The Year for Priests and Its Patron

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Wednesday, August 05, 2009

The Year for Priests and Its Patron

The Year for Priests and Its Patron | Sandra Miesel | Web Exclusive for Catholic World Report

During the Year for Priests, the Church looks to St. John Vianney for particular inspiration and intercession.

Since June 19, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Church has been observing the Year of the Priest. On August 4, we celebrate the memorial of St. John Marie Baptiste Vianney, the parish priest par excellence and universal patron of the clergy. Special festivities marking this day—the 150th anniversary of St. John’s death—nestle within the larger jubilee just as human priests shelter within the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, the Great High Priest. As Pope Benedict XVI has said, “The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.”

While the life of St. John Vianney (1786-1859) is attracting extra attention this year, his remarkable service to his parish needs to be put into historical context. He was born into a poor farming family near Lyons just as the ancien regime of Bourbon France was stumbling toward the Revolution. John was still a small child when the revolutionaries took control of the Church under the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790. Almost all the nation’s clerics refused to join the schism and were removed from office. Hundreds were killed during the Reign of Terror.

Like many loyal Catholics, John’s parents scorned their “Constitutional” pastor and attended Mass only when an underground priest was available. In 1801, Napoleon as First Consul of the Republic signed a concordat with the Pope restoring the status of the legitimate Church. Mass was freely available again, and John was confirmed by Napoleon’s uncle, the cardinal of Lyons.

During the decade of repression, John had begun to feel a calling to the priesthood. As he watched his earthly father’s sheep, he longed to shepherd his Heavenly Father’s sheep. But with scarcely a year of schooling and no academic aptitude, John’s dream seemed impossible. Fortunately, the priest in a neighboring village offered to prepare him for the seminary. John made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Counter-Reformation evangelist St. John Regis for encouragement.

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