St. Josemaria Escriva & St. John Vianney

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence; I beg your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel: intercede for me.

The topic of our meditation today is the devotion of Saint Josemaria to the Holy Curé of Ars, Saint Jean Marie Vianney or Saint John Vianney. It is a time of prayer; I am not trying to give a lecture. It is a meditation, which means we desire, we ask God for truth- to know the truth, so that our heart and our mind might be illuminated with His truth, and we also ask Him to move our hearts by this truth, and to lead us to greater love of God. So, we're not just studying a history of a saint or just facts about Saint Josemaria or the Curé of Ars, but Lord, give us the light of holy scripture and holy angels speak to us, interpret to us in this time of prayer what God is telling us. Let the light of the Holy Spirit fall into my soul, into your soul, into those who are listening to us.

For what I will be saying, I use the study by Father Laurentuz, who is a professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross; we were ordained together in 1996. And also, another study by Dr. Frederick Miller, who wrote about the heart of Saint John Vianney, and well, so to start with the fact, if we meditate on the devotion of Saint Josemaria to Saint John Vianney. Saint Josemaria never wrote about Saint John Vianney. There is only one trace of something in his writing, which was actually just a draft. So, in the Critical Edition of The Way, we read that, in what is now point no. 585, in 1938. So, we're speaking of the draft of this book, The Way, which appeared in 1939, Saint Josemaria put "Si habueritis fidem: So, if you had faith the size of a mustard seed..., Curé de Ars, Curé of Ars.” And that later this hint at his devotion to the Curé of Ars was removed. He removed it in what is now The Way. So, and besides that, there are reports of three remarks in his oral preaching, but not in his own writings. So, what we can see from that is that at least since 1938, Saint Josemaria did have devotion to Saint John Vianney.

So, the question is, well, why didn't he write more about him, or what was his relationship to him? Especially as in 1951, St. Josemaria extended that devotion to the whole, to the whole Work, to the whole of Opus Dei, because between 1951 and 1953, he asked us to invoke Saint John Vianney as an intercessor of Opus Dei. So not as a model of a way of living out the spirit of Opus Dei, but as an intercessor for the relations of Opus Dei with the local bishops. And that Saint Josemaria had a lot of devotion to him also becomes apparent that he made nine pilgrimages to Ars. So, he himself went there and prayed for his intentions. He sought the intercession of Saint John Vianney. He, in 1956, even he proposed a pilgrimage of the priests of the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross to Ars, but then he dropped the idea to avoid the impression of going as a group, I imagine. And he made, and he made very clear, Saint John Vianney is an intercessor, but not a model for the specific vocation of Opus Dei. And Saint Josemaria said we should imitate Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in our work and in our family life and just abide and live according to the spirit of Opus Dei.

So, I explain that from what we know from the biography of Saint John Marie Vianney, that, well, he didn't really fit into secular society. Let's put it this way, just by judging- just by the standards of human etiquette or human work efficiency or behavior, he stood out; he didn't comply with them. So, he had shabby clothes, and he appeared disheveled, and he lived in really very poor and hard circumstances, by his choice; it was ascetical. And so that perhaps was the reason why Saint Josemaria said he's not a model for someone who wants to sanctify ordinary life in human, in secular society and has to abide by standards of quality that makes him or her acceptable to fellow citizens. But that is, of course, only my conjecture.

And the fact is, as I said, that Saint Josemaria had a great devotion to him. And every time I visit the central house of Opus Dei in Rome, at in Viale Bruno Buozzi, in Villa Tevere, I go to the chapel on the ground floor with this beautiful marble statue of Saint Jean Marie Vianney, which where you can see him sitting on a chair behind the altar with his very thin face. It's through his fasting and his vigils and his service to the souls. He slept very, very little because he had such a demand for confessions that he is haggard, you know. But at the same time, you can see his smile and his goodness kind of shine through every line of his face and his body, and he, in his old age, was hunched. So, you can see sitting there, and coincidentally, that statue is the same size as Saint Josemaria; he would be the same size if he were standing.

So, you know why did Saint Josemaria invoked Saint John Mary Vianney as intercessor? Well, from the history of the Curé of Ars, we know that he always had difficulties with the bishop, despite himself, you know. But at least at the beginning, he was always very, very obedient and kind and loving. And, for instance, one story that shows his humility is that his fellow pastors in the surrounding parishes were conspiring against him at one point, because they said he gave an unworthy impression of the priesthood with his shabby cassock and his disheveled appearance and his ascetical lifestyle. And of course, they were also probably jealous of him because their own parishioners went to confession to him and not to them. And so, one of these pastors in his own confusion left that very document, that letter that the conspirators were writing to the bishop, on the Curé of Ars’ kitchen table, and so the Curé of Ars found that letter, read it, and was delighted, and he signed it. He said, "I'm the first. I agree. You know, I'm unworthy and please remove me from here because that's what I would really desire. I would really desire to withdraw into a monastery and just dedicate myself to prayer.”

