Facts

Perhaps it is in the detail between the facts that God makes Saints…?

God the Father (Icon)

The other day – on the 4^th of August – it was the feast day of Saint John Vianney.  Saint John Vianney is the patron saint of Priests.

He is a very famous and well-known Saint and many of the Catholic churches in France (and around the world) display statues and paintings of him as many Catholics around the world ask for his intercession.

I was interested in understanding some more about this Saint, and so I did some very basic Googling about him.  I wrote, “Facts about Saint John Vianney” into the search engine and this was the reply…

“Saint John Viannet – known as the Cure d’Ars – was a famous French parish priest who struggled intensely with Latin schoolwork, lived on a diet of boiled potatoes, and spent up to 16 hours a day hearing confessions.” (Catholic-link.org)

I have been thinking about that today.  You see there are a few little things in that description.  There is a comment about academic aptitude (or a lack of it), a comment about eating potatoes and a comment about confessions…  None of these things is terribly extraordinary.

So, I tried to do some calculations to understand if perhaps one of these things might have made more difference than the others?

For example, the confession point.  Assuming the priest spent up to 16 hours in the confessional each day and we know he spent less than 16 hours during the winter.  This means that if each confession took fifteen minutes, he would have interacted with 64 people each day – at best.  The reality is probably much smaller.  After all, he was probably spending longer than fifteen minutes per person.  He was likely delayed as people entered and exited.  Perhaps sometimes, the people were not lined up outside so he had moments of silence with nobody seeking the sacrament?

In any case, the Saint interacted with about 50 or 60 people each day, ate some potatoes, and was not a very good student at all…  And for all of this, we remember him today – more than one hundred years after his death – because he did these little things…

And I have thinking about what facts make it obvious that someone is a Saint.  After all, the facts in this particular case are very straightforward.  There is nothing that stands out as bizarre and yet for those small little things we remember this man as a Saint…

And I have been thinking about that because it seems to me that there is something more than that in the facts.  After all, for a period of years every single day, this Saint interacted with 50 or 60 people a day and what were those interactions like I wonder?  Perhaps it is in the detail between the facts that God makes Saints…?

And it occurs to me that all that detail is significantly lacking for me today.  Significantly lacking…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.