The Secret of the
Curé de Ars
May 8, 1786---August 4, 1859
FEAST DAY: August 9, Traditional Calendar
August 4, New Calendar

Compiled, Partially Rewritten, and Arranged
by Pauly Fongemie

SOURCES USED:
Secrets of the Saints, Henri Ghéon, 1944;
From the Housetops Magazine, Vol. XXIV, No. 3, Serial No. 53;
The Life of the Curé de Ars, Abbé Alfred Monnin, 1861;
and Eucharistic Meditations, Curé de Ars, Eccles. Appr. 1923

INTRODUCTION
THE SAINT'S CHILDHOOD
OVERVIEW OF THE SEMINARY AND ORDINATION
THE CONVERSION OF A VILLAGE
HOLY PURITY
SIN
THE SAINT'S DEVOTION TO ST. PHILOMENA
SUFFERINGS INFLICTED ON HIM BY THE DEVIL
SUFFERINGS INFLICTED ON HIM BY GOD
THE SAINT AND LA SALETTE
THE SAINT AND OUR LADY
THE SPECIAL PRODIGIES AND GRACES OF THE SAINT PART 1
THE SPECIAL PRODIGIES AND GRACES OF THE SAINT PART 2
THE SPECIAL PRODIGIES AND GRACES OF THE SAINT PART 3
ON THE PRIESTHOOD
THE CROSS
HIS DEATH
ACT OF LOVE OF THE HOLY "CURÉ D'ARS"
THE EUCHARIST AND THE SAINT

Bonus Images:
TOP OF THE ARS SHRINE SEEN THROUGH THE TREES
STATUE OF THE SAINT, LARGE, DEMI-LENGTH
THEME IMAGE OF THE SAINT ALONE, VERY LARGE
THE CABUCHET STATUE: SEPIA PHOTO


External Links: Verified January 21, 2008
READ THE SERMONS OF ST. JOHN VIANNEY ONLINE
NOVENA ONLINE
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE JOHN XXIII ON THE SAINT
THE HOLY MASS IS THE WORK OF GOD
THE INCORRUPT HEART OF THE SAINT
THE ORATORY OF ST. JOHN VIANNEY
OUR THEME IMAGE HOLY CARD [THE SAINT'S IMAGE ALONE]
 SHRINE IN ARS FRANCE
SAINT OF THE DAY WITH PICTURES AND TEXT
TRADITIONAL FEAST DAY ORATIONS IN LATIN AND ENGLISH
ILUSTRATED BOOK FOR CHILDREN AGE 9-15
THE LITTLE CATECHISM OF THE CURE OF ARS
THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE CURE OF ARS BY O'BRIEN
THOUGHTS OF THE CURE OF ARS
THE SERMONS OF THE CURE OF ARS TO PURCHASE
DVD AND BOOK BY BOB AND PENNY LORD
THE CURE OF ARS AND THE EUCHARIST BY NEUMANN PRESS
SUCCESSFUL FRENCH SEMINARY THAT FOLLOWS THE VIANNEY MODEL
WEB MUSEUM OF ST. JOHN VIANNEY [FRENCH]


INTRODUCTION

"Do only what one can offer to God."

OF ALL great hearts, the greatest is the still the heart of a Saint. For it wants to contain not only its neighbor, strangers, all suffering, sinful, warring humanity---but God Himself.

Never has the love of mankind been so talked of as during the last couple of centuries. Yet never has every man so fiercely coveted the good things of this world; as if there were no end of them  and the might be possessed without limit ... as if each man's boundless coveting had a free field to work in and was not certain sooner or later to clash with a hundred rival covetings, each in turn wanting its share---its share being everything whatsoever that the world---which gives so little---can give.

Where desire knows no limit, you have cruelty, envy, hatred, revolt, war; and love---even of mankind---only begins at the point where desire leaves off.

It may be asked if such a love of men is human---though the stunted seed of it lies in every man.

