Mass for the Year of the Priest: Bishop Duffy’s Homily Lough Derg

Posted on 10. Aug, 2009

Mass for the Year of the Priest on the feast of St John Mary Vianney,
St Patrick’s Purgatory, Lough Derg.

Homily by Bishop Joseph Duffy
4 August 2009

Today we celebrate the feast of St John Mary Vianney, better known as the Curé of Ars, the French parish priest who was made patron of all priests earlier this year by Pope Benedict.  Many of you will be aware that this year, the 150th since his death in 1859, has also been declared the Year of the Priest.  I wish to include in this celebration the intentions of St Joseph’s Young Priests Society who are active in many of our parishes and devote themselves to prayer for priests and financial support for those preparing to be priests.  It’s an opportunity for me to thank them for their tireless dedication to this worthy cause over many years.
My personal memory of Ars in the east of France goes back to the year 1986 when the late Pope John Paul made a pastoral visit there and I was fortunate enough to represent the Irish Bishops. I recall having fallen asleep on the long bus ride from Lyons to Ars which set out at 5 am.  On arrival, we gathered into a huge tent, which must have held at least 5,000 clergy, as the Basilica at Ars was unable to cope. There was a long prayer service from 9.30 until noon, led by the Pope himself.  I remember thinking his words were memorable, chosen carefully to give maximum confidence to a somewhat demoralised French clergy and to encourage priestly vocations. This was the place where John Vianney had preached and heard the confessions of the thousands of pilgrims who flocked there.  This was where he died at the age of 73 after a ministry of 41 years.
The parish of Ars, we are told, numbered 230 people when he arrived.  There was a lot of indifference and very little religious practice among the men.  The Bishop had warned him: “There is not much love of God in that parish; you will have to put some there.” In the single year before he died, it is said that 80,000 people came to Ars from all over France and abroad.  They often waited for days to see him, to go to confession to him.  What brought them was not mere curiosity, not even the miracles and extraordinary cures associated with him.  It was more the awareness of meeting a saint, meeting a man who was close to God, who was remarkable for his humility in the midst of popular acclaim, and most of all who was intuitive in responding to the inner needs of people and in freeing them from their burdens.  He was a man with no reputation whatever for learning, he appeared poor, weak, and defenceless, and yet he has now been chosen as a model for the priests of the entire world.   Pope John Paul reflected that day in Ars:  Is there not a sign of hope here for pastors today who are suffering from a kind of spiritual desert?
The Curé of Ars is most renowned as a confessor, as a man who believed in the life-giving power of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  He often heard confessions for ten to fifteen hours a day.  Imagine the kind of ongoing martyrdom involved in this, how it must have tried to the limit his patience, his powers of concentration, and especially the strength of his convictions.  Obviously his views on the Sacrament were deeply held and are worthy of note.  There are two in particular which I want you to think about.
The first is about preparing for the Sacrament.   John Vianney saw preparation as essential, but not as a form of fussy self-torture.  What he meant was that you don’t go to Confession without some sense of the need for a relationship with God, with a God who is the fullness of love and goodness and truth.   The need for confession follows from a sense of God and all he has done for us.  Anybody who comes here with the genuine motive of pleasing God need have no worry about being well prepared. When you think about it, there is no other reason for coming here; it’s not the kind of place you drift into by accident.  That is not to say we don’t bring our baggage with us, our personal prejudices, fears and hangups, perhaps the left-overs from a personal history of guilt and anger and low self-esteem.  But everything you are doing here is a sure sign of your desire for repentance.  It’s your step of conversion, a gesture of seeking pardon on your part, a silent search for forgiveness that  prepares you for the Sacrament.  You are no different from those thousands of people who came miles to meet the Curé of Ars.
John Vianney believed in preparation for the Sacrament. He also believed – and this is the crucial point – he believed in the mercy of God.  In the privileged one- to- one meeting with the priest, it is in Confession that God’s mercy comes home to us personally.   God’s mercy is the heart of the matter. People often come to Confession with no clear idea of what they want.   Some come because they feel the need to be listened to. Others because they want advice about something.  Others have a need to be relieved of feelings of guilt. Others have no idea of the implications of what it is to be forgiven, of what it means to accept and celebrate forgiveness.  Don’t get upset if you fit into one of these categories.  But all the better if you don’t. They have their own importance but not here.  The fact that you have turned up for Confession means that you have already been touched by God’s mercy working within you.  You have already decided that you wish to be shaken free from selfishness and false unjust ways. Mercy has already come to you as a totally undeserved gift from God.  That’s the issue and you have approached the priest to have that intervention of God in your life endorsed and celebrated,   endorsed for your own benefit and peace of mind, celebrated in joy and thanksgiving.  The simple and honest statement of your sins is simply a pledge of your sincerity, a pledge of your honest desire to be changed for the better.  The priest is there to be your friend, to help you, certainly not to interrogate or to judge you, less still to shoot you down.
Let me get back to my memories of Pope John Paul’s visit to Ars all those years ago.  I said that the purpose of his mission was to boost the morale of the French bishops and priests, flagging in a secular world.  When he spoke informally after dinner that evening, he was very candid about this.  Like John Vianney he had the special gift of being able to touch lives simply by being present to people.  I remember when I was introduced to him that evening and explained I was Irish, he said ‘wonderful’.  You will agree now, in 2009, in our own country that we need his great spirit again, as we need the spirit of John Vianney.   Let us ask them both to help our bishops and priests to put their trust more fully in the mercy of God, to lift up their hearts, to lift them up to the Lord.     
End