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(Posted by guest blogger Dr. Matthew Bunson)

Last month, I promised to write about an extraordinary priest who at first look seemed a most unlikely model for other recipient of Holy Orders. Considered unfit for the priesthood even by some of his fellow priests because he was supposedly so unlearned –and because they thought he made them look bad by his long hours in the confessional and his reputation for spiritual guidance – this priest refused every honor offered to him and died humbly in the small parish where he had spent his entire life in ministry. Hardly forgotten, however, he became not only the model for the priests of his diocese and France, he is honored today as a saint and the patron saint of parish priests and was named as the patron for the Year for Priests in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI.

I am writing, of course, about St. Jean Baptist Vianney (1786-1859), known also as the Curé of Ars.

He was born at Dardilly, France, into a family of shepherds and grew up during the terrible years of the French Revolution when the practice of the Catholic faith was often prohibited by the secular and atheist regimes in France. The family attended secret Masses, and the heroic example of the priests who put their lives in danger to bring the sacraments to French villages inspired young Jean to follow them into the priesthood.

The problem was, he was twenty by the time his father allowed him to enter the school for seminary preparation; he could barely read or write, and he lacked anything approaching a proper background in learning. And even his hopes of the seminary were crushed by the news in 1809 that he had been drafted into the army of Emperor Napoleon to go fight and kill other Catholics in Spain. Refusing to go to war, Jean deserted and remained in hiding in a small village in the mountains. Only an imperial amnesty in 1810 allowed him to go back to his home and enter the seminary in earnest at Lyons in 1813.

Put simply, Jean was or­dained because of his obvious goodness and not for his academic skills. He struggled in his studies, especially Latin, and it is unlikely that he would have been ordained had it not been for the support and help of Abbé Balley of Ecully who personally intervened on his behalf. After ordination on August 12, 1815, he served as an associate under Abbé Balley. By the time of Balley’s death in 1818, the saintly qualities of Father Vianney were well-known, most so by the bishop of the diocese who assigned him as Curé, or pastor, of Ars.

His new parish had only 230 people and was plagued by religious indifference. Prophetically, the bishop told him, “There is not much love of God in that parish. You will put some there.” Jean possessed a stunning appreciation of the priesthood and the requirement that a priest be an alter Christus, another Christ. With the absolute gift of himself, he transformed the religious and spiritual life of Ars by the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance. Gifted with remarkable discernment of the human soul, he reclaimed thousands of lapsed Catholics at a time when France was emerging out of the bleak years of the French Revolution and Napoleon. Soon, thousands flocked to the village to seek his advice and especially to give him their confession. In the winter he spent twelve hours at a time in the confessional, and in the summer he gave sixteen to eighteen hours in the confessional to the throngs of penitent souls. And they kept coming…from across the diocese, France, and then from other countries.

Not surprisingly, other priests in the diocese grew jealous of his fame (even though Jean never sought notoriety). They dug up the fact of his poor exam results in the seminary and organized a petition declaring Jean’s unworthiness to be a priest. When it was presented, the bishop discovered to his great humor that Jean had also signed it. Soon after, some priests claimed that the Curé of Ars was mentally unstable; after all, who on earth spends eighteen hours listening to confessions? The bishop’s reply: he expressed a wish that all of his priests suffered from the same mental illness.

There are many lessons to be learned by this truly remarkable priest, but one of them is that while a man may consider himself painfully unworthy, it is Christ who makes the call to the priesthood. Jean Vianney never lost sight of the glory to which he had been summoned, declaring often, “Oh! How great is the Priesthood! It can be properly understood only in Heaven... if one were to understand it on this earth one would die, not of fright but of love!" (Abbé Monnin, Esprit du Curé d'Ars, p. 113).

