Life of St John Vianney.pdf - the Catholic Kingdom!

""4 THE CURE OP ARS-Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney was born at Dardilly, avillage not far from Lyons, where his humble forefathershad dwelt formany generations. Their simple farmhouse,with its little courtyard bsfore it, stands near the entranceof the village, amid scenery of singular beauty, a succession of vineyards, meadows, and orchards, intersectedby clear streams, broken by deep valleys,by hanging woods. All the scenes surroundingand shadowedhis in"fancy were lovely to look upon, and the moral and spiritualaspect of his home was no less fair. It was the dwellingplace,"says the Abbe Monnin, of one of those honestfamilies of farmers, in which have been perpetuated, fromage to age, the traditions of labour and of prayer, andwhence have sprung daring the last fifty years the greaternumber of our priests, our soldiers, and our religious."The house of the Vianneys had been known from timeimmemorial as the home of the poor, the well-known resort of all the wandering beggars, who were accustomedto seek and find a nightly shelter beneath its hospitableroof. An Apostle tells us that they who thus welcomethe poor of Christ have entertained angels unawares ;andsuch a one crossed the threshold of the Vianneys, when,on a sultry July day of the year 1770, Benedict JosephLabre came to ask a night s lodging among the mendicants who daily crowded the courtyard. There was nothingin the outward aspect of the wanderer to point out to thegood farmer that he was harbouring one whose place wasto be hereafter on the altars of the Church; but who shallsay what influence the prayer which repaid his simplehospitality may have had upon the future sanctity of thechild, who was to make his own humble name illustrious?It was a saying of the Cure of Ars, that wherever thesaints pass, God passes with them."May not his own