The Blessed Curé of Ars in His Catechetical Instructions

Introduction

"THERE IS no doubt, " says Pere Gratry, "that, through purity of heart, innocence, either preserved or recovered by virtue, faith, and religion, there are in man capabilities and resources of mind, of body, and of heart which most people would not suspect. To this order of resources belongs what theology calls infused science, the intellectual virtues which the Divine Word inspires into our minds when He dwells in us by faith and love."

And Pere Gratry quotes with enthusiasm, excusing himself for not translating them better, these magnificent words of a saint who lived in the eleventh century in one of the mystic monasteries on the banks of the Rhine: "This is what purifies the eye of the heart, and enables it to raise itself to the true light: contempt of worldly cares, mortification of the body, contrition of heart, abundance of tears . . . meditation on the admirable Essence of God and on His chaste Truth, fervent and pure prayer, joy in God, ardent desire for Heaven. Embrace all this, " adds the saint, "and continue in it. Advance towards the light which offers itself to you as to its sons, and descends of itself into your hearts. Take your hearts out of your breasts, and give them to Him who speaks to you, and He will fill them with deific splendour, and you will be sons of light and angels of God. "

The description we have just read seems to have been traced from the very life of the Curé of Ars. Every detail recalls him, every feature harmonises marvellously with his. Who has ever carried further "contempt of worldly cares, mortification of the body, abundance of tears?" He was always bathed in tears. And then, "meditation on the admirable Essence of God and on His chaste Truth, and fervent and pure prayer, joy in God, ardent desire for Heaven" - how characteristic is this! "He had advanced towards the light, and the light had descended of itself into his heart. . . . He had taken his heart from his breast, and given it to Him who spoke to him; and He who spoke to him, " who is the Divine, uncreated Word of God, "filled him with deific splendour. " No one could doubt it who has had the happiness of assisting at any of the catechisms of Ars; of hearing that extraordinary language, which was like no human language; who has seen the irresistible effect produced upon hearers of all classes by that voice, that emotion, that intuition, that fire, and the signal beauty of that unpolished and almost vulgar French, which was transfigured and penetrated by his holy energy, even to the form, the arrangement, and the harmony of its words and syllables. And yet the Curé of Ars did not speak words: true eloquence consists in speaking things; he spoke things, and in a most wonderful manner. He poured out his whole soul into the souls of the crowds who listened to him, that he might make them believe, love, and hope like himself. That is the aim and the triumph of evangelical eloquence.

How could this man, who had nearly been refused admittance into the great seminary because of his ignorance, and who had, since his promotion to the priesthood, been solely employed in prayer and in the labours of the confessional - how could he have attained to the power of teaching like one of the Fathers of the Church? Whence did he derive his astonishing knowledge of God, of nature, and of the history of the soul? How was it that his thoughts and expressions so often coincided with those of the greatest Christian geniuses, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa?

For example, we have often heard him say that the heart of the saints was liquid. We were much struck with this energetic expression, without suspecting that it was so theologically accurate; and we were surprised and touched to find, in turning over the pages of the Summa, that the angelical doctor assigns to love four immediate effects, of which the first is the liquefaction of the heart. M. Vianney had certainly never read St. Thomas, which makes this coincidence the more remarkable; and, indeed, it is inexplicable to those who are ignorant of the workings of grace, and who do not comprehend those words of the Divine Master: "Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones. " [Matt. 11:25].

The Spirit of God had been pleased to engrave on the heart of this holy priest all that he was to know and to teach to others; and it was the more deeply engraved, as that heart was the more pure, the more detached, and empty of the vain science of men; like a clean and polished block of marble, ready for the tool of the sculptor.

The faith of the Curé of Ars was his whole science; his book was Our Lord Jesus Christ. He sought for wisdom nowhere but in Jesus Christ, in His death and in His Cross. To him no other wisdom was true, no other wisdom useful. He sought it not amid the dust of libraries, not in the schools of the learned, but in prayer, on his knees, at his Master's Feet, covering His Divine Feet with tears and kisses. In the presence of the Blessed Sacrament where he passed his days and nights before the crowd of pilgrims had yet deprived him of liberty day and night, he had learnt it all.

