Moonbase

Since I’m talking so much about priests today, I can’t help but note that today is the feast of Saint John Vianney (1786-1859), patron saint of priests.

The start of his career as a priest was rather unremarkable. After squeaking through seminary, barely literate in Latin, his bishop assigned him the obscure little French town of Ars, where presumably he couldn’t do too much damage.

Vianney, however, proved to have profound gifts for the exercise of his new role. In the space of decades, he gained a world-wide reputation for his holiness, uncanny perception, and profound spiritual guidance. Beseiged by visitors in his little church, he spent 18-hour days hearing confessions. France would have to adjust its rail schedules around the waves of visitors, and eventually (according to the Wikipedia article) had to build a dedicated rail line from Lyons.

Enduring punishing waves of visitors, supernatural attacks, ill health, and a brutally ascetic lifestyle, he had a reputation for profound patience in the face of it all. He was canonized in 1925, and today his unusually well-preserved body (wearing a death mask), is on display above the altar in his little church, now mushroomed into a basillica.

Most priests don’t live quite so eventfully, of course. But it is a grave and awesome responsibility. Frankly, I find the suggestions by (mostly non-Catholic) friends that I might make a good priest more than a little terrifying. :)