Reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. It happened that a Canaanite woman living in that locality presented herself crying out to Jesus, Lord, son of David, have pity on me. My daughter is terribly troubled by a demon. In response, Jesus gave her no word.
His disciples came up and began to entreat him. Get rid of her. She keeps shouting after us. Christ replied, my mission is only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The woman came forward then and did Jesus homage with this plea.
Help me, Lord. But Jesus answered, and I think this are the harshest things he said no matter how you try to explain it. Just listen. And Jesus replied to this distraught woman, it is not right to take the food of sons and daughters and throw it to dogs. Please, lord, the woman insisted, even the dogs eat the leavings that fall from their master's tables.
Jesus then said in reply, woman, you have great faith. Your wish will be fulfilled. At that very moment, her daughter got better, and this is the good news of Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
This is the feast of Saint John Viannae, the Curie of Ars, a tiny little village, or was in his day, close or in the neighborhood of Lyon, France. He was born about 1786 or something like that, and died in 1850 something before our civil war. That's how I keep dates. They are his He lived a pretty good life, despite the fact that he did about everything he could do short of shooting himself or poisoning himself to end it. He lived on practically no sleep, and a diet of boiled and moldy potatoes.
And this is no exaggeration, I mean, this actually happened. One of the first books that I recall reading in French was Henri Gaonne's Life of the Courier of Ars. So I worked hard on that with the LaRuce right at my elbow. This man is a paradox. From this pulpit, from the, Martyrology of the Catholic church, we have a day in and day out continuing series of holy men and women that the church wants us to remember.
And these are just a tiny handful, a scant handful of the multitude which actually lived and fought and had their being and made it in the end. There are a tiny handful, but they are tremendously significant. And you talk about variety, there is scarcely any homogeneity in them except holiness, loyalty to the church of Jesus Christ, and their effort to try to live their lives in the footsteps of their master, Jesus, daily to carry his cross. That they all have in common. But how they accomplish it is it's absolutely astounding.
Absolutely astounding. And this man, you see, he died just before our civil war, so he's not a million years back. We're not talking about a Saint Boniface or Saint Athenagoras or Saint John Chrysostom. We're talking about a man just before our died just a little before our civil war. A man that couldn't Well, he was thrown out of the seminary at Lyon because he couldn't achieve even the lowest level of academic excellence.
He wouldn't have stood a chance of getting into a College USA 1982 in the fall, when the herds and the hordes will be rushing back. He came from a family of five or six children, had only one or two or three years in school because he had to be put out to take care of the flocks and the few cattle they had. Then of course, this is post revolution, and he got swept along with that. His parents this I think is significant. His parents refused went along with the priests who refused to take the oath for the civil constitution of the clergy.
This is significant. I think it's significant, just as the example of any parents is the most significant factor in their kids' lives, methinks. Nothing can match it. And if this man purse if if the courier of ours, if Saint John Vianney persevered in his ideas of being a priest of Jesus Christ in the church of Jesus Christ, it certainly had a lot to do with the example of fortitude, perseverance, loyalty, love of the church that his parents showed under the direst circumstances. Because they were putting their lives on the line when when they sided with the priest who refused the oath, just as Thomas More, centuries before, had refused the oath.
You see how we can hop along in centuries? Here's Thomas More, we're mentioning him along with Saint John Vianney. You can't imagine two people so totally different, and yet we mention them in the same breath. The Lord High Chancellor of England, the first layman who became a chancellor, the man who got who went as far as he could go in the human level of achievement, who had his head cut off because he refused, refused to admit that the king of England was head of the church of Jesus Christ. Now, this man, there's another little facet here.
You see we talk about the Curie of ours, we talk about Saint John Vianney, what a wonderful pastor he was, what he accomplished in the confessional, and his prayerful life, his mysticism, his asceticism, which nobody with any sense ought to copy. We talk about these things, but you forget what's in the background. What put him in the confessional? What put him in that little old parish where they were with only 250 people? After he got himself ordained, he was sent out to a nondescript little old town with only around, as I say, 250 people, not families but persons.
A village that was not notable for its loyalty to the 10 commandments, a church that was in total dilapidation, where there was practically no religious life whatsoever, and here he goes, an ignoramus who who couldn't even get through the seminary. What's behind all? There's a man behind him, and that's the Abbey Ballet, b a l l e y, Ballet. Yeah. That's my pronunciation of it.
B a l l e y, the Abbey. And from the very beginning, this man saw something in this kid, this herder of animals who got himself in trouble with the law because he was a deserter, AWL, who got fired from the seminary because he knew no Latin and the courses were in Latin, so he couldn't possibly make it. He stuck with that kid. He didn't give up on him. He started him off in his studies, and when he couldn't make it in the seminary through the formal training, he took him into his home and tried to bring him along.
And he did, and he did. And he took him down there to Lyon and had the professors down there examining, and finally they agreed to ordain him. So he got himself ordained and soon after was shipped off to this nondescript little village. He did three things there. Three things.
First, he tried to rebuild the church. This this edifice, a physical building, stone upon stone. That's point number one. The second, he visited every single family, and that that wasn't a big job, but he did it. And third, he taught catechism.
And when you think of those three things, they certainly justify the church in making him as champion, as sponsor, as patron of parish priests. Now it's interesting to me that this man who was such an ascetic when he went into this tiny little village where there was nothing to encourage him, where he was over 30 at the time. The first thing he did was to turn to try to put up that that building. Stone masonry, which has nothing to do with religion. You don't have to have a building and a roof to worship God, you can go out on the summit of any mountain or down in a valley, you can go any old place.
You don't need a church, or don't you need a church? Remember what I said about social worship yesterday? Man is a social being, Aristotle said that. So he he he rebuilt, he gave he gave focus to the religious life of that little town where there was no religious life with a building that everybody could see, and I don't know how he did it, but we're told he did it in some way or other. Then the next thing was he he got going and he visited every single fact.
He knew his sheep by name, and then he gave them the doctrine of the church, which in those days was a catechism based upon the Council of Trent. That's a naughty word today, you know, but we dare use it at times. It is the council of the Church of Jesus Christ. And that's what he did. He built, he visited, and he taught.
And then, of course, he made his great international reputation as a confessor, as you all know. He heard confessions, you know, from from evening I mean, from from shortly after midnight until the following evening, and see why I get twisted. That was his that was his day, started after midnight and continued until the following evening. Hearing confessions this man is is is the patron of parish priests, but let me tell you, he can be the he can be a patron for us all. Social worship in the church, social worship, the unity of a parish where families know one another, they know their needs and their good happenings and the bad happenings, Where a hand is put out, not an anonymous hand, not the hand of welfare, but the hand of the of Jesus Christ in Christian charity and love.
And then, doctrine. What is your faith? Do you know it? Are you living on your on what you take took as a tiny child? Which may not be bad.
That's wonderful. But is that enough? You don't live on the science that you learned in the first grade. So all of us today can look at this dumb ox. Dumb ox, you know, is what Thomas Aquinas was called.
And let me tell you, when they talk about how ignorant and dumb and all that the puree was, don't take that too seriously. He was a man of great common sense, except for himself. He impressed those academicians down in Leon enough that they said, Well, he doesn't know very much theology, but and he has common sense. So they said, he's alright. Let him be ordained.
So the bishop ordained him. So don't underrate his common sense which is at unperchable, perchable talent. And so today, when we think of the courier of ours, let us realize that he is one of us. Let us pray that we would be one with him. In the name of the father, the son, holy spirit.
Amen.