When persons have heard him discourse upon Heaven, on the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord, on His dolorous Passion, His Real Presence in the most Holy Sacrament of our altars, on the Blessed Virgin Mary, her attractions and her greatness, on the happiness of the saints, the purity of the angels, the beauty of souls, the dignity of man - on all those subjects which were familiar to him - it often happened to them to come out from the discourse quite convinced that the good father saw the things of which he had spoken with such fullness of heart, with such eloquent emotion, in such passionate accents, with such abundance of tears; and indeed his words were then impressed with a character of divine tenderness, of sweet gentleness, and of penetrating unction, which was beyond all comparison. There was so extraordinary a majesty, so marvellous a power, in his voice, in his gestures, in his looks, in his transfigured countenance, that it was impossible to listen to him and remain cold and unmoved.

Views and thoughts imparted by a divine light have quite a different bearing from those acquired by study. Doubt was dispelled from the most rebellious hearts, and the admirable clearness of faith took its place before so absolute a certainty, an exposition at once so luminous and so simple.

The word of the Curé of Ars was the more efficacious because he preached with his whole being. His mere presence was a manifestation of the Truth; and of him it might well be said that he would have moved and convinced men even he would have moved and convinced men even by his silence. When there appeared in the pulpit that pale, thin, and transparent face; when you heard that shrill, piercing voice, like a cry, giving out to the crowd sublime thoughts clothed in simple and popular language, you fancied yourself in the presence of one of those great characters of the Bible, speaking to men in the language of the prophets. You were already filled with respect and confidence, and disposed to listen, not for enjoyment, but for profit.

Before he began, the venerable catechist used to cast a glance over his hearers, which prepared the way for his word. Sometimes this glance became fixed on someone; it seemed to be searching into the depths of some soul which the saint had suddenly seen through, and in which one would have thought he was looking for the text of his discourse. How many have thought he was speaking to them alone! How many have recognised themselves in the picture he drew of their weaknesses! How many have listened to the secret history of their failings, of their temptations, of their combats, of their uneasiness, and of their remorse!

To those to whom it was given to assist at these catechisms, two things were equally remarkable - the preacher and the hearer. It was not words that the preacher gave forth, it was more than words; it was a soul, a holy soul, all filled with faith and love, that poured itself out before you, of which you felt in your own soul the immediate contact and the warmth. As for the hearer, he was no longer on the earth, he was transported into those pure regions from which dogmas and mysteries descend. As the saint spoke, new and clear views opened to the mind: Heaven and earth, the present and the future life, the things of time and of eternity, appeared in a light that you had never before perceived.

When a man, coming fresh from the world, and bringing with him worldly ideas, feelings, and impressions, sat down to listen to this doctrine, it stunned and amazed him; it set so utterly at defiance the world, and all that the world believes, loves and extols. At first he was astonished and thunderstruck; then by degrees he was touched, and surprised into weeping like the rest. No eloquence has drawn forth more tears, or penetrated deeper into the hearts of men. His words opened a way before them like flames, and the most hardened hearts melted like wax before the fire. They were burning, radiating, triumphant; they did more than charm the mind, they subdued the whole soul and brought it back to God, not by the long and difficult way of argument, but by the paths of emotion which lead shortly and directly to the desired end.

M. Vianney was listened to as a new apostle, sent by Jesus Christ to His Church, to renew in Her the holiness and fervour of His Divine Spirit, in an age whose corruption had so effaced them from the souls of most men. And it is a great marvel that, proposing, like the apostles, a doctrine incomprehensible to human reason, and very bitter to the depraved taste of the world - speaking of nothing but crosses, humiliations, poverty, and penance - his doctrine was so well received. Those who had not yet received it into their hearts were glad to feed their minds upon it. If they had not courage to make it the rule of their conduct, they could not help admiring and wishing to follow it.

It is not less remarkable that, though he spoke only in the incorrect and common French natural to the people brought up in the country, one might say of him as of the Apostles, that he was heard by all the nations of the world, and that his voice resounded through all the earth. He was the oracle that people went to consult, that they might learn to know Jesus Christ. Not only the simple but the learned, not only the fervent but the indifferent, found in it a divine unction which penetrated them and made them long to hear it again. The more they heard, the more they wished to hear; and they always came back with love to the foot of that pulpit, as to a place where they had found beauty and truth. Nothing more clearly showed that the Curé of Ars was full of the Spirit of God, who alone is greater than our heart; we may draw from His depths without ever exhausting them, and the divine satiety which He gives only excites a greater appetite.

