God is always found in the present moment, but the present moment can seem brutal at times, and that brutality can make him seem very far away.

In my late teens I began to ask the big question: God, what do you want me to do with my life? I had always thought I would get married and have a family, but in asking the question I began to sense God's call upon my life. As a young man growing up in the era I did, that meant only one thing: priesthood. And so I began to explore this path. It didn’t work out, but it helped me discover my vocation to serve the Church outside of the priesthood. 

John Vianney, known as the Curé of Ars, crossed my path around that time and has remained in my heart as one of my heroes ever since. Unable to keep up with his studies in the seminary, John Vianney scraped through to ordination only because of the intervention of a bishop attuned to the Holy Spirit who sensed in Vianney a special gift from God.

After ordination Vianney was sent to Ars, a village in rural France. It might as well have been the end of the world. That is certainly where they intended to send him, so he could do as little damage as possible. But over the next thirty years, Ars would become one of the most popular Catholic pilgrimage destinations in Europe. So many people traveled to see John Vianney that the government built a train line to carry passengers directly to Ars.

People went to encounter the Curé of Ars—to see him, to hear him preach, and to go to confession. He sat in the confessional every day for ten, twelve, fourteen hours. Day after day, year after year, he listened to the challenges and heartaches people were grappling with, and dispensed deeply personal answers to their deeply personal questions. It was an extraordinary ministry of grace and mercy.

The present moment can often be brutal, but Saint John Vianney helped people in that brutality see how God was at work. And in the years since he died, he has helped many people, including myself, discern our vocations, whether that is in or outside the priesthood.

We are surrounded by possibilities that only God can see.

What is God calling you to now? Is he clarifying your primary vocation in your heart? Does he have some temporary or secondary vocation that he wants you to dedicate yourself to at this time in your life? The danger is that we are so attached to our own plans that we cannot even see his plan.



Feast Day: August 4

Feast Day Shared By: Saints Justin and Crescenzio

Patron Saint of: Parish Priests and Confessors

Also Known As: The Curé d'Ars

Symbols: A Cassock

Canonized: May 31, 1925 

Canonized By: Pope Pius XI