So again, the question: Why did Saint Josemaria choose Saint Jean Marie Vianney? Well, because... and these are also conjectures. Well, because he was a diocesan priest. And in 1950, Saint Josemaria saw, or was given the insight in prayer, that diocesan priests could be members of the priestly society of the Holy Cross, which is an integral part of Opus Dei. So, he had planned to leave Opus Dei in 1949 out of love to diocesan priests. He himself was a diocesan priest, and he wanted to serve them and found something that would help them in their ministry and to have help in their spiritual life. And so, he was going to hand over Opus Dei to Blessed Alvaro, and he was going to just found this (new institution for diocesan priests). And then God, in prayer, thank God, showed him that they fit (in Opus Dei). You know, the priests who are incarnated in dioceses as secular priests can be members of Opus Dei in the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, and Saint Jean Marie Vianney was such a diocesan secular priest.

And the other reason is that Saint Josemaria wanted to have intercessors from different nations, and at that time Opus Dei was spreading to nations outside of Spain, where it had been founded. And so, Saint John Mary Vianney, as a Frenchmen, added this international character to Opus Dei. So, those might be the reasons.

I will just venture to add another reason, and this will I think help us pray more, and that is in Saint John Marie's youth, he received this vocation to the priesthood, and he was born in a time when the Church was persecuted by the French revolutionaries. The clergy had been forced to swear the oath of allegiance to the civil constitution, which made them employees of the state. And the civil government had reorganized the church, had made the office of bishop and pastor something to be elected by all citizens of a parish or county or whatever, and so not only by the Catholics but by everyone. And so, priests who did not swear this oath were kicked out, and some of them were executed and persecuted. And so obviously, Jean Marie Vianney could not do that (swearing the oath), and he wasn't ordained yet. So, he was admitted to the seminary under Napoleon, who kind of tried to repair the relationship with the Holy See. He did so in his own dictatorial way. But anyhow, the Church had more freedom and was not under the strict regime of persecution anymore, and so Jean Marie Vianney was accepted to the seminary, but for some reason, his name was not entered into those people who were exempted from military service. So, Napoleon conscripted people for his campaigns, but seminarians were exempted.

So, Jean Mary Vianney was conscripted, and so he joined the army. But as his unit was marching to join the bulk of the army, he got so distracted in the- at the tabernacles on the way that he lost the others. He was counted as a deserter, and so that was of course a reason to be court martial and executed. And so he hid anonymously under a false name in some remote mountain village for over a year. And in the meantime, as punishment, his brother was drafted and conscripted into the army and unfortunately died on the battlefield. As a result, his mother died of a broken heart. And so, after an amnesty, John Mary Vianney returned to his home, or what he thought was his home. And when he opened the door and his father saw him, he slammed the door in his face and said, "You traitor! You! It is your fault that your brother died, and it is your fault that your mother died of a broken heart because she thought that her two children had died” (because nobody knew of what was going on with Jean Marie Vianney in that time) and so he said, “if you want a home, go to the cemetery and there think about what you've done.” So, of course, Jean-Marie was devastated, asked his father for forgiveness, and he did so many times. But it seems that his father never forgave him.

And so, with that rejection, with that wound in his heart, Jean-Marie Vianney started his ministry. And it seems that he at the time the Jansenist interpretation of moral theology was dominant in the seminary formation, and especially in France. The Gallicanism had this influence of Jansenism, and what was that? That was a very rigorous position, so it demanded pure love of all Catholics, all Christians, and if you didn't do things with pure love, that was sin! And also, the confessional practice, so the penance through auricular confession, individual confession, was very strict. So he was educated in this way during the first 10 years of his priesthood, namely that sometimes or frequently he refused absolution, and he said he gave very strict and difficult penances, comparable to the first church, which was like months without meat and you know public shame and so on. And then come back and then you can receive absolution once you've done your penance right.

So nowadays, this is completely the opposite. You know you get a small simple penance and you receive absolution before you do your penance. Of course, there are cases where the priest must deny absolution if somebody is absolutely unwilling to leave a situation of sin or is not willing to restitute something that has been unjustly acquired. But normally absolution is given readily.

So, after 10 years, something happened. We don't really know what it was, but definitely it was the Holy Spirit. And an explanation that I read was that Saint John Vianney took his wounded heart, the heart that had been wounded by the rejection and the unforgiveness of his father, to the wounded heart of Jesus. Saint John Vianney had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and so when we touch Jesus's heart, wounded heart, with our own wounded heart, our wounds are not taken away; they stay, but they are transformed into the wounds of Christ, and they become a source of love and mercy. And that is what happened with Saint John Vianney! All of a sudden, he became the loving father, and he who had been rejected by his own father became a father of orphans. He founded this orphanage. He was very hospitable to the poor. He was welcoming and especially merciful, and so he became a confessor of God's mercy. He had lines and lines of people coming, and they were coming from all over the region, and then from the whole nation. People came, and some, and frequently they had to stand in line for a whole week, and when someone came into the confessional, Saint John Vianney sometimes asked him, "Have you taken a bath this morning?” And he wasn't referring to their body odor or anything because he immediately then corrected, kind of added without waiting for the answer. He said, "I today took my bath in the love of God,” you know, and so that was what he was trying to do with souls to really bathe them in in the love of God.