Jean Vianney was an unlikely candidate for Holy Orders. But he responded to Christ’s call, and the result was the transformation of Ars and the spiritual enrichment of France and beyond. But what does all of this mean to us today? Pope Benedict XVI answered that very question when he declared:

The pastoral methods of St John Mary Vianney might hardly appear suited to the social and cultural conditions of the present day. Indeed, how could a priest today imitate him in a world so radically changed?...far from reducing the figure of St John Mary Vianney to an example albeit an admirable one of 18-century devotional spirituality, on the contrary one should understand the prophetic power that marked his human and priestly personality that is extremely timely. In post-revolutionary France which was experiencing a sort of "dictatorship of rationalism" that aimed at obliterating from society the very existence of priests and of the Church, he lived first in the years of his youth a heroic secrecy, walking kilometers at night to attend Holy Mass. Then later as a priest Vianney distinguished himself by an unusual and fruitful pastoral creativity, geared to showing that the then prevalent rationalism was in fact far from satisfying authentic human needs, hence definitively unlivable. (General Audience, August 5, 2009.)

Next month, I will write about an experience I recently had in the Alleghenies and how it is connected to a Russian prince and the first priest to receive all of his orders in the United States.

A blessed Advent to everyone!

You’ve probably heard the saying “in persona Christi” applied to priests. It’s a Latin phrase that very nicely sums up who and what a priest is. Translated, it means “in the person of Christ.” How that’s understood makes all the difference in the world.

For some, “in persona Christi” means that the priest merely represents Jesus before the people. Others believe it means that the priest simply performs actions that are Christ-like. The true meaning of the phrase, however, is far deeper than we can imagine without the gift of faith. For it means nothing less than that a priest, in a certain metaphysical sense, is Jesus.

Don’t take that to mean that when a man is ordained he somehow becomes divine like our Lord. No, as any priest will tell you, he retains his humanity just like the rest of us – complete with the inclination toward sin that afflicts us all.

Rather, at his ordination, a man’s soul is mystically transformed and given a permanent mark – also called a “character” – that empowers him to do for the People of God what ultimately only Jesus can do, most notably change ordinary bread and wine into the Lord’s body and blood, and forgive our sins in the Sacrament of Confession.

The next time you’re looking at a priest as he’s celebrating Mass or one of the other sacraments, try to see with the eyes of faith who is really standing before you – Jesus Christ!

I’ve written about the importance of family life in the planting and cultivation of vocational seeds in the hearts of children and young people. Recently, I came across an article titled, “Formula for a Vocation,” by Teresa Thomas, a writer for Today’s Catholic Magazine. I found her piece to be one of the finest I’ve read when it comes to summing up the critical roles that mothers and fathers play in the vocational choices their children will eventually make. It’s succinct, but manages to convey many key points.

Two things stand out in Thomas’ article.

First, a phrase she says a priest once found on the wall of a prison inmate’s cell – “Mothers are the fate of men.” In explaining to the priest why he had scrawled that on his wall, the convict said that during the time he had spent in prison reflecting on the important things in life, he had come to see that “a good mother is a blessing for the children; a bad mother, however, is a terrible curse.”

Second, Thomas highlights the importance of the father encouraging his son to consider the priesthood, and how that encouragement “legitimizes the option as an accepted and viable one” for the boy.

The author shares many other thoughts about priestly vocations and the family. You’ll just have to click on the link above to read the entire article.

(Posted by guest blogger Dr. Matthew Bunson)

Jerry Usher is a man with ideas. He first told me one of his biggest ideas almost two years ago when he came to town to anchor the Sharathon for Redeemer Radio, the local Catholic radio station. The idea was so large that we started talking about it at lunch and then kept discussing it over dinner at a local Chinese restaurant (Jerry and I both happily eat Chinese food).

We had been talking about vocations for a long time, certainly since one of my earliest appearances on Catholic Answers Live, but it was at lunch that he first used the name Vocationboom.com. Jerry described his vision for a website that could offer advice, inspiration, and help to men discerning a vocation to the priesthood.

What struck me immediately about his idea was his commitment to a global vision for the site. He wanted Vocation Boom! to be a place where any man wondering whether Christ might actually be calling him could find some answers to both complicated and very practical questions. It was a concept that immediately elicited my support and my promise to help in any way that I could.

