SAINT JOHN VIANNEY

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

FLOWER

THE SAINT AND OUR LADY

WE have already seen how devoted Jean-Marie Vianney was to the Mother of God, from the very beginning as a little boy. You have just read about Our Lady of La Salette, France. We have just this to add with a little repeat on La Salette, taken from the Ghéon work:

"At this time of his fame, two things are to be noted---a great joy and a great anxiety. The joy was Pius IX's definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, on 8 December, 1854. We must remember that M. Vianney had consecrated his parish to Mary Conceived without Sin; had placed in every house in his village a simple coloured statuette of Our Lady blessed by himself; had hung round the neck of the miraculous statue of Our Lady a little gold heart containing a silk ribbon whereon were inscribed the names of all his parishioners. Remember, above all, that he had seen her immaculate. In honour of the definition, he wore at High Mass a magnificent chasuble of blue velvet figured in gold; he went up into the pulpit and preached. In the evening, he rang the bell with his own hands to give the signal for the illuminations; he led a torchlight procession through the streets. For he had never for a moment doubted that the Blessed Virgin had been "preserved from all stain of Original Sin from the first moment of her conception.

"His great anxiety was likewise concerned with Our Lady; or rather, with her apparition at La Salette. There, in 1846, she spoke, weeping, to two shepherd children, Melanie Mathieu and Maximilien Giraud, and confided terrible secrets to them. ... Needless to say, it was widely doubted and there was bitter controversy. M. Vianney, with his instinct for the supernatural, believed in it instantly. But in 1850, for a complication of reasons, the boy Maximilien was brought to him. He was an odd boy; was, moreover, bored with all the cross-questioning he had had to put up with. At any rate, his answers were so vague and oddly phrased, that M. Vianney began to be less certain. The decision of the Bishop of Grenoble reassured him---but the shadow of a doubt remained. ... For eight years he awaited a sign. Then he surrendered. Being in need of a certain sum, he prayed to Our Lady of La Salette, received it to the exact halfpenny---and that last shadow of doubt disappeared."

Mary, conceived with sin,
Pray for us sinners, now,
and at the hour of our death.

Continued forward.

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