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

"14 THE CURrf OF ARS.cence of his childhood, that he has been heard to say :knew nothing ^ evil till I learned to know it in the confessional."His own first confession, from the impossibility at thattime of approaching the Sacraments, was not made till hewas eleven years old. The fury of the revolutionary stormhad by that time in some measure abated ; some of theproscribed priests had reappeared, and together with themsome pious Sisters of the Order of St. Charles, who laboured under their direction in the neighbouring parish ofEcully to prepare the children of the few faithful familieswho pressed around them for confession. Jean Marie wassent to the house of his grandfather at Ecully, that hemight be at hand to receive their instructions. Fromtheir hands the aspirants for first Communion passed intothose of the missionary priests, who assembled them, nowin one house, now in another, and always at night, to eludethe vigilance of the republican police. We have no precise information as to the circumstances attending thefirst Communion of the saintly boy. It took place, in allprobability, in the year 1799, in the house of the Comtede Pingeon. Though the first heat of persecution hadthen passed away, so unquietstill was the state of thetimes, that the Cure of Ars used to tell of the loadedwagons of hay, which were drawn up against the door ofthe barn which served as a chapel, to screen the worshipers from malicious observation. The peculiar circumstances which make it difficult now to find authentic records of the acts of religion solemnised in those dark days,must have impressed them the more deeply upon thehearts of the worshipers. No outward circumstances, indeed, were needed to enhance the thrill of awful delightwith which, for the first time, Jean Marie Vianney must]