Cure D'Ars Today: St. John Vianney

FOREWORD

There are possibly two types of readers who will not read this book: those who think they already know everything important about the Curé d’Ars and those who do not want to know anything about him at all. Both will suffer a serious loss.

To be fair, I might well have passed up the opportunity myself, for neither reason—only because of the press of events—had I not known the author. Although it will be said of him, Father George Rutler is not another Gilbert Keith Chesterton. No one is ever really another anyone. Father Rutler does write in Chestertonian paradoxes and with that convert’s insight and orthodoxy, but he brings to whatever he treats what I suspect will one day be called a Rutlerian dimension. Such a dimension I can describe only as the Curé responded to the question of the sweet lady asking him how she should go to heaven. Straight as a cannonball, Father Rutler tells us Father John Vianney told her.

Those who would read this book should really know of this special dimension that Father Rutler provides. Otherwise they could miss the startling insights in his matter-of-factness, as when he tells us the Curé of Ars did not mind being called shabby, but he turned sullen when those who had never met him called him dirty.

Everyone who thinks Vianney already well-known will find, not simply new information, but what has new meaning for each discoverer. That meaning may well differ for each reader. The descriptions of the Curé’s encounters with Satan and his lesser angels and of the hours in the confessional were my own personal crucial rediscoveries.

Neither Bernanos’ dramatic Sun of Satan nor Blatty’s melodramatic Exorcist, each of which introduced so many modern readers to the notion of a devil in real life, gives us quite the sense of the terror and the wonder of what can happen to us as do the quiet passages descriptive of what happened to the Curé, beginning in 1824 and perduring until a year before his death. Father Rutler gives short shrift to the tendency to mythologize the events and to diagnose Father Vianney as paranoid, and he provides solid evidence for dismissing this tendency. He also attributes less importance to melodramatic activities of the devil than to the devil’s hauntings as "a via negativa to salvation". As such, the Curé’s experiences become far more familiar to our daily experience, and far more instructive.

No one who has read a page of any life of the Curé of Ars can be unaware of his commitment to the confessional. Father Rutler writes interestingly of the stories told of the Curé’s inspirations while in the confessional, but these hold far less for me personally than does the sheer tenacity of the man in refusing to invert his priorities. When I first took the Curé seriously, I was a very young priest who also took quite seriously the tremendous potential given a priest in hearing confessions. (Despite that popular terminology, I believe we were just as concerned about reconciliation then as we have been since the name change.) I had none of the Curé’s devotion or heroic piety, and I could not have stayed in the confessional all day if I had wanted to. A busy pastor would have sent me packing on other business. But I did see hearing confessions and absolving sins as a major priority.

In reading Father Rutler’s account of the Curé at work in the confessional, I have been reminded, not of a truth I have never forgotten, but of the zeal I once practiced on behalf of that truth. Periodically, as Archbishop of New York, deprived to a degree of opportunities available to my priests, I still hear confessions, and at times with some frequency, as when I am conducting a retreat. Too many weeks at a time go by, however, when I foolishly permit too many other duties to preoccupy me and to take questionable priority over this fundamental priestly act and privilege.

Others will make their own discoveries or rediscover once-cherished insights. I suspect, however, that the two described above as most meaningful for me will prove meaningful for many. The expose of Satan will enhance understanding for many of what it means to be God’s pilgrim in today’s world. The insights into the apostolate of the Curé as confessor will be a reminder for all that Vatican II by no means abolished sin.

Appendices 1 and 2 are extraordinary bonuses in this extraordinary book. How uncommon to be truly helped in understanding what is of such common concern: the cultural context within which a saint lived and moved and had his being. How exceptional to illustrate the applicability of a saint’s teaching to today’s world by having the Holy Father himself do the applying.

An important, fascinating work by an important, fascinating author.

+John Cardinal O’Connor

Archbishop of New York

Chapter 1

FACTS AND ILLUSIONS

The Historical Approach

A writer whose reputation has not faded in the last hundred years said that a certain biography of Saint Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney was not historical enough. It was devotional, but of a devotion that passes over the common sort of facts needed for an earthly sense of the subject. He did not mean that the devotional approach must be contrary to facts, but that in one way this biography assumed the reader knew enough about the subject, and that in another way the facts were not especially important. But anything important has to be factual, and anything factual has to be particular.

