The trials, miracles, and weaknesses of Saint John Vianney, the Curé d’Ars

Saint John Vianney is known today as a great saint and a patron for parish priests and confessors.

But he also suffered through many trials during his life, which can be overlooked if we focus solely on his reputation as a miracle worker.

John’s childhood

Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney (1786-1859) was baptized on the day of his birth, and his parents were poor peasants. John (according to the English spelling of his name) was child number four.

John was four years old when the French Revolution’s persecution of the Catholic Church reached their small town in eastern France. After their parish priest had refused to swear allegiance to the anti-Catholic revolutionary government and had left the country, a constitutional priest was sent to replace him. The Vianneys did not immediately realize that this new priest had betrayed the Church by taking that oath. But as soon as they did, they began attending Masses in secret with faithful priests instead.

Young John, who was already well educated about his faith by his pious mother, loved to pray. Even though he knelt in a smelly barn rather than a church on Sunday mornings, he fell in love with the beauty of the Mass. And he wanted to be just like the priest who was risking his life to provide them with the sacraments.

As he grew up, John cared for the family’s sheep and worked in the fields. He told his mother about his desire to become a priest, but his father flatly refused to consider it, pointing out their lack of money. Years passed. Finally, when John was twenty years old, his father gave in.

His trials in seeking ordination

John left home to study under a parish priest named Fr. Charles Balley, who was certain that John was meant to be a priest. But John was a terrible student. The revolutionary government had eliminated Catholic schools in France, depriving him and other poor children of any hope of formal education. Despite Fr. Balley’s best attempts to teach him, John seemed unable to remember anything he was taught.

John confronted this problem as he did everything in life: through prayer and sacrifice. He undertook a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint John Francis Regis to pray that he would be able to complete his studies and become a priest. He traveled the entire distance—about 60 miles and up the side of a mountain—on foot and without bringing any food with him. Along the way, people mistook him for a tramp, called him names, and refused to give him food or lodging. When he finally arrived at the shrine, he fervently prayed for the saint’s intercession, went to confession and Communion, and walked all the way home again. Afterward, John did not miraculously become a brilliant scholar, but he no longer despaired that he would ever be ordained.

However, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte needed soldiers for his many wars, and John was drafted. Although he should have been exempt from military service as a seminarian, twenty-three-year-old John was forced to report for duty due to a clerical error.

Soon after arriving for duty, he became ill and was sent to a hospital. He recovered, then relapsed. He recovered again, enough to be ordered to report for duty. However, John passed a church along the way. A few minutes of prayer accidentally became hours, and he arrived at the superior’s office far too late. The next day, he was ordered to catch up with his unit on foot.

He never found his unit. Instead, he collapsed along the way near the remote village of Les Noës. John never intended to be a military deserter, but that is what he became when he followed a man into the nearby town. For a few years, he and many other deserters lived in barns and in the surrounding mountains, hiding from patrols. On more than one occasion, John was nearly detected when a soldier poked his sword into the straw under which John was hiding. He earned the affection of many residents of Les Noës through his kindness, hard work, and deep devotion.

On the occasion of the emperor’s much-celebrated second marriage, a general amnesty was proclaimed in France, and John and the other deserters were able to leave Les Noës. John returned to his seminary studies, but he remained a poor student. Some of his classmates—most of whom were much younger than he was—mocked him for his ignorance, and within a few years, his superiors asked him to leave because of his bad grades. John began wondering if he should become a religious brother instead.

However, the vicar general who was governing the diocese at the time was a good man. He asked the seminary administrators, “Is the Abbé Vianney pious? Has he a devotion to our Lady? Does he know how to say his rosary?” When the superiors replied that John was “a model of piety,” the vicar general agreed to Vianney’s ordination, saying that “the grace of God will do the rest.”¹

John was assigned to a remote parish of about 200 people, where it was hoped he would not do too much damage. There he remained for the rest of his life.

Finally, a parish priest

The people of Ars were ordinary peasants who had not had a parish priest for many years. Their worst sins were skipping Mass for trivial reasons, working on Sundays, drinking too much alcohol, and holding dances.

John did not see these as trivial sins because every sin separates us from God. To atone for their sins and his own, John prayed long hours before the Blessed Sacrament, lived on one small meal a day, and whipped himself daily. He wept for his people’s sins because they did not weep for them, and he begged the Lord to give him many sufferings, whatever it would take to bring his flock to conversion.

