The Sermons of the Curé of Ars/Afterword
❧ AFTERWARD
Anyone analzing M. Vianney's library — the furniture and the books are still there, exactly as he left them when he died—can see for himself that sermons figure largely among his books, as do also works of theology and Sacred Scripture. The Curé of Ars was certainly preoccupied with the idea of “asserting himself” as a preacher. Undoubtedly he passed over the oratorical work of Bossuet of which there is no sign at all among his books. He did possess an Advent by Bourdalue . . . But it is clear that in his choice of authors he was not influenced in the slightest degree by literary considerations, In the fairly frequent trips which he made to Lyons at the beginning of his pastorate, when he was renewing the vestments for his poor little church, the Abbé Vianney did not content himself with visits to the goldsmiths and embroiderers alone; he went to the bookshops. The house of Rusand, well known at this period, had much of his custom. He bought books there that had been recommended to him or which he personally picked out. In that way he had at his disposal quite a considerable number of works to help him in composing his Sunday allocutions. It remains to be seen how much he drew from them.
The Bible is the first of the books which should not only be consulted but studied by every preacher worthy of the name. “He must,” in the opinion of St. Augustine, “have read and studied the whole of Sacred Scripture; he must reread it continually, because it is like those inexhaustible mines where there are always new treasures to be found proportionate to what is dug for, or like those exquisite pictures in which one always discovers new beauties as one studies them more.” The Fathers of the Church, and in particular St. John Chrysostom among the Greeks, and St. Augustine among the Latins, have impregnated their discourses with phrases and images borrowed from the Bible. Among ourselves the preachers of the grand siécle, and Bossuet above all, have made frequent and most felicitous use of it. All exponents of sacred eloquence have had a thorough knowledge of the holy Book.
The use which the Curé of Ars made of the Bible bears witness to his fairly extensive knowledge of the Scriptures, and, above all, of the Gospels.
His quotations are often made largely from memory; so it happens—very rarely, it is true—that M. Vianney gives his references incorrectly. He will attribute to the “holy Prophet-King” a text drawn from Ecclesiasticus, and to St. Paul a quotation from an unknown author. He will confuse the chastisement which threatened Nineveh with that which overtook Sodom. He will send the Prophet Habacuc “to carry food to the three children who were in the furnace of Babylon” while Habacuc fulfilled this task for Daniel thrown into the den of lions. But these are negligible errors.
In general, M. Vianney does not set out to quote Scripture as such. He develops, he arranges, he embellishes the inspired quotation; or, if he seems to render it in its native simplicity, he makes a really personal translation of it.
Together with Holy Scripture the Abbé Vianney had studied theology. What he learnt of it in the seminary of St. Irenaeus in Lyons hardly counted; M. Bailey, at the presbytery of Ecully, where the future Curé of Ars spent seven to eight years, was his unique teacher in the study of the sacred sciences. He was not only a saintly priest but he also had a most cultured mind: the diocesan administrators had offered him the professorship of moral theology in the seminary at Lyons but he had preferred to consecrate himself to the pastoral ministry. He took on the task of teaching his pupil the clear and solid dogmatic principles. He prepared him for his role of confessor and spiritual director by teaching him the current moral theology, that theological practice which came in a direct line from the eighteenth century and which showed itself so difficult in the matter of approach to the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, so severe on public sinners, on habitual sinners and on recidivists.
The teaching received in his clerical youth explains the rigorism of which M. Vianney gave evidence during the first fifteen or twenty years he spent in the parish of Ars. Moreover, in showing himself a severe moralist, he held to the tradition of the clergy of Belley, the older men of whom had followed, before the Revolution, the courses in the seminary of St. Irenaeus, composed on the order and according to the direction of Msgr, de Montazet. This manual, without directly professing Jansenism, does in fact reproduce its spirit. The work, published in 1780, was not altogether to the liking of M. Emery and his Sulpicians, who were charged with the curriculum of St. Irenacus, but they continued to teach it “without changing anything of importance in it after taking the advice of Monsignor.”
Neither in advance of nor behind his clerical contemporaries in this, the Abbé Vianney availed himself of the theology of his time—not that, in Catholic theology, there is a time or a truth which may be admitted at one time and rejected at another. We would say simply that the Curé of Ars, when it was a matter of giving practical solutions from the pulpit, followed the customs he had been taught.
