Year for Priests
“For you I am a Bishop, with you I am a Christian” (St. Augustine)
St John Vianney, although not a scholar or a theologian was a saint. He had that rare gift that saints have which is that they are able to speak with wisdom and clarity about many issues which impact our lives. We offer you a variety of sayings and insight of the great Curé of Ars to illustrate the gift of wisdom God had so abundantly poured out on him.
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.
If people would do for God what they do for the world, what a great number of Christians would go to Heaven.’
You either belong wholly to the world or wholly to God. I tell you that you have less to suffer in following the cross than in serving the world and its pleasures.
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.
We should consider those moments spent before the Blessed Sacrament as the happiest of our lives.’ Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.
My secret is easy to learn. It can be summed up in these few words: give everything away and keep nothing for yourself.
