The Secret of the Curé de Ars Compiled, Partially Adapted, and Arranged by Pauly Fongemie SOURCES USED: Secrets of the Saints, Henri Ghéon, 1944; From the Housetops Magazine, Vol. XXIV, No. 3, Serial No. 53; The Life of the Curé de Ars, Abbé Alfred Monnin, 1861; and Eucharistic Meditations, Curé de Ars, Eccles. Appr. 1923 THE SAINT'S CHILDHOOD A SACERDOTAL VOCATION is always be a great mystery, yet we may try to give some shadow of an explanation. At the end of the eighteenth century the French Court and the large towns no longer believed in much. It was the countryside that kept the traditional beliefs in tact, at least in that corner of the Lyonnaise where faith was always strong and persevering. Faith, indeed, was so strong and authentic that such a man as Jean-Marie's grandfather would give tramps a bed; not that there were not some scoundrels on the road; simply men were less fearful then, and as a matter of course placed human prudence far below the teaching of the Gospel---according to which a poor man, any poor man, is the living image of Christ. All the biographers of Jean-Marie Vianney have written abut a famous mendicant who paid a mysterious visit to the Saint's grandfather, a farmer. For those who are not familiar with the story, we will pause now and speak of him---St. Benedict Joseph Labre. The scandal of his age [which could only be horrified at him and not a little shocked], this unusual man had come from Artois to the Trappist monastery of Sept-Fonds in order that he might, in that hard place, lead the hardest possible life. His health broke down and he became a pilgrim with the open sky his roof. Like Saint Alexis before him, Benedict Joseph was "the poor man" par excellence, flung aside, jeered at, even beaten;  on occasion he was kindly welcomed which was more than he bestowed on himself. He fasted thrice weekly, bore up with the heat and cold,  the vermin, praying all the while and never spoke. He would reply with a nod with the greatest of amicability. He visited all the famous shrines---Rome, Loretto, Compostella---spending  half his life tramping, the other half on his knees. He died at the age of thirty-five, due to sheer poverty. It was as though the sorrowing Christ walked this refined but irreligious world, to warn it of the gulf into which it was soon to fall. On his way to Rome he presented himself, in 1770, at the house of Pierre Vianney where he was given warmth, food, and a bed. The Vianneys realized that he was a Saint, so he was asked to blessed the children, among them little Mathieu, who was to be the father of Jean-Marie. Was it merely by chance that he knocked at that door? By chance that sixteen years later Pierre Vianney's grandson received the names of the Baptist, the beloved Evangelist and the Mother of God? Providence does nothing without sound reason and as is often said, there is no coincidence with God. A name given at Baptism is likewise a protection, or better still, a protector, appointed by Providence, so that saints are always the spiritual offspring of other Saints, living or dead, who come to the aid of their natural family. Our Saint, the village Curé was born under the three-fold sign of Christian humility, Christian poverty, Christian chastity, and these words, which are all different ways of saying the word "love," meant something considerable for his parents. Five miles the north and slightly west of Lyon is the small village of Dardilly, at the time numbering a thousand souls. One could still see the farmhouse [at the time of the biography by Ghéon] where the Saint's parents dwelled. Mathieu Vianney and Marie Béluse had six children. Jean-Marie was number four. The Vianney family had lived in Dardilly for generations. For us Americans, even those of us who are poor by American standards, it is difficult to form a clear idea of the life of a peasant family of the time. Essentially it was much work, hard, backbreaking work, but not drudgery as it was a life of much peace and simple holiness. The earth with all its needs to keep men down, but untroubled faith to draw men upwards. The Vianneys held their faith firmly. Let is now look in at the farmhouse of the time through the eyes of the biographer, Monnin [with slight repetition of the above paragraphs]:  Their simple farmhouse, with its little courtyard before it, stands near the entrance of the village, amid scenery of singular beauty,---a succession of vineyards, meadows, and orchards, intersected by clear streams, broken by deep valleys, and shadowed by hanging woods. All the scenes surrounding his infancy were lovely to look upon, and the moral and spiritual aspect of his home was no less fair. "It was the dwelling place of one of those honest families of farmers, in which have been perpetuated, from age to age, the traditions of labour and of prayer, and whence have sprung during the last fifty years the greater number of our priests, our soldiers, and our religious." The house of the Vianneys had been known from time immemorial as the home of the poor, the well known resort of all the wandering