Particularity is the ground of devotion, at least from the Christian point of view, because Christianity is the account of how God became particular. There was a period—one period of thirty-three years, to be precise, and a moment—or three hours of a Friday, to be quite precise, when God was as specific with us as he ever was. That is called salvation history, and not simply salvation, because it happened. So nothing Christian can be loose with history; there can be no dichotomy between the historical approach and the devotional approach.

Christ prayed in the presence of his apostles: I am remaining in the world no longer, but they remain in the world, while I am on my way to thee. Holy Father, keep them true to thy name, thy gift to me, that they may be one, as we are one (Jn 17:11). The one-ness is the character of holiness, the effective cooperation of the human intellect and will with the intellect and will of God. When human thought and desire wander off on their own, they begin the meander called sin. This is a plain fact of history. A sinner is evidence of Christ by default, as someone lost is a sign of a place where one is not lost. But a saint is particular evidence of Christ by example. The saints have not all started well, said the Curé d’Ars, but they have all finished well. The sinner and the saint may have the same name; a saint, after all, is a sinner who has perfectly accepted forgiveness. A biography of a saint should not exaggerate if it is to do justice to the acceptance.

Legends and Myths

Legends are exaggerations, and that is why they are not myths. Myths do take truth seriously. Hobbes did not appreciate the distinction in his own day; so he wanted to eliminate all metaphors from conversation. But that could only have eliminated the conversation. The myths in Christianity are not mere myths, the way there are mere legends. A Christian myth gets into history; a legend tries to get out of it. The problem with devotional literature of a certain sort is that it is only legendary; it keeps circling above what is going on without getting involved in it. Anyone can rightly claim that such material is not true material.

Myths are told of intuitions too broad for linear, or explicit, language. They are about the number of days God took to create the world before there were days; the beguiling speech by which the serpent mocked the dignity of the first man and woman before there were strangers to provide a human disguise for Satan. But this figurative language describes what was involved, not who was involved. For myths are about events; individuals figure in them as ciphers rather than as personalities. If you try to personalize myths, they become legends. Someone who becomes larger than life ceases to live. We do well to speak of Christ because that describes who Jesus is; we would do just as well not to speak of a Christ event because that makes Jesus into an abstraction. This is worth mentioning here, before taking up the life of the Curé d’Ars, because the life of a saint has to be treated with the precision used for the life of the Christ of the saints. They are part of the same history.

The coming of God to earth in the Incarnation was an event among other events, and it involved a man; it is not mythical for that reason. There was a birth, but if there were only an idea of a birth, the baby would be no more significant than the crib. There have been many resurrections of ideas and cultures, and they form the substance of magnificent myth; but there has been only one resurrection of a man. If I want to discover the resurrection of classical thought in the twelfth century, I can try to get a sense of a dark ignorance that rolled away; and then I will understand that it was not a resurrection but a revival. But if I want to discover the Resurrection of Christ, I can try to find a stone that rolled away, and I will understand that it was not a revival but a resurrection. The Resurrection resurrected a man; explaining it as a metaphor distorts it into a fable. The apostles in the upper room did not see a figure of speech; they saw a figure with wounds that made them speechless. A pure myth would have marked his hands and feet with diamonds or roses; the myth would then be about the indomitability of virtue, but Christ himself would be a subjective symbol. Yet Christianity is all about the wounds. And that is why it has threatened sentimentalists who fear real wounds.

Saint Paul said that the saints live wasted and tragic lives if Christ is not truly raised from the dead. It does no good to say they were wrong about Christ but wrong in a respectable way. That they were good is not good enough. They were nothing if they were not right. Vianney was specific about Christ. He knew that great teachers pass on teachings, but that Christ passes on himself. He does this through the saints. And so the saints are solid and specific. But the language we use about divinity will have to be different from the biography of a human. To say God walked in the garden in the cool of the evening is a startling myth of God’s involvement with creation, and I say myth, not because the transcendent God is aloof, but because he has no legs. To say Adam walked and that Vianney walked is a misleading legend unless it means that they left footprints as we would. Whether or not God actually walked in the Garden of Eden in the evening is irrelevant to his existence, but whether or not God in Christ walked in the Garden of Olives at any time decides whether or not there was a Christ; and whether or not Adam and Vianney walked decides whether or not they were like us. When God is described as high and lifted up on a throne with his train filling the temple, we know he is the real God; to describe Adam that way would mean he was not a real man. The Scriptures say much about what God looks like because, to natural sense, he looks like nothing at all; but the same Scriptures say little about the first man and woman because they looked like every man and woman.