It is inhuman because it is superhuman. It requires grace from on high, a vision---clear or dim---of an end above man's nature, an end from which man's nature draws its truest dignity. Men can only love one another as brothers when they know themselves for the sons of one Father. Outside this universal Fatherhood, there is no bond strong enough to unite men permanently in love. That bonds that pleasure knots are weak; the bonds that self-interest knots are harsh.

It is their love of God that is the measure of the greatness of great souls---whether they suspect it, or do not suspect it, or merely catch glimpses of it.

That is the secret of the miraculously living charity which flamed in the heart and inflamed the heart of Jean-Marie Baptiste Vianney, a country curé of France.

It was said before the Saint's death, and rightly, that his reputation of sanctity made all commendation superfluous, for common consent numbered him as among the servants of God.

In every age God deals with His creatures by opposing the times with holy simplicity.

To the corrupt intellectual refinement of Greece and Rome, He opposed the illiterate sanctity of the Apostles; to the spiritual miseries of the age of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment He opposed the simplicity of a man who in learning hardly complied with the conditions required for Holy Orders, but like Bl. John Colombini and St. Francis of Assisi, drew the souls of men to him bu the irresistible power of a supernatural life. It is a worthy and necessary rebuke to the intellectual pride of France of the Curé d'Ars time, inflated by science, that God chose from the midst of the learned, as His instrument of surpassing works of grace upon the hearts of men, one of the least cultivated of the pastors of His Church.

And just as no one can read the life of this Saint without drawing parallels with St. Francis, there is a bucolic, rustic beauty about  Dardilly, Ecully, and the "Chante-merle" of France, that remind us of Foligno, Perugia, and Gli Angeli; and the lowly, lonely pastor wandering among the cornfields and the orchards of Ars is of such vivid miraculous masterpiece of evangelical poverty that we read in the Fioretti de San Francisco.

Another supernatural beauty in this life is the unusual nature of the miracles by which God manifested His love and care of His servant; such as, the multiplication of the corn in the grenier, the wine in the barrel, and the flour under the hand that was kneading it for the oven. No one can read them without recalling the lives of the prophets Elias and Eliseus [Elisha: 1 Kings 19:8-21], with the plain, yet exquisiteness of their miracles, the visible revelations of the loving Providence which invisibly is interwoven with all our lives, and ministers to all our needs.

And lastly, it is impossible to to read of the days of unresting toil. till his wasted frame was carried from the confessional to his chamber, and the nights of unceasing prayer, in which he gazed with eyes radiant with supernatural light upon God Incarnate on the altar, without remembering One Who "had not so much as time to eat," and Who, when the toil of the day was done, "went up into a mountain alone," and "continued all night in the prayer of God."

One of his spiritual children said of the Saint, "He would gaze at the Tabernacle with a smile which gladdened the heart. I have seen it many a time; it seemed as if he saw our Lord. I was always struck with my own spiritual misery before God, when I saw by the light of the sanctuary lamp, that wasted and withered form. and that brilliant glance fixed upon the door of the Tabernacle, with an expression of happiness which it is impossible to describe."

The special features of this most supernatural life appear to be, evangelical poverty of spirit, and the two fruits which spring from it,---the sweetness which, as St. Francis of Sales tells us, is the perfection of charity, and the radiant peace which beamed from his countenance, his words, his tones, and every action of his life.

In a word, the one great truth taught us by the whole history of the Curé of Ars is the all-sufficiency of supernatural sanctity. A soul inhabited by the Holy Ghost becomes His instrument in the salvation of men. To such a sanctity the smallness of natural gifts is no hindrance, and the greatest intellectual power without it does little in the order of grace; for souls are to be won to God, as God created and redeemed them---by love and by compassion; and it was this which shone forth with a surpassing splendor in all the life of this great servant of Jesus, and concealed even the wonderful gifts of discernment and supernatural power with which he was endowed.

It remains only to add, that the following narrative was written at the command of the Saint's diocesan Bishop, the Bishop of Belley, by his friend and fellow laborer, the Abbé Monnin.

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