But he also had a practical plan for bringing his parishioners back to God. First, he made it a priority to get to know every single one of them by visiting their homes.

He also told them the truth: committing sin would lead them to hell. Farmers argued with him that they had work to do on Sundays. Local tavern keepers complained that he was harming their businesses. Young people insisted that there was nothing wrong with dancing. But he would not give up. Eventually, most families in Ars showed up for Sunday Mass, all the taverns in Ars closed their doors, and those who wanted to dance had to go to another village.

When John arrived in Ars, the church building was practically falling apart. He restored it himself using the skills he had learned on the family farm. He brought beauty into his church and his parishioners’ lives by buying gorgeous vestments, restoring a bell tower, and erecting new altars.

John taught them about charity by giving away everything but the most essential items in his rectory. His cassock and shoes were always terribly patched and worn. He used donations to open a school for girls and an orphanage called Providence House.

The trials of his priesthood

Many people have heard about the demonic assaults John endured each night during the few hours he allowed himself some sleep. Initially, John did not realize that the ugly and threatening voices and the disturbing noises that he heard at night were demonic attempts to frighten him. Over the years, John became nonchalant about these disturbances, even though other people found them petrifying. He told people that “the tumult is greater and the assaults more numerous if, on the following day, some big sinner is due to come.”²

That was not his only trial. A few years after he arrived in Ars, wicked tongues spread the lie that he was secretly committing grave sins with young women. He received anonymous letters, and angry crowds tried to force him to leave town. Other priests deeply resented John and his reputation for holiness. Nevertheless, Fr. Vianney always treated his persecutors and detractors with the greatest respect.

Gradually, other towns in France heard about the remarkable priest of Ars, and Catholics came from all over to see him, attend his Masses, and confess their sins. By the time of his death, John had spent at least twenty hours each day hearing confessions, saying Mass, preaching, and praying. He was only able to leave his church briefly during the day to visit Providence House and to eat or drink his meager meal.

Every day, summer or winter, thousands of pilgrims thronged the streets of Ars, begging for his prayers, his attention, his charity, and his time. Some even stole his prayer books and other possessions as relics.

The miracles

In the early years, many healings occurred in Fr. Vianney’s presence. Later, he became devoted to the early Church martyr Saint Philomena and built an altar in her honor. After that, he attributed miracles that occurred to her intercession. When he recognized that some people were coming merely for the sake of seeing miracles, he and Saint Philomena apparently reached some sort of agreement. Healings no longer occurred regularly in the church. Instead, the miracles began occurring inside his confessional.

What was so remarkable about having Fr. Vianney hear your confession? People reported that his spiritual advice was usually very simple. But he often seemed to know many details about the person’s situation even before he or she had begun speaking. Sometimes he would suddenly leave his confessional to speak words of comfort or advice to a complete stranger and then return to his confessional. On the other hand, he would tell penitents who were half-hearted about their contrition or who had committed serious sins to go away, perform a penance, and come back before he would give them absolution. Although he would never explain how he was able to read people’s souls, this happened often enough that a divine cause seemed the best explanation.

Fr. Vianney never directly stated that he received visions or other mystical experiences. Yet the thousands of people who watched him celebrate Mass or devoutly pray in thanksgiving after Mass believed that he was seeing much more than he admitted. Fr. Vianney wept over men’s sins but also over God’s goodness, and he seemed to have insights about the residents of heaven and purgatory.

Fr. Vianney’s biographer, Abbé Francis Trochu, pointed out that Vianney was a kind man by nature but initially had a quick temper.³ The unshakeable patience that he demonstrated in the final years of his life did not come naturally; it was acquired through God’s grace and after years of heroic effort. He displayed that patience daily. For example, although the poor man had virtually no privacy and was mobbed by crowds and interrupted by strangers almost every waking minute, witnesses said that they never saw him lose his temper.

As his modern biographer, Fr. George Rutler, explains it: “Heroes are better than we are; saints are better than themselves.”⁴

We, too, can become “better than ourselves” by relying on God’s grace rather than our own power. Or as God explained it to Saint Paul, who was apparently overwhelmed by his failure to conquer his own personal deficiencies: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”⁵

Just like Saint John Vianney, we can pray without ceasing and offer personal sacrifices when facing trials or interceding for others. We might even see miracles. But the greatest miracle would be for us to humbly admit our worst vices, place them at the feet of Christ, and allow our good God to make us holy.

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