The holy Curé spoke without any other preparation than his continual union with God; he passed without any interval or delay from the confessional to the pulpit; and yet he showed an imperturbable confidence, which sprang from complete and absolute forgetfulness of himself. Besides, no one was tempted to criticise him. People generally criticise those who are not indifferent to their opinion of them. Those who heard the Curé of Ars had something else to do - they had to pass judgment on themselves.

M. Vianney cared nothing for what might be said or thought of him. Of whomsoever his audience might consist, though bishops and other illustrious personages often mingled with the crowd that surrounded his pulpit, he never betrayed the least emotion, nor the least embarrassment proceeding from human respect. He, who was so timid and so humble, was no longer the same person when he passed through the compact mass that filled the church at the hour of catechism; he wore an air of triumph, he carried his head high, his face was lighted up, and his eyes cast brilliant glances.

He was asked one day if he had never been afraid of his audience. "No, " he answered; "on the contrary, the more people there are, the better I am pleased. " Then, to impose on us, he added, "A proud man always thinks he does well. " If he had had the pope, the cardinals, and kings around his pulpit, he would have said neither more nor less, for he thought only of souls, and made them think only of God. This real power of his word supplied in him the want of talent and rhetoric; it gave a singular majesty and an irresistible authority to the most simple things that issued from that venerable mouth.

The power of his word was also increased by the high opinion the pilgrims entertained of his sanctity. "The first quality of the man called to the perilous honour of instructing the people, " says St. Isidore, "is to be holy and irreproachable. He whose mission it is to deter others from sin must be a stranger to sin; he whose task it is to lead model of perfection. " In the holy catechist of Ars, virtue was preaching truth. When he spoke of the love of God, of humility, gentleness, patience, mortification, sacrifice, poverty, or the desire of suffering, his example gave immense weight to his words; for a man who practices what he teaches is very powerful in convincing and persuading others.

He used to put his ideas into the most simple and transparent form, letting them suggest the expression that best suited them. He could bring truths of the highest order within the reach of every intellect; he clothed them in familiar language; his simplicity touched the heart, and his doctrine delighted the mind. That science which is not sought for is abundant; it flows like the fountain of living water, which the Samaritan woman knew not, and of which the Saviour taught her the virtue. Thus, his considerations on sin, on the offence it is against God, and the evil it inflicts on man, were the painful result of his thoughts. They penetrated him, they overwhelmed him; they were like a burning arrow piercing his breast; he relieved his pain by giving utterance to it.

It was a wonderful thing that this man, so ready to proclaim his own ignorance, had by nature a great attraction for the higher faculties of the mind. The greatest praise that he could give anyone was to say that he was clever. When the good qualities of any great person, whether an ecclesiastic or a layman, were enumerated before him, he seldom failed to complete the panegyric in these words: "What pleases me most is that he is learned. "

M. Vianney appreciated the gift of eloquence in others; he blessed God, who for His own glory gives such privileges to man, but he disdained them for himself. He had no scruple in utterly neglecting grammar and syntax in his discourses; he seemed to do it on purpose, out of humility, for there were faults in them that he might easily have avoided. But this incorrect language penetrated the souls of his hearers, enlightened and converted them. "A polished discourse, " says St. Jerome, "only gratifies the ears; one which is not so makes its way to the heart. "

His manner of speaking was sudden and impetuous; he loosed his words like arrows from a bow, and his whole soul seemed to fly with them. In these effusions the pathetic, the profound, the sublime, was often side by side with the simple and vulgar. They had all the freedom and irregularity, but also all the originality and power of an improvisation. We have sometimes tried to write down what we had just heard, but it was impossible to recall the things that had most moved us and to put them into form. What is most divine in the heart of man cannot be expressed in writing. We have, however, set down a few words, in which we find more than a remembrance. We find the Curé of Ars himself, the simple expression of his heart and of his soul. These are some of his lofty and deep thoughts:

"To love God! oh how beautiful it is! We must be in Heaven to comprehend love. . . . Prayer helps us a little, because prayer is the elevation of the soul to Heaven. . . . The more we know men, the less we love them. It is the reverse with God; the more we know Him, the more we love Him. This knowledge inflames the soul with such a love, that it can no longer love or desire anything from God. . . . Man was created by love; therefore he is so disposed to love. On the other hand, he is so great that nothing on the earth can satisfy him. He can be satisfied only when he turns towards God. . . . Take a fish out of the water, and it will not live. Well, such is man without God.

