Although the feast of San Juan Vianney, Cura de Ars, is on August 4, the centenary of his canonization was held earlier this year, May 31. It is a providential moment to reflect on their teachings and guidance, given in sermons to their faithful in Ars (France) and then to the thousands of pilgrims who came to the small village.
While in many sermons he did not walk around the sin and the possibility of hell while trying to save the careless and sinful souls, he also emphasized God’s mercy to attract sinners, whom he attracted by thousands as he spent countless hours in the confessional.
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Let’s look at some ways to demonstrate how easily your warnings apply to what we see that happens in the world today, and a much greater rhythm.
In a sermon, Ars’s priest points to the terrible state of the warm soul:
“That soul that I would like to be mundane while still being the daughter of God. You will see that person prostrate himself in a moment before God, his Savior and his teacher, and to the next prostrate in the same way before the world, his idol. (…) Love God. Or rather, I would like to love him, but he would also like to please the world. Then, tired of wanting to give his loyalty to both, he ends up surrendering only the world.”
In other words, as our Lord said, two lords cannot be served.
Make our actions worthy
San Juan María Vianney wanted to teach sinners to regret and change:
“Jesus Christ, with his sufferings and his death, has made all our actions meritorious, so that for the good Christian there is no movement of our heart or our body that is not rewarded if we do them for him.”
Again explain:
“Follow me a moment and you will know how to make all your actions meritorious for eternal life without changing anything. In your behavior, you just have to be in mind to please God in everything you do. And I would add that, instead of hindering your actions by doing them for God, you will make them, on the contrary, much more pleasant and less arduous.”
That practice should start daily.
How to start the day? He advises:
“In the morning, when you wake up, think immediately in God and quickly make the sign of the cross, saying:” My God, I give you my heart.
Ars’s priest explains this offer again:
“It simply offers all your difficulties to God and renew this offer from time to time. You will have the happiness of attracting the blessing of heaven about yourself and especially what you do. Think, dear brother, how many works of virtue you can practice behaving like this, without changing anything you do.”
“If you work in order to please God and obey his commandments, that they order you to win the bread with the sweat of your forehead, that is an act of obedience. If you want to atone The salvation of our souls! ”
And for any job?
“Before starting your work, dear brothers, never stop making the sign of the cross,” says Vianney.
Also says:
“The sign of the cross is the most terrible weapon against the devil. Therefore, the Church wishes not only that we always keep in mind to remember how much our souls are worth and how much it cost Jesus Christ, but also that we do it at all times: when we go to bed, by waking up, at night, when we get up, when we take any action and, above all, when we are tempted. We can say that a Christian who is persecuted before the cross with authentic Religious feelings, that is, with full awareness of the action he performs, he trembles hell.
Importance of religion
Again he affirms: “How happy it would be man, even on this earth, if he knew his religion!” Because, it continues:
“Neither wealth, nor honors, nor vanity can make man happy during his life on earth, but only the attachment to God, when we are lucky to realize it and carry it out properly.”
“What power has who is close to God when he loves him and serves him faithfully! Oh, my dear brothers, whatever he is despised by the people of the world, who seems insignificant and humble, look at him when he dominates the will and power of God himself. Look at Moses, who forces the Lord to grant forgiveness to 300,000 men who were really guilty. Demons fled before them, the lame wared, the blind saw, the dead rose. ”
You don’t have to be on the opposite side, it warns with emphasis:
“Now, observe all those people Impia and all those famous people in the world, with all their ingenuity and knowledge to achieve everything. Oh!
“Oh, my dear brothers, the man who lives according to the direction of his passions and leaves God’s service is unhappy and capable of very little!”
But on the contrary, preach:
“Only the service to God will comfort us and make us happy in the midst of all the miseries of life. To achieve it, you do not need to leave your belongings, or your parents, not even your friends, unless they take you to sin. You do not have to go to spend the rest of your life in the desert to cry your sins there. If that were necessary for us, in fact, we would be very happy to have such a remedy for our evils.”
“But no, a father and a mother can serve God living with their children and greedying them Christianly. A servant can easily serve God already his master, without anything stopping him. No, dear brothers, the lifestyle that means serving God does not change anything in everything we have to do. On the contrary, we simply do better everything we should do.”
The mercy of God
While Ars’s priest had a lot to say about sin and the way to hell, and wanted to instill and scare in a good way those who are simply undecided and do not care about living a good life, Juan María Vianney wanted to make God’s love and mercy predominate, especially in his last sermons.
Let’s take, for example, your advice on Mass – and examples of the daily mass. “
“No, dear children, we should not fear that Mass prevents us from fulfilling our temporary affairs; it is quite the opposite. We can be sure that everything will be better and even our businesses will prosper better than if we have the misfortune of not attending Mass … who frequently attend the Holy Mass administered their affairs much better than those who, for their little faith, believe that they do not have time for Mass. God and we depend on our own efforts at all, how much more happy we would be! ”
As he summarized on another occasion:
“Attending Mass is the most important thing we can do.”
Then there is the issue of prayer. He says that a Catholic Church is “the abode of the one who loves me more than himself, because he died for me, whose compassionate eyes are attentive to my actions, whose ears are attentive to my prayers, always willing to listen to them and forgive.”
Continue:
“Oh, how many things do I have to tell you, how many thanks I have to ask for, how much gratitude I have to show you! I will talk about all my concerns, and I know that I will comfort myself. I will confess my faults, and you will forgive me. I will talk about my family, and bless her with all kinds of mercies. Yes, my God, I will worship you in your holy temple, and I will return from there.”
Confession and mercy
“The mercy of God is like a overflowing torrent,” says Vianney. “Drag hearts in your path.”
Echoing the parable of the good shepherd, he says: “It is not the sinner who returns to God to apologize, but it is God who runs behind the sinner and makes him return to him.”
At the same time, “the good God is always willing to receive us. His patience awaits us!”
It also explains the divine mercy of God in this way:
“There are those who give the Eternal Father a hard heart. How wrong are! The Eternal Father, to disarm his justice, gave his son an excessively good heart: there is no what you do not have.”
This follows what we have learned from Santa Faustina, Jesus and the message of divine mercy. Vianney says:
“There are those who say: ‘I have done too badly, God cannot forgive me.’
And again:
“Our faults are grains of sand next to the great mountain of God’s mercies.”
Once sins are confessed, people shouldn’t have to worry because, as Vianney teaches:
“When the priest gives the acquittal, we must only think of one thing: that the blood of the good God flows on our soul to wash it, purify it and make it as beautiful as it was after baptism.”
And again:
“The good God, at the time of acquittal, throws our sins behind his shoulders, that is, he forgets them, annihilas them: they will never appear again. … will no longer talk about forgiven sins. They have been erased; they no longer exist!”
Together with his other preaching, we can conclude with him: “If we understood what it is to be the son of God, we could not do evil.”
Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in the National Catholic Register
Joseph Pronechen
Joseph Pronechen is an editor of the National Catholic Register since 2005. He is the author of Frutos de Fatima: Signs and Wonders. He has a postgraduate degree and previously taught English and cinematographic study courses that he developed in a Catholic high school in Connecticut.