St John Vianney

August 4 Feast of St John Marie Vianney, Patron of parish priests.

Fr Doyle had a great devotion to the then Blessed John Vianney, and visited Ars in 1907.

From O’Rahilly’s biography:

In spite of missing a train, and after an adventurous journey on a very primitive steam-tram, he found himself in the spot hallowed by the Curé of Ars. Fr. Doyle insisted on seeing everything the room in which the saint died, the half-burnt curtains said to have been damaged by the devil, the little pan in which the holy man cooked the flour-lumps which he called cakes. He was allowed as a special privilege to sit in the Curé’s confessional, and above all he was able to say Mass at his shrine, using the saint’s chalice. Just above the altar reposed the Curé’s body in a case of glass and gold. “It gave one a strange feeling,” wrote Fr. Doyle, “to see the holy old man lying before one during Mass, calm and peaceful, with a heavenly smile on his face, just as he died fifty years ago…I shall never forget my visit to Ars,” he concluded; “I knew all about the Blessed Curé’s life, so that each spot had an interest and charm for me.”

Two further reflections from Fr Doyle on St Vianney may be helpful today. Writing in his diary on this feast day, 4 August, 1913, he said:

Making my meditation before the picture of the Blessed (John Vianney), he seemed to say to me with an interior voice: “The secret of my life was that I lived for the moment. I did not say, I must pray here for the next hour, but only for this moment. I did not say, I have a hundred confessions to hear, I but looked upon this one as the first and last. I did not say, I must deny myself everything and always, but only just this once. By this means I was able always to do everything perfectly, quietly and in great peace. Try and live this life of the present moment. Pray as if you had nothing else whatever to do; say your Office slowly as if for the last time; do not look forward and think you must often repeat this act of self-denial. This will make all things much easier.”

In another place in his diary Fr Doyle writes in a similar vein:

No sacrifice would be great if looked at in this way. I do not feel now the pain which has past, I have not yet to bear what is coming; hence I have only to endure the suffering of this one moment, which is quickly over and cannot return.

The implications of this advice is of immediate relevance for every life, no matter who, or where, we are.