SAINT PRIEST OF ARS, SAINT JOHN MARY VIANEY
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What I remember from his biography with additions from other pages:
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"He is patron of priests; example of virtue, confessor, promoter of the Eucharist and Marian devotion. He was born near Lyon in the year 1786."
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St. John Vianney was born at a time of persecution of the Holy Religion, he made his First Communion in a barn, the people went there secretly and the ceremony took place there. He was compulsorily conscripted into the army but a heaven-sent chance set him free. He entered the seminary breaking his father's wishes.
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The holy priest of Ars was appointed to a parish where the previous parish priest did not last long. When he arrived, Ars was infested with canteens and only 2 or 3 persons went to Mass. The holy priest spent hours and hours in front of the Tabernacle, and he asked God: if you do not change them, change me. And God worked so much in him that when he died, there were no more canteens, people no longer worked on Sundays and all the people of Ars, except one individual, attended Mass.
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<<God gave him the gift of knowing the sins of the people, his fame as confessor grew and people came to confess to him from all over the area, and then from all over France, so the railroad had to put an extra window in (I suppose it was Paris) dedicated exclusively to selling tickets to Ars. Then people came from the bordering countries. People would go to Ars and wait there for days until they could go to confession.
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So many souls he snatched from the devil that the devil would not let him sleep any day, he would shake his bed, he would scream terribly and tell him that he was very angry because that day he had snatched so many souls... Saint John Vianney even said that "with the ‘paws’ (the devil) we already seem to be buddies", many said that those attacks were an invention, so one day the Saint priest of Ars invited 2 detractor priests to sleep in his room. When the devil started screaming, the two priests fled dressed in their pajamas... and from then on they became Saint John Vianney’s best defenders. One day he was preparing for Holy Mass and someone came to tell him that his room was on fire, the Saint said nothing, just gave him the keys to the room and went on quietly preparing for Mass. The attacks of the devil lasted 45 years, it is noteworthy that the Day D, in Normandy (land of St. Therese) happened in ‘45. If the world, whose prince is satan, hates the Saints, it will have no one to intercede for it.
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Asked what he said to Sacramented Jesus when he adored Him, he said: "nothing..., He looks at me, I look at Him.... He looks at me....". (I copy a photo that represents a bit of his attitude in his whole life, most of the drawings in internet are insulting... people should look for the truth and abandon irrational hatred towards Catholic Church, I know that many were raised in that hatred since they were children, but "where sin abounds, grace abounds" if they want to look for it).
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It is necessary to make great sacrifices. St. John Vianney boiled 14 potatoes once a week, and ate 2 a day, on Feasts he added an egg. That was all he ate. He was also in the confessional almost ALL DAY, apart from officiating at Mass, then giving a catechesis, then shaving and going to the orphanage for girls that he founded with the alms that people gave him; the rest of the day, from 4 in the morning until 12 at night, he was in the confessional, even on Sundays, he never rested from working for God (tremendous similarity to Jesus Christ Most Holy). There were schedules for confessing women, and the hardest schedules were for men. He cared for the souls of the girls in the orphanage and provided for everything. One day the cook told him that she had no enough flour to make bread, he told her to make it anyway, so the cook began to put water to the flour and as it was thick, she added more water, and more water until she had a normal dough with the daily customary amount.
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That sacrificed life was not easy, but it is what bears fruit for the salvation of souls, on two occasions he wanted to leave Ars and when he was walking through the meadow ..... He returned. One day he was in the confessional and a woman was walking around the square in a litter. The Holy Curé of Ars had to go outside and said to her: Go away, for the stench of your soul will make me vomit.
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<<He used to say that "the devil is not so afraid of discipline and nail shirts, as he is of the reduction of food, drink and sleep." The episodes in which the demon tried to frighten or distract him are quite well known. On one occasion he made his house shake for up to 15 minutes so that he would stop praying.
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To go to confession with him, people had to make an appointment three days in advance. And in the confessional he obtained impressive conversions. From 1830 to 1845, 300 people came to Ars every day from different regions of France to confess to the humble priest Vianney.>>
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VERY IMPORTANT:
"Faced with the criticism of some villagers against his sermons, the bishop sent a visitor to point out the defects and virtues of Fr. Vianney's sermons: "His defects are that they are very long, very hard and he always speaks of the same subjects: sins, vices, death, judgment, hell and heaven. But its quality is that the listeners are converted and begin a holier life than the one they were leading before". The Bishop, satisfied and smiling, exclaimed: "Because of this last quality, the priest of Ars can be forgiven for his defects”.