beggars, who were accustomed to seek and find a nightly shelter beneath its hospitable roof. An Apostle tells us that they who thus welcome the poor of Christ have entertained Angels unawares; and such a one crossed the threshold of the Vianneys, when, on a sultry July day of the year 1770, Benedict Joseph Labre came to ask a night's lodging among the mendicants who daily crowded the courtyard. There was nothing in the outward aspect of the wanderer to point out to the good farmer that he was harbouring one whose place was to be hereafter on the altars of the Church; but who shall say what influence the prayer which repaid his simple hospitality may have had upon the future sanctity of the child, who was to make his own humble name illustrious? It was a saying of the Curé of Ars, that "wherever the Saints pass, God passes with them." May not his own birth and predestination have been the fruit of this passing of God over the hospitable threshold of his father? One thing is certain, that his birth took place in the course of the very same year in which the miraculous power of Benedict Labre was most signally displayed in the cures wrought at his tomb.   The parents of Jean Marie, Matthieu Vianney and Marie Béluse, possessed, in a high degree, the traditional virtues of their race. Matthieu was a pious Christian, and a thoroughly honest man; to the virtues which distinguished her husband, Marie added a sweetness and tenderness of character, a gentleness of manner, and an elevation of mind which sprang from a deeply interior spirit, and befitted her to be the mother of a Saint. Before his birth, Marie had often offered him to God and the Blessed Virgin, and had even made a secret vow, should God accept her desire, to consecrate him to the service of the altar; with this view he received in Baptism, on the very day of his birth, the names of Jean Baptiste and of Marie. It is said, perhaps without sufficient authority, that the woman who attended his mother at his birth went out suddenly, as if to consult the stars, and exclaimed on her return, without much consideration for the state of her patient, "This child will be either a great Saint or a great villain." Matthieu Vianney, who entered the room as she finished her sentence, rebuked her sharply and laughed at her prediction; but the shaft rankled in the anxious mother's heart, and was not drawn forth till, reassured by the early marks of her child's precocious piety, she could say to herself: "He will be a Saint, then, my little Jean-Marie." Like the mother of St. Bernard, Marie Béluse watched for the first dawn of reason to turn her child's earliest thoughts to God. At eighteen months old he had already learned to join his little hands in prayer, and to lisp the names of Jesus and Mary. M. Vianney used often to tell how his mother would always come herself every morning to awaken her children, that she might see that they offered their hearts to God, and secure the first thought and the first action of the day for Him. "You are very happy," said some of his friends to him, "to have had so early a love of prayer." "After God," said he, "it was the work of my dear mother; she was so good. 'Do you see, my little Jean-Marie,' she would say, 'if I were to see you offend the good God, it would give me more pain than if it were one of my other children.' Virtue," added he, "passes from the heart of a mother to the hearts of her children, who do willingly what they see her do." At three years old Jean-Marie already began to retire into solitary places to pray. When he could yet hardly speak, he loved to join in all the devotions of the family. He was the first to kneel down at midday or sunset to recite the Angelus with infantine gravity. The first present which he received from his mother was a little statue of the Blessed Virgin. He prized it, not as a child's toy, but as an object of pious veneration. It was the surest remedy for all his childish troubles. "Oh, how I have loved that image!" said he, more than sixty years afterwards; "I could not bear to part with it day or night; and I could not have slept quietly, if I had not had it beside me in my little bed." On the rare occasions when some of the troubles which to childhood seem irremediable, drew tears from his eyes, it was quite enough to give him an image or a rosary, and he was consoled at once.   In the long winter evenings he would sit for hours by his mother's side, talking with her of God and holy things, till her heart swelled with joy that her long-cherished hopes were thus being realized in the early sanctity of her child. Devotion to the Blessed Virgin was the sentiment earliest developed in his soul.   "You have long loved the Blessed Virgin," said his assistant priest to him one day.   "I loved her even before I knew her," replied he; "it was my first affection. When I was quite little I had a little rosary, to which my sister took a fancy; she wanted to have it. This was one of my first troubles. I went consult my mother about it. She advised me to give it up for the love of God. I obeyed; but it cost me tears."   