In the end, the site that was created flows from a love of the Church and a simple understanding that vocations are the concern not just for Church officials, not just for priests, religious, and nuns. They need to be a concern for all of us. As St. John Vianney once declared to his parishioners: “Without the Sacrament of Holy Orders, we would not have the Lord. Who put him there in that tabernacle? The priest. Who welcomed your soul at the beginning of your life? The priest. Who feeds your soul and gives it strength for its journey? The priest. Who will prepare it to appear before God, bathing it one last time in the blood of Jesus Christ? The priest, always the priest. And if this soul should happen to die [as a result of sin], who will raise it up, who will restore its calm and peace? Again, the priest… After God, the priest is everything! … Only in heaven will he fully realize what he is.” (“Le Sacerdoce, c’est l’amour du cœur de Jésus,” in Le curé d’Ars. Sa pensée – Son cœur. Présentés par l’Abbé Bernard Nodet, éd. Xavier Mappus, Foi Vivante, 1966, pp. 98-99).

Currently, there are some 408,000 priests in the world, and some 115,000 seminarians. With a population of 1.14 billion Catholics, the numbers seem miniscule in comparison. They become even more remarkable when we look at where vocations are literally booming and where they are still flat. New priests and seminarians are found in growing numbers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, while the seminaries are still struggling in North America and Europe. It is true that vocations are picking up in the United States, with several diocese or archdioceses having the largest ordination classes since the 1960’s, but the reality is we need more priests.

So, there are very good reasons to think globally.

Catholics across the United States are growing used to hearing their priests speaking with accents. Only a while ago, Americans spent a century listening to Irish and German accents, now we are hearing priests with Nigerian, South African, Filipino, and Chinese inflections. They are a permanent feature of life for the foreseeable future, so our support of vocations around the world is not merely some act of charity to a distant region and that will never have relevance to our own lives.

Our priests may come from Africa or China or the United States, but one thing remains: every priest has been called by God to live in persona Christi – in the person of Christ – and has received a permanent mark on his soul. He is empowered to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass and so give to the members of the Church the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Every priest, regardless of where he is from has received the sacrament of holy orders that was first instituted by Christ at the Last Supper when he offered his body and blood under the appearance of bread and wine and commanded the disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19). He has given a yes to Christ’s call and is worthy of our prayers and our support.

Which brings me back to Jerry, dinner at the Chinese restaurant, and Vocation Boom!. When I told Jerry that I would help in any way that I could, he very kindly accepted my offer. One of the things that he asked was for me to write for the website. He especially wanted me to help visitors learn more about the history of the priesthood, the Church around the world, and the challenges that Catholics are facing under Islamic regimes, oppressive African and South American governments, and even in Western Europe. So, over the next months, I have the honor of writing a little for this blog on these topics.

I had the privilege of attending an ordination yesterday for two young men in our local cathedral. Afterward, at a reception in their honor, I recorded interviews with the new priests, their families, and others for Redeemer Radio. I was struck in talking with several priests about their own ordination day, (some were ordained a few years back and others, a very long time ago) how they remembered a sense of unworthiness and shock that they had actually been found worthy by the Church to be ordained priests. As they looked at the two young men lying on the floor of the cathedral as part of the ordination rite, they were reminded that they had not been worthy of the incredible gift of the priesthood, but Christ had called them, had chosen them, and had made them worthy.

VocationBoom.com is here to help young men from every walk of life to realize that the priesthood is not so implausible. If you have been called by Christ there are many people eager to help you discern what He wants you to do and to make the right decision for your future. Above all, Vocation Boom! wants to remind you that if you are pondering what God wants for your life, you are not alone in trying to figure it out.

And if you still really have a hard time picturing yourself a priest, please read my next blog. You will meet the priest I quoted above, a man who was mocked as the most unlikely candidate for holy orders in his entire country. All he did was become a saint and the patron for all priests.

See you next month.

Matthew E. Bunson, M.Div., D.Min.