p. 123How M. Vianney Spoke of the Saints

M. Vianney spoke often of the saints, and never without tears. His stories of them were so full of life and detail, that one would have thought he had lived in the most intimate intercourse with them. The legends in the lives of the servants of God chiefly attracted him, and he was most delighted with what was most wonderful and contrary to the ordinary course of nature. He differed entirely from those who would limit the power of God, and leave out the supernatural from the lives of the saints, for he had that courage of faith which does not fear to oppose the pride of human reason and to scandalise the impious.

“I think,” he said, “that if we had faith we should be masters of the will of God; we should lead it captive, and He would refuse us nothing.” Then he had a thousand stories to relate of the divine condescension towards the saints, one more beautiful and marvellous than the other. He spoke of a saint who was burning with desire to adore our Lord in the Sacrament of His love, during the night; he had only to go to a church, and the gates opened of their own accord to let him in.

“Another saint, being in a church, prostrate before a veiled statue of the Most Holy Virgin, was so desirous to see the face of the Mother of God, that the veil which covered the image withdrew of itself, and our Lady appeared to him smiling and beautiful.”

“A saint one day met a little shepherd crying bitterly, because one of his sheep was just dead. Touched with compassion, he recalled the poor beast to life.”

“There was once a saint who had bought a field, and the man who had sold it to him died soon after; but they pretended afterwards that he had not paid for it, and that the field did not belong to him. He was not at all disturbed, but put all his confidence in God, and answered those who troubled him, ‘Give me three days, and I will bring a witness.’ He passed that time in praying and fasting, and the third day he went to the place where the man was buried, collected his bones, and said to him, ‘Arise, come out of the tomb, and bear witness to the truth.’ … Then those bones returned to human form; the dead man arose and declared before all the bystanders that the field had been duly paid for.”

“There was a saint who wanted to build a monastery, but a mountain was in the way. He commanded it to move, and the mountain went back fifty feet.”

“Another was asked to command a great rock to change its place. ‘Will you be converted if I do it?’ said he. ‘Yes.’ He commanded the rock, and it immediately disappeared in the air.”

“See,” added the good Curé, weeping, “see how good God is to those who love Him! He works miracles for nothing when one of His friends asks Him. When man has a pure heart, he commands God as if he were His master. St. Francis of Paula heard one day that his parents were to be put to death because a man had been found assassinated in their garden, and they were accused of having killed him. Then he said, ‘O Lord, let me be near them to-morrow!’ In the night an angel transported him four hundred leagues, to the country where they were. The next day he said before every body, ‘Bring hither the man who has been killed.’ They brought him; and he said, ‘I command thee, in the name of God, to declare whether it was my parents that killed thee.’ And the man arose, and exclaimed before them all, ‘No, it was not thy parents.’ Then the saint said again to our Lord, ‘Let me be taken back to my monastery;’ and during the night the angel took him away again. He travelled in this way eight hundred leagues. The good God can refuse nothing to a pure heart.”

“St. Vincent Ferrer worked so many miracles that his Superior, fearing they might prove a snare to his humility, forbade him to exercise, without permission, the power he had received from God. One day he was in adoration before our Lord, and a workman who was repairing the church fell from the top of a scaffold. The good saint cried out to him, ‘Stop! stop! I have not the power to raise you to life again.’ Then he went in haste to get the permission he required from his Superior, who was very much surprised, and could not understand the matter; being sure that, at any rate, the permission would come too late. What was his astonishment when, following St. Vincent to the place of the accident, he saw suspended in the air the unfortunate mason whom he expected to find lying on the ground! ‘Come,’ said he to the saint, ‘do whatever you wish. Indeed, there is no way of preventing you.’”

These stories were the more attractive from the tender simplicity with which he related them. Nothing could be more touching and beautiful than the frequent tears, the angelic smiles, the innocent joyfulness that were combined in him, with thoughts so lofty, with habits of life so austere, with sacrifices so painful, and an apostolate so laborious. In an age when simplicity has almost disappeared from among men, no Christian can see without emotion and envy how this holy priest fulfilled the words of our Lord, that we should become like little children.

His cheerfulness and benevolence were never diminished by labour and suffering, but seemed, on the contrary, to increase amid the infirmities of old age. That gloomy period was replaced in him by a freshness of feeling and imagination which overcame the chills of age, like the eternal youth of the blessed. He never knew that sadness which makes the decline of life silent and melancholy, casting a shadow over the soul.

The conversations we had with him two months before his death have often recalled to our mind these words: “The last thoughts of a heart filled with the love of God are like the last rays of the sun, more intense and more brilliant on the point of disappearing.”