<<In the last year of his life, 100,000 pilgrims came to Ars. Next to the parish house there were several hotels where those going to confession stayed. [At 4 am] he would ring the bell in the tower, open the church and begin to hear confessions. At that hour the line of penitents was already more than a block long. He would confess men until six o'clock in the morning. Shortly after six o'clock he would begin to pray the psalms in his devotional book and prepare for Holy Mass. At seven o'clock he would celebrate the holy office. In his last years, the Bishop obliged him to drink a cup of milk at eight o'clock in the morning. From eight to eleven o'clock he would hear women's confessions. At eleven o'clock he gave a catechism class for all the people who were there in the church. They were very simple words that did immense good to the listeners. At twelve o'clock he would have his two potatoes. He would bathe, shave, and go to visit an institute - called "THE PROVIDENCE" - for poor young girls that he supported with the alms that people gave him. In the streets people surrounded him with great veneration and asked him questions. From half past one until six o'clock he continued to hear confessions. His advices in confession were very brief. But to many he read their sins in their mind and told them the sins they had left unsaid. He was strong in combating drunkenness and other vices.
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In the confessional he suffered from dizziness and at times it seemed to him that he would freeze with cold in winter and in summer he would sweat profusely. But he continued to confess as if he were suffering nothing. He would say: "The confessional is the coffin where I have been buried while still alive". But it was there that he achieved his great triumphs in favor of souls. At night he would read for a while.
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To a man who insulted him without reason, he wrote a most humble letter apologizing as if he had been the aggressor.
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"Knowing how his parish was doing, in order to convert it to God, Fr. Vianney proposed three things:
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1) To pray much, devoting long hours to prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. He called himself "the lapdog who throws himself before his master present in the Tabernacle."
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He prayed daily to God: "Lord, grant me the conversion of my parish; I accept to suffer all that you want for the rest of my life".
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2) He spoke harshly in his sermons against the vices of his parishioners, to demolish the traps with which the devil wanted to lose them. He read and studied many hours to prepare the Sunday sermon; he wrote it down, walked around to memorize it, and often forgot what he had prepared, but he caused impressive conversions.
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A parishioner, Catherine Lassagne, said of his sermons: "Speaking of the immense love of Our Lord, his heart would break, and he could no longer speak. Then he wept”.
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He criticized, above all, Sunday work, dances and taverns. In a sermon he said about Sunday: "On Sundays the Good Lord opens his treasures to us; it is up to us to take full advantage of them".
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He criticized dances as the main occasion for falling into lust and impurity. He spoke to the young women of the town to remind them of the importance of purity. "Impurity is the sin that is most difficult to uproot," he would say. "A chaste body, a pure soul, there is nothing more beautiful!".
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In another homily he said against taverns, "The tavern is the devil's store, the marketplace where souls are lost, where family harmony is broken, where quarrels begin and murders are committed."
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Faced with the criticism of some villagers against his sermons, the bishop sent a visitor to point out the defects and virtues of Father Vianney's sermons: "His defects are that they are very long, very hard and he always speaks of the same subjects: sins, vices, death, judgment, hell and heaven. But its quality is that the listeners are converted and begin a holier life than the one they were leading before". The Bishop, satisfied and smiling, exclaimed: "For this last quality one can forgive the Parish Priest of Ars his defects".
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The influence of the Curé of Ars was so great that all the taverns started to close due to the lack of customers. From then on, due to the influx of pilgrims, hotels, cafes and restaurants were opened, to which the Saint did not object.>>
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The Holy Curé of Ars once said: God, I am tired of living among sinners... when will I go to live among angels?
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In his old age one day he fainted and the bishop ordered him to drink a glass of milk at mid-morning. But soon he got sick, and people put wet blankets on the roof to cool his room and bring his fever down, after a few days a priest came to give him the last Sacraments he said: God is so good... when we cannot go to Him, He comes to us.