Thinking Outside the Box… And Working Inside
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - August 3, 2007
To put out into the deep is simply to go for it. That's what Jesus was telling Peter when he told him to throw his nets out for a catch. That's what Pope John Paul II was urging all Catholics to do when he adopted it as the motto for the third Christian millennium. He was encouraging all of us to go for it, to live our Christian discipleship and apostolate with audacity.
The greatest examples of those who put out into the deep, who go for it, are the saints. All of them, in their own way, live the faith with what Catholic tradition calls "heroic virtue." They demonstrate the habit of heroism on a day-to-day basis, sacrificing themselves for God and others in the supposedly little things of each day, and, when circumstances have required it, in the sacrifice of their lives in martyrdom.
While routinely heroic, the saints are also very human. They are not born on the planet Krypton, but are flesh-and-blood, just like you and me. What distinguishes them from others is their level of receptivity and correspondence to God's grace. Since God calls everyone to become a saint, those who actually end up becoming saints are those who use their freedom fully and courageously to respond to that call.
As I take into my hands the nets which for the last two years Fr. Pignato has skillfully tossed into deep water, I wish to focus on those figures in the history of the Church who have been the greatest fishers of men. These are the earthen vessels who have illustrated what God is capable of doing when he receives the free permission and consent of his beloved sons and daughters. These are the men and women who have gone for it, and who serve as an inspiration spurring us on to imitation.
We begin with the saint the Church celebrate tomorrow, St. Jean-Marie Vianney, popularly known as the Cure of Ars (1786-1859). When he was a young boy during the French Revolution, the courage of clandestine priests housed in his home awakened in him a sense of priestly vocation, but due to his lack of education and poor Latin abilities, he flunked out of seminary. Nothing, however, is impossible with God. With the help of his parish priest who became a tutor and a vicar general who prized piety more than perspicacity, he was eventually ordained.
In 1818 he became parish priest of Ars, a tiny village of 200 families north of Lyons not known for its faith. Patiently over the course of the next eight years, he worked for the conversion of his parishioners, through all night vigils in his parish Church, bodily sacrifices in reparation for their sins, powerful preaching against the profanation of Sunday, and, most especially, sitting in the confessional and reconciling his parishioners to God.
It was in the confessional in Ars that he would put out into the deep for the rest of his life. His reputation for holiness soon began to draw penitents from all over France. Despite his hearing confessions for 16-18 hours a day — even vigorous priests are exhausted after a few hours! — penitents would still have to wait seven or eight days to enter the confessional. His box became France's great "lost and found" department, where those who were dead in sin experienced the resurrection of God's forgiveness.
Pope Pius XI in 1929 declared him the patron saint of parish priests, not for his intellect or for his great preaching or theological work, but because he loved his people enough to spend his life in the confessional to make them holy.
His feast day is an opportunity for all parish priests to ask God for the grace to love their people as much as and in the same way as the Cure D'Ars loved his. It is also a great occasion for the faithful to rediscover close to home the healing power and beauty of the sacrament for which people would travel great distances and wait in line for eight days.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
