Post #6201

Having completed the theology course with difficulty, he was found suitable enough to be ordained in sacris: the ordination took place in Grenoble on the 13th of August 1815. In the village of Ecully, under the parish priest, of which he had been elected vicar, he strove with all his might to attain the highest degrees of pastoral perfection. After three years, he was sent, like an angel from heaven, to the village of Ars, which was soon assigned to the diocese of Belley, and he renewed the face of his completely squalid and deserted parish in a most florid way. Assiduous every day for many hours in judging and directing consciences, he introduced the use of frequent Communion, renewed the pious confraternities: and in a marvelous way he instilled in souls a tender devotion to the Immaculate Virgin. Deeming it then to be the pastor's expiation for the sins of the flock entrusted to him, he never ceased to pray, or to keep vigil, or to scourge and fast continuously. Not being able to bear so much virtue of the man of God, Satan attacked him first with vexations and then with open combat: but John Mary patiently bore the most atrocious afflictions. He was often invited by nearby parishes so that, like the Missionaries, he would provide for the salvation of souls now with preaching now with hearing confessions. Burning with zeal for the glory of God, he ensured that the pious exercises of the Missions were established, with the foundation of a perpetual endowment, in more than one hundred parishes. In the midst of these things, God making his servant illustrious with miracles and gifts, that famous pilgrimage arose, from which, for twenty years, almost one hundred thousand people of every age and condition flocked to Ars every year, not only from the distant provinces of France and from Europe, but also from America; to favor this concurrence of penitents, the State had to build a small section of the railway. Consumed more by fatigue than by old age, after having predicted the day of his death, he fell asleep in the kiss of the Lord on August 4, 1859, at the age of 73. Clear due to many miracles, Pius X enrolled him among the Blessed on January 8, 1905, and Pius XI among the Saints in Heaven in the holy year 1925 on May 31, and extended the feast to the universal Church. The same Supreme Pontiff Pius XI, in the fiftieth year of his priesthood, in 1929, declared him the heavenly Patron of all parish priests.