All these holy affections grew with his growth; prayer was delight before he understood it to be his duty. It was the spontaneous language of his lips, which were never profaned by any of the coarse and unbefitting words so commonly learned by village children. He was shielded from the knowledge of evil by the pure atmosphere of his father's house, and he seldom left his mother's side but to retire to some quiet corner to pour out his heart to his heavenly Mother. When he was about four years old, he one day disappeared and could nowhere be found. His mother, having sought him with increasing anxiety, found him at last on his knees, in a corner of the stable, praying most fervently. Suppressing her feeling of joy and admiration, she reproved him severely for the trouble and anxiety he had occasioned. "Why, my child, have you caused me all this uneasiness, and why have you taken it into your head hide yourself from me to say your prayers?"   "Mother, forgive me," said the child, throwing himself into her arms; "I did not mean to grieve you. I will never go there any more." Another time, a neighbour, who was not particularly devout, said to his father," I think your little fellow takes me for the devil; he does nothing but make the Sign of the Cross when I am present." His mother, fearing that, young as he was, he might be already beginning to affect singularity and to wish to attract notice, remonstrated with him upon the subject. He listened with great docility, and replied: "I did not know our neighbour was looking at me; but ought not we to make the Sign of the Cross at the beginning and end of our prayers?" When the neighbours saw the extraordinary devotion and recollection with which the child assisted at Mass they would say to his parents, "You must make your little son a priest." But the time was at hand when that most intense desire of the mother's heart seemed destined to bitter disappointment. The revolution, which swept away throne and altar, barred the way to the sanctuary. A day came when the little church of Dardilly opened its doors no more for holy Mass; the bell no longer called the faithful to prayer; every indication of Christian feeling was forbidden under the name of liberty. Jean-Marie was then only in his eighth year; but the seed had been sown too deeply in his heart to be scattered by the cold blast of infidelity which swept over his unhappy country; the more deeply hidden, the more strongly was it rooted. As he beheld all the things which he loved and revered fall around him, he gathered them up and stored them in his heart. He was no longer to kneel beside his mother at the altar of God, and, like St. Mary Magdalene of Pazzi, inhale the fragrance of her Communion ere yet admitted to receive his Lord. Few and far between were now the blessed seasons when, in fear and haste, the faithful were summoned to some carefully guarded hiding place to hear the Mass said by some proscribed and persecuted priest, at peril of his life and their own. What was to replace the daily Mass, and the frequent visit to the Blessed Sacrament? Even the indwelling of that Divine Spirit, the Lord and the Lifegiver, that best Consoler, by Whose ministry Jesus is made present to us in His Sacraments, and in Whose Person He is present even without them. What was to stand in the place of the deserted and desecrated sanctuaries of apostate France, where her few faithful children might no longer find their God? Even her silent valleys and lonely woods, and her free, pure mountain tops, where the step of the spoiler and infidel came not near to disturb them. With God in his heart and the holiness of nature around him, Jean-Marie passed peacefully through that terrible time. He was now come to the age when country boys of his class were to begin to labour for their daily bread. Matthieu Vianney had four or five cows in his stable, an ass, and three sheep. It had been hitherto the office of the elder brother to keep them; now it was Jean-Marie's turn to lead them out to browse in the little close near the house, and in the long days to take them to the more distant pastures belonging to the farm. It would seem that our Divine Lord, Who has been pleased to reveal Himself to us under the touching name of the Good Shepherd, has a special love for the shepherd's life. Shepherds were the first to approach Him on earth; and He has often made life of a shepherd the preparation for that of a pastor of souls. Such was the first seminary of St. Vincent of Paul; such was the school in which Jean-Marie Vianney was trained for the interior life; the solitary communing with God, in which he was enabled hereafter to persevere under the overwhelming pressure of his life-long labour for souls. To him, in those evil days, that life was a special blessing. The daily Sacrifice was taken away; the church bells were silent, except when forced "to send around The bloody tocsin's madd'ning sound." But under the free sky, by the light of the silent stars, the lonely boy conversed with God, and learned of Him that heavenly wisdom by which