The memorial of St. John Mary Vianney is normally celebrated on August 4th; however, because it falls on Sunday this year, the Sunday liturgical celebration takes precedence in its observance. But, I think it is still worth knowing about St. John Mary Vianney. He is known as the patron and model of all priests because of his immense love for God and his ardent zeal for the priestly ministry. It is said that he would spend eleven to twelve hours each day in his parish in Ars, France working to reconcile people with God. In the summer months, he often worked sixteen hour days and refused to retire. Can you imagine that! He was very dedicated and a holy priest, so much that even Satan would beat him up just to discourage him from hearing confessions and living a holy life, but he would remain firm in his faith, and the more that he offered sacrifices, the more he intensified his prayer life. He would often say: "Private prayer is like straw scattered here and there: If you set it on fire, it makes a lot of little flames. But gather these straws into a bundle and light them, and you get a mighty fire, rising like a column into the sky; public prayer is like that."
His prayer was this: I love You, O my God, and my only desire is to love You until the last breath of my life. I love You, O my infinitely lovable God, and I would rather die loving You than live without loving You. I love You, Lord and the only grace I ask is to love You eternally...My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love You, I want my heart to repeat it to You as often as I draw breath.
It is a beautiful prayer that we can also adopt in our spiritual life to free us from all vanities of the world, as our first reading this Sunday from the Book of Ecclesiastes reminds us. The gospel also mentioned about guarding ourselves against all forms of greed in our life which should not consist of possessions. What matters to God is simplicity, humility, purity, holiness and all other virtues that lead us closer to Him. That is exactly what St. John Mary Vianney did. That is why he became one of the great and popular saints of God.
Pray for all the priests in the world, including me, that we may mirror our priestly life into his life so that we can bring many souls to an encounter of God’s mercy and love.
There will be more saints this week that we will be commemorating like St. Sixtus II and St. Cajetan on August 7th, St. Dominic on August 8th, St. Lawrence the Deacon and Martyr on August 10th. All of them have a story to tell how they struggled to be good, holy and faithful to God, but they never gave up until they became saints of God.
Our goal is to imitate and someday be a saint like them. I hope that their lives will inspire us. As St. Ignatius of Loyola said, “If they were able to make it, we can also make it.” All we need is the right attitude and perseverance to be good, holy and faithful because that is exactly what they did.
Due to increasing parish ministries and zeal to share what we do in our parish, our bulletin has transitioned from six pages to eight pages to accommodate all efforts of the various ministries in evangelization and service to our parish community and beyond.