To most of his listeners he could have appeared very slightly “jansenist” when he uttered in his first years such pronouncements as the following: “Alas! that Christians who leave the church (after assisting at Mass) have perhaps more than thirty or fifty mortal sins more than when they came in!” The preacher considered himself severe, for he formulated the objection which he sensed in the minds of the listeners: “But,” you will say, “it would be much better not to assist at it then.” And he replies with of shift of ground: “Do you know what you should do? You should assist at it, and assist at it as well as you can. . . .”
In the sermon on The Thought of Death he puts this despairing statement into the mouth of St. Jerome as he was dying: “I speak of it to you with the experience of more than sixty years. Yes, my dear children, of one hundred thousand people who have lived badly there will scarcely be one who will have a good death!” This is not, it is true, a quotation, but it is obvious that the Curé of Ars brought it in here with a certain amount of willingness.
In preaching to the fathers and mothers of families about their duties towards their children he made their duties appear so difficult that these poor people had to decide either not to fulfill them or to become saints.
It is absolutely essential to see in these doctrinal exaggerations either oratorical amplification or the desire to inspire in the souls (of his listeners) a salutary apprehension, “But,” our saint makes an imaginary opponent say in his sermon on The Delay in Conversion, v. . . that would be enough to throw one into despair.” “Ah! my friend,” retorts the preacher, “I would like to be able to bring you to the edge of despair so that, struck by the terrifying state you are in, you would at least take the means that God offers you even to-day to get out of it.”
M. Vianney, wishing to impress souls vigorously, had surely the need to “exaggerate” certain details of morality in order to make them more understandable to the least instructed portion of his audience. In addition, his austere temperament inclined him to preach the terrible truths: he returned, in almost every sermon, to the last end, to death, to judgment, to hell.
Experience in dealing with souls taught him to be a less stern moralist, However, as a missionary who heard him in his last years has said, he preserved right up to the end “a slight tendency to severity, when he was speaking with such energy on the threats of divine justice, on the terrors of the judgment, on hell.” For he treated of all these frightening subjects as continually as ever when numerous pilgrims were mingling with the people of his parish.
Nevertheless, he never excluded from his theology the dogma of the divine mercy. We have a special sermon by him on that very consoling truth. And “the preference which he gave to this theme in his later years clearly shows that it was the sentiment of the love of God which he wished to make predominate in souls.”
Many religious and priests, even bishops, sat among the simple faithful at the foot of his pulpit. “It is outrageous that anyone should reproach the Servant of God with the slightest inexactitude in doctrine, dogmatic or moral.”
M. Vianney possessed in his library the Ecclesiastical History by Fleury. He went through it and quoted it sometimes in his instructions, while taking care, at least on one occasion, to indicate the reference.
But the history book which he knew best and quoted most frequently, together with the Scriptures, was the Lives of the Saints. He finished by knowing it practically by heart. “It could be truly said that he had lived with these great saints, by the way he told about the details of their lives.” “Every day,” testifies Catherine Lassagne, who had charge of his little household, “I found on the table this volume which I had put back in its place in the bookshelves the day before.” And Jeanne Marie Chanay, assistant at the orphanage of Mlle. Lassagne, adds: “The Curé never gave up this reading, not even at the period of the pilgrimage when he spent his day entirely in the confessional and returned home, in the evening, overwhelmed with fatigue.” The Lives of the Saints, in the full meaning of the word, was his bedside book.
And there is no doubt but that it was with his preaching in mind that he made this reading a strict rule, in addition to which he found in it rest and consolation. “He loved,” recalls M. Pagés, who was living in retirement in the village of Ars, “to read over each evening the account of the saint whose feast it was the following day, and at his catechism at 11 o’clock, he told with delight what he had read the evening before.”
One of the books from which he took his edifying stories is still preserved in his library. It is indeed the only book, or one Page:The sermons of the Curé of Ars - Vianney, tr. Morrissy - 1960.djvu/218 Page:The sermons of the Curé of Ars - Vianney, tr. Morrissy - 1960.djvu/219 Page:The sermons of the Curé of Ars - Vianney, tr. Morrissy - 1960.djvu/220