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

""The""""318 THE CURri OP ARS.rather than the body, and sum up his complaints in the*naive reproach, St. Philomena really ought to have curedthis little one at home.justification of the sinner," says St. Thomas,is the greatest of the works of God." And how oftendid He vouchsafe to work this greatest of His wondersby the means of the Cure of Ars ! It was emphaticallyhis work, his daily work, to which all the bodily curesand other miracles wrought at Ars were but secondaryand subsidiary. In the sixteen hours which he spentdaily in the confessional, he must, at a moderate computation, have heard no less than a hundred penitents, andthat for more than thirty years."It will never,"he once said himself,"be knownin this world how many sinners have found their salvation at Ars. The good God, who has need of no man,has been pleased to make use of me for this great work,though I am a very ignorant priest. If He could havelaid His hand upon another, who had greater cause tohumble himself than I, He would have made choice ofhim, and have done a hundredfold more good by hismeans."It was not by his words only thatM. Vianney madehis way to the hearts of sinners ;he moved by his tearsthose whose own eyes were dry.Father," said ahardened sinner, who had long knelt unmoved at his feet,"why do you weep so bitterly ?Alas, my friend," replied he,I "weep because youdo not weep."The following aarrative of a conversion effected by alook of the holy cure is given by the subject of it, M.Maissiat, who, after trying every phaseof unbelief andmisbelief, from Mahometanism to Mesmerism, died two