he was hereafter to make many wise unto salvation. And already, even at that early age, he was beginning to exercise his ministry for the souls of others. There is at a little distance from the village of Dardilly a lovely little valley, which, from the number of those birds which congregate there, is called Chante-merle [the thrush's song]; this was the young shepherd's most frequent haunt, thither he loved to lead his ass and three sheep. His young companions, who all loved him well, used to hail his approach, as he appeared among them with a staff in one hand and his inseparable image of the Blessed Virgin pressed to his bosom with the other. On a little hillock, by the side of an old willow, which is still to be seen there, he placed his dear Madonna upon an altar of turf, and having knelt to pay his homage to her, he invited the other shepherd boys to do the same. Never was he so happy as when he saw them all kneeling around his beloved image; then, having recited a Hail Mary with fervent devotion, he would rise and gravely address his young companions, who listened with devout attention, upon the devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Sometimes, indeed, they would get tired of listening, and desert the sermon for some more stirring exercise. Jean-Marie, being thus left like his patron to make his voice heard in the wilderness, would console himself by retiring into some silent corner, where he installed his beloved image in the hollow of a tree, and kneeling at its feet he passed long hours in prayer. We have visited with pious curiosity and religious reverence these scenes of our Saint's infancy. We have taken delight in wandering along the paths which the foot of the little shepherd had so often traced. Long did our eyes rest on the peaceful landscape before us, as we mused upon the influence of nature over the heart of man. It was here, then, O God of the poor, God of the little, the humble, and the weak, ---it was in this unknown spot of earth that this child lived alone with Thee, with Thine Angels, and with the works of Thy hand; it was from among these coppices, whence his childish prayer arose to Thee, that Thou wast pleased to call that priest, that apostle, that man of God! Here didst Thou train him for Thyself, amidst the horrors of those days of blood, far from the twofold torrent of anarchy and impiety which was then deluging France and covering her with ruins. Here wast Thou slowly preparing him to become one of the glories of Thy Church. When he rose from his knees to return to his little flock, he went forth from Thy presence, carrying in his heart Thy spirit of poverty, of humility, of sweetness, of obedience, of sacrifice, and all those precious germs which we have seen in later years developed into sanctity.   Next to God, Jean-Marie loved the poor. The unbounded charity, which was one day to be identified with his very life, already inflamed his young heart. With him the heart seems to have outgrown and absorbed the other faculties; for he was in no way remarkable at this time for graces of mind or gifts of intellect. We have a touching picture of the hospitality of that poor farmhouse to the homeless beggars, of whom the country was full. At nightfall they would present themselves, sometimes twenty at a time, and were all sure of a resting place in the grange. In the winter, Matthieu Vianney took care to have a large sparkling fire of fagots kindled in the kitchen to warm them. Then a huge pot of potatoes was placed upon the hearth, which the children afterwards consumed together with the poor, seated at the same table with them. After supper all said night prayers together, and then the master of the house went to marshal his guests to their resting places---some in the barn, some in the cellar. The great delight of Jean-Marie was to assist his parents in the exercise of their noble and holy hospitality. He brought in all the beggars whom he could meet with, and once succeeded in collecting four-and-twenty. His greatest joy was to find little boys or girls of his own age, or younger still. He brought them to the fire, one after the other, beginning with the youngest; he would beg fruit from his parents' table for them, and add to it all that he could save from his own food. Then he inspected the state of their clothing, and begged from his mother, whose tender compassion he well knew, a shirt for one, a vest for another, a pair of trousers for a third, and shoes for a fourth. When he met with children of his own age, he set to work to teach them the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and the chief truths of religion. He taught them that they must be very good; that they must love the good God very much; never complain of their lot, but bear its hardships patiently in the prospect of eternal life. Though he discreetly addressed his exhortation to the children, their elders would listen to him with grateful and admiring wonder. Such was the early childhood of Jean-Marie Vianney, such the freshness of the morning dew sent to prepare his soul to bear the burden