And he had this gift of seeing the underlying reason for someone's sins. He could find the wounds in the soul that triggered sins. So, certainly, that was a gift of God to be able to read souls, to read hearts, but it also might have been his own experience of his own wounded heart. And by the way, when his heart relic, that is incorrupt, was brought to the United States, and here shown in veneration (I think it was in 2018 or so), a team of specialists had to examine whether it was safe to transport this unique and priceless relic to remove it from Ars for some time, and under what conditions that could be done technically. And so, as they were doing that, they discovered that the heart of Saint Jean Marie Vianney had a physical wound, not by a lance, or by some kind of mystical stigma. But he must have had a heart attack, and so there was this scar, which is the typical telltale sign of a heart attack. So, we don't know when that might have happened. But in his terrible toughness to himself, he was able to you know just to keep on working, and just out of love to continue his ministry, which was grueling. So, he sometimes started to hear, or maybe regularly started to hear confessions at 2:00a.m. and went to sleep at midnight. So, he slept about two hours, and I once heard that his meals consisted of him dipping his two fingers into a bowl of mashed potatoes and just licking those. And once a week, the lady who was taking care of him made these mashed potatoes and put them in a bowl, and that's what that was the food for the week. So that was really a very, very ascetical life!

And so, you know, Saint John Mary Vianney, this confessor of mercy, this father of mercy, must have really attracted Saint Josemaria, who always wanted just to be called El Padre, father, not Monsignor. He was a Monsignor. He was prelate, you know. He had a doctorate and so on. But he wanted to be ‘father’ to all those who knew him. I never got to know Saint Josemaria personally, but I got to know many people who knew him personally, and they all agree on one quality of Saint Josemaria. That was his great love, his enormous heart, and his joy, his wit. But this love, which wasn't a sweet love and a weak love, you know, like he was just as we sometimes say “nice”, you know. Nice is someone who never hurts someone or never corrects or is very diplomatic or so. But he was kind, which means he could correct someone when it was necessary for this person to reach heaven. So, kindness is the attitude or the virtue of someone who takes someone to heaven. And it's a really important quality of a confessor. So, that probably attracted Saint Josemaria.

Saint John Vianney was also attacked by demons, by the devil, in a physical way, because there was no other way they could assail him. In our case, we give in easily enough to temptations that are rooted in our own disordered passions. But when somebody is as holy as Saint Jean Marie Vianney, the devil must resort to other means, like he did with Padre Pio. But so, he, you know, he shredded the curtains of his room and broke up furniture and so on. And he also, sometimes visited him through people who were possessed, and in one of these visits, let's call it that way, a woman came into his confessional, and through her, the devil spoke in a different voice than the woman's. He said, or using her voice in a different way, he said, "Go away, go away! If there were three priests like you in this world, my kingdom would be destroyed.”

So, I think today's meditation could be an occasion for all of us to pray for the holiness of priests and for the depth and quality of priestly formation. I was blessed by being able to participate in the beatification of Fulton Sheen on the 24th of September 2026 in Saint Louis. And what an event you know -- to see these 1000 priests and 800 seminarians, 850 deacons, 60 or 70 bishops, you know, and 50,000 faithful with so many children. So, there's so much future, but it all depends, in the end, it depends on the holiness of priests and especially pastors.

And just for those of you who are lay people and maybe just see their pastor on Sunday or don't have much interaction with him, you know, maybe this meditation could be an occasion to think. Well, how could I help him? How could I help him to be a holy pastor? By praying to the holy Curé of Ars, who is the patron saint of pastors. You know, so I can tell you, it is very complicated and difficult to be a pastor. It's not just saying Sunday mass. It's running a small business with employees and with all kinds of troubles and difficulties and from legal to financial to personnel. And it’s really a prayer intention. And you know also we pray now for Opus Dei and its service to the Church. Saint Josemaria said Opus Dei came to serve the Church as the Church wants to be served, and so Saint Jean Marie Vianney, help us do that. And Saint Josemaria, help us to be faithful to this path of joyful holiness which you have opened in this world. And Mary, our Mother, have mercy on us, pray for us, and we flee under your protection.

I thank You, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations which you have communicated to me in this meditation. I ask your help to put them into effect. My Immaculate Mother; Saint Joseph, my father and lord; my guardian angel, intercede for me.