"There are some who do not love the good God, who do not pray to Him, and who prosper; that is a bad sign. They have done a little good in the midst of a great deal of evil. The good God rewards them in this life.

"This earth is a bridge to cross the water; it serves only to support our steps. . . . We are in this world, but we are not of this world, since we say every day, 'Our Father, Who art in Heaven. ' We must wait, then, for our reward till we are at home, in our Father's house. This is the reason why good Christians suffer crosses, contradictions, adversities, contempt, calumnies - so much the better! . . . But people are astonished at this. They seem to think that because we love the good God a little, we ought to have nothing to contradict us, nothing to make us suffer. . . . We say, 'There is a person who is not good, and yet everything goes well with him; but with me, it is of no use doing my best; everything goes wrong. It is because we do not understand the value and the happiness of crosses. We say sometimes that God chastises those whom He loves. That is not true. Trials are not chastisements; they are graces to those whom God loves. . . . We must not consider the labor, but the recompense. A merchant does not consider the trouble he undergoes in his commerce, but the profit he gains by it. . . . What are twenty years, thirty years, compared to eternity? What, then, have we to suffer? A few humiliations, a few annoyances, a few sharp words; that will not kill us.

"It is glorious to be able to please God, so little as we are! Our tongue should be employed only in praying, our heart in loving, our eyes in weeping. We are great, and we are nothing. . . . There is nothing greater than man, and nothing less. Nothing is greater, if we consider his soul; nothing is less, if we look at his body. . . . We occupy ourselves with the body, as if we had it alone to take care of; we have, on the contrary, it alone to despise. . . . We are the work of a God. . . . one always loves one's own work. . . . It is easy enough to understand that we are the work of a God; but that the crucifixion of a God should be our work! that is incomprehensible.

"Some people attribute a hard heart to the Eternal Father. Oh, how mistaken they are! The Eternal Father, to disarm His own justice, gave to His Son an excessively tender heart; no one can give what he does not possess. Our Lord said to His Father: 'Father, do not punish them!' . . . Our Lord suffered more than was necessary to redeem us. But what would have satisfied the justice of I His Father would not have satisfied His love. With - I out Our Lord's death, all mankind together could not expiate a single little lie.

"In the world, people hide Heaven and Hell: Heaven, because if we knew its beauty, we should wish to go there at all costs - we should, indeed, leave the world alone; Hell, because if we knew the torments that are endured there, we should do all we could to avoid going there.

"The Sign of the Cross is formidable to the devil, because by the Cross we escape from him. We should make the Sign of the Cross with great respect. We begin with the forehead: it is the head, creation - the Father; then the heart: love, life, redemption - the Son; then the shoulders: strength - the Holy Ghost. Everything reminds us of the Cross. We ourselves are made in the form of a cross. In Heaven we shall be nourished by the breath of God. . . . The good God will place us as an architect places the stones of a building - each one in the spot to which it is adapted. The soul of the saints contained the foundations of Heaven. They felt an emanation from Heaven, in which they bathed and lost themselves. . . . As the disciples on Mount Thabor saw nothing but Jesus alone, so interior souls, on the Thabor of their hearts no longer see anything but Our Lord. They are two friends, who are never tired of each other. . . .

"There are some who lose the faith, and never see Hell till they enter it. The lost will be enveloped in the wrath of God, as the fish are in the water. It is not God who condemns us to Hell; it is we ourselves who do it by our sins. The lost do not accuse God; they accuse themselves. They say, 'I have lost God, my soul, and Heaven by my own fault. ' No one was ever lost for having done too much evil; but many are in Hell for a single mortal sin of which they would not repent. If a lost soul could say once, 'O my God I love Thee!' there would be no more Hell for him . . . but, alas, poor soul! it has lost the power of loving which it had received, and of which it made no use. Its heart is dried up like grapes that have passed through the winepress. No more joy in that soul, no more peace, because there is no more love. . . . Hell has its origin in the goodness of God. The lost will say, 'Oh, if at least God had not loved us so much, we should suffer less! Hell would be endurable. . . . But to have been so much loved! what grief!"