and heat of the day which was before him. The grace which, like an aureola, had surrounded him from his cradle, increased from year to year. As he passed out of early childhood, it was but to advance from the ignorance of evil to its detestation. Such was the innocence of his childhood, that he has been heard to say: "I knew nothing of evil till I learned to know it in the confessional." His own first Confession, from the impossibility at that time of approaching the Sacraments, was not made till he was eleven years old. The fury of the revolutionary storm had by that time in some measure abated; some of the proscribed priests had reappeared, and together with them some pious Sisters of the Order of St. Charles, who laboured under their direction in the neighbouring parish of Ecully to prepare the children of the few faithful families who pressed around them for Confession. Jean-Marie was sent to the house of his grandfather at Ecully, that he might be at hand to receive their instructions. From their hands the aspirants for first Communion passed into those of the missionary priests, who assembled them, now in one house, now in another, and always at night, to elude the vigilance of the republican police. We have no precise information as to the circumstances attending the first Communion of the saintly boy. It took place, in all probability, in the year 1799, in the house of the Comte de Pingeon. Though the first heat of persecution had then passed away, so unquiet still was the state of the times, that the Curé de Ars used to tell of the loaded wagons of hay, which were drawn up against the door of the barn which served as a chapel, to screen the worshipers from malicious observation. The peculiar circumstances which make it difficult now to find authentic records of the acts of religion solemnized in those dark days, must have impressed them the more deeply upon the hearts of the worshipers. No outward circumstances, indeed, were needed to enhance the thrill of awful delight with which, for the first time, Jean-Marie Vianney must have received his God; but, for that life of sacrifice, what would have been a fitter preparation than such a first Communion as the children of France were then wont to make? The altar, encircled only by the parents and some few friends upon whose fidelity entire dependence could be placed, was usually prepared in a granary, or some upper chamber, to be out of the reach of observation. There, before daybreak, in the strictest secrecy, the holy Sacrifice was offered. There was something in the precautions necessary to keep suspicion and hostile observation at bay, and in the mystery which accompanied all the preparations for the great day, which told of a time of persecution, and breathed of the air of the Catacombs. The soul of the young communicant could not but be deeply and permanently impressed by all the circumstances attending his first participation of the Bread of the strong in those days of trial and apostasy. If the flowers of first Communion are ordinarily the presage of the fruits of riper years, truly must the heart of our Saint have been on that blessed day a sanctuary fragrant with the presence of the Divine Spouse.   His sister Margaret gives her testimony to the perfection of his conduct in their daily home life. "Our mother," says she, "was so sure of Jean-Marie's obedience, that when she met with any repugnance or delay on the part of any of us to do her bidding, her plan was to call my brother, who always obeyed at once, to do what she wanted. She would then hold him up as an example to us, saying, 'You see he never complains, or hesitates, or murmurs. You see he is far on his way already.' It was very seldom that his example failed to lead us to follow him. He generally went to work in the fields with the other members of the family. He did his part of the work conscientiously, and so long as all worked together, everything went on happily; but one day when he was sent to the vineyard alone with François, he tired himself out with trying to keep up with his brother, who, in his capacity of elder, felt bound in honor to surpass him. In the evening poor Jean-Marie complained to his mother that François went on so fast, that he could not keep up with him. 'François,' said she, 'go on a little more slowly, or else give a helping hand now and then to your brother; you see that he is much younger and weaker than you: you must have a little compassion for him.' 