It did not occur to the evangelists to describe Christ’s appearance, because he looked like them. The miracle was his appearing. That he had appeared was far more absorbing than how he appeared. He had no form nor comeliness that any should desire him (Is 53:3); he was, after all, Christ and not Apollo, and the admission becomes the essential proclamation and boast. Apollo never was and never will be, so he can be as glorious as legends will have him; Christ always was and always will be, so he must be marred and acquainted with grief as circumstances did have him. Discourse on the life of historical figures is regulated by this economy; they are temporal facts and not illusions.

Anyone can add to stories that never happened; Pandora can have a cottage in any corner of the world, but Eve can only dwell in Eden. You or I can change to eels the snakes twisting the hair of the Gorgons, but the hair of Samson has to be his own hair. If I set out to describe the Saint of Ars, I cannot place him in India to make him seem more exotic, and I cannot have him telling witty stories in rococo drawing rooms to make him more entertaining. It is true of him as it is true of his Christ. It would not matter in a dream if Atropos, who never was, cut the thread of life with shining shears or a crystal sword; but the centurion, who was, jabs the holy Side with a lance and nothing but a lance. Ceyx floats toward Halcyone over any diaphanous sea; Christ comes to Peter on the waters of Galilee. In the corridors of evening slumber Syrinx will sigh upon the woodland reeds whatever songs our reveries want; but Christ pipes one sure tune in one sultry place.

Vianney was too recent for many impossible legends to crop up about him. And given the age in which he lived, the legends would have been torn down fast enough, for if his contemporaries failed to be scientific about religion, they were very religious about science; to perform a miracle was considered almost a sign of incompetence by progressivists, and hagiography was blasphemy to the rationalist piety of the day. But if legends do attach themselves to the lives of saints, we should not be surprised. It is a way of acknowledging that saints are more than just heroes. For the most part, notables are chronicled instead of hymned. I am unaware of any description of congressmen, however remarkably honest, flying through the air on their own; even the most eloquent university presidents have not been alleged to carry their heads through the streets. The greatest heroes are honored for having done what they did, and not for doing more. But saints are sometimes said to have done more than they did, and this is because they were more than they were. Saint Paul said, and not as a syllogism, It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gal 3:20).

Heroes are better than we are; saints are better than themselves. That is, saints become the ultimate pragmatists by making themselves totally available to God’s original design for men. The hero imposes his will on nature as an act; the saint imposes God’s will on nature as a state. In the case of the hero, heroism is a deed; it is a way of being for the saint. We have a treasure, then, in our keeping, but its shell is of perishable earthenware; it must be God, and not anything in ourselves, that gives it its power (2 Cor 4:7).

There is nothing wrong in enjoying legends for their own sake, but the facts about the saints are more wonderful than any fable could be. Saint Dorothy’s apples, Saint George’s dragon, Saint Nicholas’ bags of gold are charming so long as they only charm. But they are something like the tinting of old black-and-white motion pictures by a new computer process: when a producer saw one of his old films colored that way, he said it was like pouring syrup on roast beef. To make Saint Thérèse of Lisieux prettier than she was would diminish her great beauty; to parade Saint Maximilian Kolbe as stronger than he was would mock his courage. You might say that Saint Jean Vianney would become less brilliant than he was by any story that made him brighter than he was. It is good to remember that images of the saints should be severe and serious things, tokens of hard reality. And medals of the saints are not like the charms worn by people who do not know about the saints; holy medals ward off charm.

The Nature of True Devotion

The truth of the saints is this: the human intellect and will become more human by becoming more divine. The ancient Fathers used bold language to say it in mystical prose; but they balanced their words as skilled acrobats, and they did not mean that men become gods, as clumsy pantheists have thought. Divinity cannot be some kind of vapor leaking into creation. Humans do not become godlike, though the grace of holiness can make them a place for God. There is no contradiction, and nothing less than a great affirmation, in saying two things at once: that saints become more human by becoming more divine and that saints become truly holy by becoming human. This is a mystery which modern people misunderstood to their tragic loss. Vianney confided an old secret to his arrogant new world: All the saints are not saints in the same way; there are some saints who would not have been able to live with other saints. . . all do not take the same path. Nonetheless, all arrive at the same place.