Besides these deep thoughts, he had some that were forcible and startling. He called the cemetery, the home of all; Purgatory, the infirmary of the good God; the earth, a warehouse. "We are on the earth, " he said, "only as in a warehouse, for a very little moment. . . . We seem not to move, and we are going toward eternity as if by steam.

"A dying man was asked what should be put on his tomb. He answered, 'You shall put, Here lies a fool, who went out of this world without knowing how he came into it.' If the poor lost souls had the time that we waste, what good use they would make of it! If they had only half - an hour, that half - hour would depopulate Hell. In dying, we make restitution; we restore to the earth what it gave us - a little pinch of dust, the size of a nut; that is what we shall become. There is, indeed, much to be proud of in that! For our body, death is only a cleansing. In this world we must labor, we must fight. We shall have plenty of time to rest in all eternity.

"If we understood our happiness aright, we might almost say that we are happier than the saints in Heaven. They live upon their income; they can earn no more, while we can augment our treasure every moment. The Commandments of God are the guides which God gives us to show us the road to Heaven, like the names written up at the corners of the streets and on guideposts, to point out the way. The grace of God helps us to walk and supports us. He is as necessary to us as crutches are to a lame man.

"When we go to confession, we ought to understand what we are going to do. It might be said that we are going to unfasten Our Lord from the Cross. When you have made a good confession, you have chained up the devil. The sins that we conceal will all come to light.

"In order to conceal our sins effectually, we must confess them thoroughly. Our faults are like a grain of sand beside the great mountain of the mercies of the good God."

M. Vianney made great use of comparisons and similes in his teachings; he borrowed them from nature, which was known and loved by the crowd whom he addressed, from the beauties of the country, from the emotions of rural life. The recollections of his childhood had kept all their freshness, and in his old age he could not resist the innocent pleasure of recalling for a moment the lively sympathies of his youth. This return of the thoughts to the brightest days of life is like an anticipation of the Resurrection. After the manner of Our Lord, he used the most well known events, the most common facts, the incidents that came before him as figures of the spiritual life, and made them the theme of his instructions. The Gospel is full of symbols and figures, fitted to lead the soul to the comprehension of eternal truths by a comparison with what is more evident to the senses. In like manner, allusions, metaphors, parables and figures colored all the discourses of the Curé of Ars. His mind had acquired the habit of raising itself, by means of visible things, to God and to the invisible. There was not one of his catechisms in which he did not often speak of rivulets, forests, trees, birds, flowers, dew, lilies, balm, perfume and honey. All contemplatives love this language, and the innocence of their thoughts attaches itself by predilection to all the beautiful and pure things with which the Author of creation has embellished His work. A good man, Our Lord says, brings forth good things out of the good treasures of his heart. The sweet writings of St. Francis of Sales are a model of this style, dear to all mystics; and we are not surprised to find these graces of language and this exquisite taste in the Bishop of Geneva. But where had this poor country curé learnt his flowers of eloquence? Who had taught him to use them with such delicate tact and ingenuity? Let us listen:

"Like a beautiful white dove rising from the midst of the waters, and coming to shake her wings over the earth, the Holy Spirit issues from the infinite ocean of the Divine perfections, and hovers over pure souls, to pour into them the balm of love. The Holy Spirit reposes in a pure soul as on a bed of roses. There comes forth from a soul in which the Holy Spirit resides a sweet door, like that of the vine when it is in flower.

"He who has preserved his baptismal innocence is like a child who has never disobeyed his father. . . . One who has kept his innocence feels himself lifted up on high by love, as a bird is carried up by its wings. Those who have pure souls are like eagles and swallows, which fly in the air. . . . A Christian who is pure is upon earth like a bird that is kept fastened down by a string. Poor little bird! it only waits for the moment when the string is cut to fly away.

"Good Christians are like those birds that have large wings and small feet, and which never light upon the ground, because they could not rise again and would be caught. They make their nests, too, upon the points of rocks, on the roofs of houses, in high places. So the Christian ought to be always on the heights. As soon as we lower our thoughts towards the earth, we are taken captive.