'But,' replied François, 'Jean-Marie is not obliged to do as much as I. What would be said if the elder did not keep ahead of the younger?' "The next day a religious, who had been driven out of her convent by the revolution, and was living with her family at Dardilly, gave my brother, whom she loved very much on account of his piety, a little figure of our Blessed Lady, contained in a hollow cylindrical case, which could be opened or shut at pleasure. This present," continues Margaret, "came just in good time, and my brother thought he had now found a sufficient auxiliary against the over-activity of François. The next time, therefore, that they were sent to the vineyard together, he took care, before he began his work, to place his little statue at a short distance before him, and as he advanced towards it, he begged the Blessed Virgin to enable him to keep up with his elder brother. As soon as he came up to it, he again simply picked it up, put it once more before him, and seizing his pickaxe made head against François, who chafed in vain at not being able to pass him, and told his mother in the evening [not without a slight tone of pique] that the Blessed Virgin had helped his little brother well, and that he had done as much work as he. Our mother, like a wise and prudent woman, only smiled and kept silence, for fear of exciting any emotion of self-love." In the midst of these toilsome labours, the pious child never lost the habit of interior prayer, nor the sacred Presence of God. "When I was alone in the fields,"  Curé de Ars would often say, "with my spade or my pickaxe in my hand, I used to pray aloud; when I had companions with me, I used to pray in my heart." And he added, "Oh, how happy should I be, if now, when I am cultivating souls, I had as much time to think of my own, to meditate and to pray, as I had when I was cultivating my father's fields! There was some relaxation at least in those days; we rested after dinner before we set to work again. I stretched myself on the ground like the others, and pretended to be asleep, but I was praying to God with all my heart. Oh, those were happy days!" "Oh, how happy I was," repeated he less than a month before his death, "when I had nobody to guide but my three sheep and my ass! Poor little gray ass! he was full thirty years old when we lost him. In those days I could pray to God quite at my ease; my head was not broken as it is now. It was like the water of the streamlet, which has only to follow its bent." A premature wisdom had revealed to this child that the kingdom of God is within us, that God weighs the heart and not the work, that He looks not at what we do, but at why we do it. It is in the secret laboratory of the intention that the gross metal of our commonest actions is transformed into purest gold. What is a glass of water in the universe? Give it to a poor man. and it is the purchase-money of eternity. The whole of human life consists in little actions which accomplish great duties. Jean-Marie understood this. He did much [in the words of the Imitation] because he loved much; he did much, because what he did, he did well. As he went and returned to his work, he always recited his rosary or some other prayers. If he met with children of his own age, he would persuade them to go with him, and teach them the Catechism as they went along. One evening, as he was returning from the vineyard with his elder brother and a band of labourers, he had taken his rosary in his hand, and was telling his beads as he walked a little behind the others. One of the vintagers said to François in a tone of mockery, intending to be heard by Jean-Marie, "And you, François, why don't you mutter Pater-nosters with your brother?" François coloured a little; but the generous child continued his prayers without being in the least degree disconcerted, or making any reply.   After the hard labour of the day, he would spend the evening in studying the Catechism, the Gospel, or prayers, which he learned by heart, and then set himself seriously to meditate on them till, overcome by sleep, he was obliged to retire to his bed. He had no taste for any of the usual amusements of children; his one recreation in his leisure moments was to make little clay figures of priests and nuns, or altars and candlesticks. He set a certain value upon these handiworks, out would give them readily to anyone who would undertake to enable him to go to Mass, by doing some of his work for him. He would then leave them all and run off to Mass, where he would be seen on his knees in a corner, with his eyes cast down, his body immovable, absorbed in profound contemplation, and often shedding abundant tears. After Mass he never failed, having first made his thanksgiving before the Blessed Sacrament, to pay a visit to the Image of the Blessed Virgin. He then returned to his work with a light heart and bright countenance. Sometimes his brothers or companions would amuse themselves with hiding his tools during his absence. Nothing ever put him out of humour; he would seem quite to enjoy the joke, and when he found out the culprit, would thank him for taking care of his tools, and promise to do the same good turn for him another time. The Curé de Ars dearly loved the remembrance of these days of rustic labour, and would often speak of them to his intimate friends. "When I was young," he used to say, "I tilled the ground. I am not ashamed of it; I am nothing but an ignorant husbandman. I often used to say to myself, as I struck my pickaxe into the ground, So shouldst thou cultivate thy soul; so pluck up the evil weeds to prepare it for the good seed of the good God." 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