St. John Vianney, often referred to as “The Curé of Ars” for his pious service as a parish priest in the French town of Ars, may be the greatest champion of the Sacrament of Reconciliation the Church has ever seen.
In an average week of his priestly life, Father Vianney was known to have heard well over 100 hours of confessions, commonly hearing anywhere from 15 to 18 hours of confessions per day. As we live in a time in which many parishes offer the Sacrament of Reconciliation only one hour each week, this is extraordinary.
But it was extraordinary even in his time. His reputation for mediating Christ to others in such a tangible way and his gift for being able to see into the deepest depths of one’s soul led to thousands of people traveling many miles just to confess their sins to Father Vianney.
However, St. John Vianney was known for being more than just a gifted confessor. He was also known for being a man of wisdom due to the personal intimacy He shared with God.
So that you can gain a glimpse into his simple yet profound wisdom, below are 17 quotes from St. John Vianney that will inspire you to grow in holiness today:
Quotes from St. John Vianney
On Loving God Above All
1. “You either belong wholly to the world or wholly to God.”
2. “If people would do for God what they do for the world, what a great number of Christians would go to Heaven.”
3. “You cannot please both God and the world at the same time. They are utterly opposed to each other in their thoughts, their desires, and their actions.”
On Loving Our Neighbor
4. “All our religion is but a false religion, and all our virtues are mere illusions and we ourselves are only hypocrites in the sight of God, if we have not that universal charity for everyone – for the good, and for the bad, for the poor and for the rich, and for all those who do us harm as much as those who do us good.”
5. “We must always choose the most perfect. Two good works present themselves to be done, one in favour of a person we love, the other in favour of a person who has done us some harm. Well, we must give preference to the latter.”
On the Mercy of God
6. “The good God will pardon a repentant sinner more quickly than a mother would snatch her child out of the fire.”
7. “You may have done evil enough to lose the souls of a whole parish, and if you confess, if you are sorry for having done this evil, and resolve not to do it again, the good God will have pardoned you.”
On Prayer
8. “Man is a beggar who needs to ask God for everything.”
9. “When our hands have touched spices, they give fragrance to all they handle. Let us make our prayers pass through the hands of the Blessed Virgin. She will make them fragrant.”
10. “Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.”
11. “My little children, your hearts, are small, but prayer stretches them and makes them capable of loving God.”
12. “How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak.”
On Holy Communion
13. There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us.
14. “We should consider those moments spent before the Blessed Sacrament as the happiest of our lives.”
15. “If we could comprehend all the good things contained in Holy Communion, nothing more would be wanting to content the heart of man.”
RELATED: 5 Prayers to Say Before Mass & Communion
On Carrying Our Cross
16. “The saints did not all begin well, but they all ended well.”
17. “I tell you that you have less to suffer in following the cross than in serving the world and its pleasures.”
18. “The good God does not require of us the martyrdom of the body; He requires only the martyrdom of the heart, and of the will.”
19. “Our greatest cross is the fear of crosses.”
Which of the above quotes strike you the most?
Let me know in the comment box below!
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The last one struck me quite hard…”Our greatest cross is the fear of crosses.” It really speaks to my own personal prayer of late. I have been struggling because I am a homeschool mom of seven, and I have a vision of how things should go, but most of the time my kids just won’t cooperate! I don’t mind hard work, and in fact I love to work hard, but they make things so much harder than they need to be. I brought this to the Lord in prayer, and He very clearly told that I should stop trying to negotiate my cross. I really couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t…