In depicting the saints, there are bad and good portraits. It may be that Vianney scorned his portraitists, not because they drew bad likenesses, which they usually did, but because they liked him. Hagiography may flatter saints but, when it does, it insults them; an affectionate picture of a man who is detached from the world can make him seem disconnected. In true devotion, though, to like a subject can give a good likeness. Strachey’s word portraits of his eminent Victorians were no truer for being written with venom. In the case of the saints, you either have to attach yourself to their detachment, and let sympathy become empathy, or you have to reject it until scepticism becomes satire. But either is more apt to give some sense of a soul than the clinical indifference which claims to be objective. No one can remain indifferent to an object and get an impression of it.

The one pertinent consideration is the validity of the impression. Though it should not be shaped by less than history, it may take its form from a calculus behind history; it may be under the influence of a tale more delicate and shining than the most fabulous enchantment; it may have met the truth of myth and the object of legend. The saints impress by possessing their own heart’s desire within themselves. If the prophets have prefigured a truth to come, the saints have postfigured a truth that came and stayed. When the wise have lived to foretell the way of God with man, the lives of the saints are its very telling. Here is how the saints make such an impression, and no unbeliever has dared completely to deny it. The atheist denies God, but he ignores the saints; he would not do that had he not been influenced by a need to ignore them. The need assumes a paradoxical and even compulsive quality, like the nihilist insisting it is true that there is no truth and like the atheist believing that there is nothing to believe. But the saints continue to live visible lives. As the sacraments are outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace, the saints are living sacraments; they are sacraments of the sacraments. And no story about them, no display of their souls’ architecture, can be so grand and schematic as living their story with them. The voice of Ars said it: At the Holy Altar I had the most singular consolations. I was looking at the Good God.

Both Feet on the Ground

Saint Jean Vianney grew up in the France of the Enlightenment. He is most usually known as the Curé d’Ars. Curé means pastor, or one who cares for or cures, and that is what he spent most of his life doing in his obscure parish near Lyons. There is a scene that comes to mind, the one that has been painted dozens of times and bronzed as a statue: the young priest arriving at Ars. He is telling a boy who has led the way that now he will show him the way to heaven. He may not have pointed his finger to the sky as the statue shows, though the gesture is characteristic, and his silhouette true to form. Language like that does not come easily to facile lips, and a grand wisdom lies in considering why so unprepossessing a man used it. The boy, in any case, lived long enough to believe that the Curé had kept his promise.

I am not saying Vianney entered heaven by pointing to it; he got to heaven by keeping both feet on the ground. This is the sane balance of the saints, the wisdom of the serpent affixed to the innocence of the dove; without it, wisdom becomes sophistry, and innocence is bleached by naïveté. But Vianney did often point to heaven, and it is not too fanciful to say that his finger rubbed against its gates. It has to be that way, for if heaven is out of reach it is also out of truth. The most pragmatic people have shown that is not so, and even Christ, who came from farthest away, said that his home is within people. This can only mean that the road to heaven is along the route to souls, and that to lose a soul is also to lose everything besides a soul. Vianney is a witness; Paradise is in the heart of the perfect, who are truly united to our Lord; hell in that of the impious; purgatory in the souls who are not dead to themselves.

Nothing to Attract Attention

To begin, what did he look like? It is not a superficial question, provided we ask it superficially. If we ask it as though it were the most revealing thing, then looks will deceive. But what he looked like may lead to what he looked at. Pope Pius XI spoke of his long white hair which was to him a shining crown, by which he meant that something reflected on him so comfortably that the reflection became a radiance. With the humility of certain stout men, John XXIII remarked the thin face hollowed with fasting; had they been weighed together, the Pope and the Curé might have averaged out to a normal weight. But in the scale of things normality is as rare as sanctity. Vianney’s contemporary, the Abbé Monnin, was not beneath Olympian rhetoric but the most extravagant feature in his description of the Saint was the very lack of anything extravagant to say; he was "pallid and angular, his body frail, his height below average, his walk heavy, his