The Holy Priest Who Inspired Another

by Fr. Roger Landry - July 17, 2009

The future patron saint of priests, John Vianney, never desired merely to be a priest. He hungered to be a truly holy priest. One of the greatest means God used to help him learn the heroic virtue required of a saint, and the indefatigably sacrificial heart demanded of a holy priest, was to give him a saintly spiritual father and mentor, Fr. Charles Balley.

Fr. Balley was born in Lyons 1751, the youngest of 16 children. During the ugliest days of the French Revolution, at the risk of his life, he served as one of four clandestine priests to the faithful Catholics in the underground Church around Ecully and Dardilly where the Vianney family had its farm. Several times the young John Vianney attended his secret Masses, which were well-remembered because of the celebrant's copious tears.

When the anti-clerical and anti-Catholic persecution finally ended, Fr. Balley was appointed pastor in Ecully. So many priests had been killed in the revolution and so many others had apostasized to preserve their earthly lives that Fr. Balley his top priority the promotion and training of future priests to whom he could pass the baton of the Gospel.

He was a very well-educated cleric, having several times turned down the chair of moral theology at the Lyons seminary in order to continue to accompany the audacious flock that he had served secretly during the revolution, to reconcile those who out of ignorance or intimidation had gone into schism, and to reevangelize those who had been brainwashed by revolutionary indoctrination. Because of his education, he fittingly established in his rectory a house of studies for boys who thought that the Lord was calling them to serve him at the altar. There he would help them discern and learn the prerequisites of Latin, reading, writing and rhetoric that would be the necessary foundation for future seminary courses in philosophy and theology.

John Vianney was 19 when Fr. Balley opened up his presbytery school. When Mrs. Vianney and another relative approached Fr. Balley to ask that John be admitted among the pupils, Fr. Balley responded with a firm no. As an educator he knew it would be a Herculean task to help a young man with almost no formal education learn the seminary prerequisites. "I can't," he repeated over and over again. When John's brother-in-law came to speak to him shortly thereafter, he reiterated that the task was impossible. He was in his mid-50s and physically felt much older on account of the sufferings he had undergone during the revolution. He was implored at least to meet with the young man who used to sit at his feet when he celebrated the clandestine Masses. Fr. Balley assented to the meeting.

When he met with the young aspirant, the priest was surprised that, despite his lack of a formal education, Vianney was quite knowledgeable about the faith, had common sense and a deep prayer life, and was willing to make the types of heroic sacrifices that would be required for him ever to get up to speed. Fr. Balley agreed to take him on. When John apologized in advance for how much work his education would entail for the teacher, Fr. Balley replied, "Do not worry, my friend; if need be I will sacrifice myself for your sake."

Sacrifice he did. The road ahead required almost infinite patience and trust in God on both their parts. John needed to sit in class with students much younger who grasped instructions much more easily. No matter how much he studied, he could not succeed in retaining anything in his "bad head." Latin was nearly impossible for him. Everyone was frustrated: professor, Vianney and the much younger students, one of whom — Matthew Loras, a future missionary bishop in Dubuque, Iowa — punched him in the face for his seeming stupidity.

Seeing how he was not only failing but seeming to bring others to ruin with him, he said, crestfallen, to Fr. Balley, "I want to go home." But the sage old priest reminded him that that would be the end of his desire to help souls. Vianney decided to give it another shot, but this time, with far greater dependence on God. After a pilgrimage of nearly 200 miles round trip on foot to the sanctuary of St. Francis Regis, after an interlude of 18 months as a Napoleonic draftee, after having flunked out of the seminary and failed yet again on extraordinary examinations for the priesthood — a remarkable story of perseverance worth a future article — he was eventually approved for Holy Orders. This was in no small part to the continually patient teaching, encouragement, assistance, inspiration and multiple ecclesiastical interventions of Fr. Balley.

After John returned from being ordained a priest, he discovered to his great delight that he had been appointed the parochial vicar in Ecully. The vicar general of the Archdiocese of Lyons thought it would be wise to have him continue his studies with his mentor during his baby steps as a priest. The pastor and curate would discuss cases of conscience late into the night and on afternoon walks. Fr. Balley by this point had grown to admire his young protégé so much that he asked the young priest to be his confessor. Since, according to the practice of the time, newly-ordained priests needed to wait for months to receive the "faculties" to hear confessions, Fr. Balley once again intervened with his vicar general. The first confession the young Abbé Vianney heard was of his holy mentor.

Parishioners soon witnessed a "competition" between the two priests, both of whose fasts and other mortifications were so marked that they each reported the other to the vicar general for "exceeding all bounds." There was a holy bond forged between them, however, that only grew as they inspired other to greater identification with the sufferings of love of the great high priest.

Two years after Fr. Vianney became his vicar, Fr. Balley got a gangrenous ulcer in his leg that eventually took his life. His spiritual son heard his confession, anointed him and gave him viaticum. After the parishioners left, Fr. Balley entrusted his curate with his hair shirt and discipline — two means of hidden self-sacrifice Catholics have used for centuries to enter into the mystery of the Lord's passion — with the instructions to get rid of them, lest any of the faithful draw the "wrong" conclusion that he had done his penance on earth and wouldn't be in need of their prayers after the Lord's visitation. Vianney kept them for his own use in the event that his own instruments of mortification fell apart.

After Fr. Balley died, the parishioners of Ecully asked the vicar general that Fr. Vianney be appointed his successor, but Fr. Tripier was sent instead. The latter, probably because he had never had a holy mentor like Fr. Balley, deemed his curate — with his tattered cassock, abstemious appetite, lack of desire to kiss up to the well-to-do, and longing for the rectory to a prayerful and austere monastery — too "rigid" for his tastes and so the future patron saint of priests needed to be transferred elsewhere. Unbelievable as it was, it was the means by which God would make the road to Ars a modern road to Damascus.

"I should have ended by acquiring a small measure of goodness," Vianney would say much later looking back at his relationship with his mentor, "had I had the happiness of living always with Monsieur Balley. No one has shown me more plainly to what extent the soul may rise above the sense and become akin to the angels. To make one wish to love God, it was enough to hear him say, 'God God, I love thee with my whole heart.' I have seen beautiful souls, but none so beautiful."

That beauty was so contagious that Fr. Balley ended up inspiring the farmer with the "bad head" to acquire one of the most beautiful priestly souls of all time.

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.