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"I will tell you the way of Heaven," he replied to the little pastor who had shown him the way he led to Ars, that is to say, I will help you become a saint.
He invites everyone to be sanctified by God, to receive the means offered to him for this union with God, which begins here and lasts forever eternity.
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Inner Life
Despite the constant inflow of crowds who bothered him in every way, nothing was able to disturb his inner life. He said, "How I would lose and not find myself in God."
His abandonment to the divine will was unconditional, and even in the midst of his laborious work of his ministry, he always remained gathered when he was performing pious exercises.
It was driven by zeal and not by natural inclinations, and at no time of the day was ever disturbed the freedom of spirit, the sweetness of character, the reflection of inner peace. At any time, both at the pulpit, or in the confessional, or among the various occupations of his ministry, he raised his heart to God.
Prayer was for him the sweet and gentle consolation of the soul and the usual shelter. "It's like a scented rose, he said; The more you pray the more you would like to pray. Time is not long when you pray".
"Don Vianney has always and earnestly desired in his life the solitude to contemplate the things of God. Now surrounded by the crowd, his thought returned to the remembrances of youth, spent in the solitude of the fields, and then his soul had nothing to groan: " How happy I was, I did not have as many occupations as I did now and prayed to God as it pleased. I believe my vocation was to remain a shepherd all my life."
It was only in the early years of his ministry that he had been able to satisfy the burning desire for prayer and had come to that higher grade of prayer, which is called a prayer of simplicity, "in which intuition establishes much of reasoning and feelings are reduced to the essentials, reaching almost a single expression."
Don Vianney was always in the church, kneeling, and praying without any book, because his prayer had become a heartbeat. All her effort was stretched out in his desire to be intimately united with God, as soon as his life had become a constant prayer. He never talked of sin and sinner without pouring abundant tears. When he made the Way of the Cross, his word was extinct by sobbing, and often even when he handed over Holy Communion, the tears dropped copiously.
When the pilgrims did not permit him to give long time to prayer, he followed the practice of choosing a meditation topic in the morning, which he was aware of in all the actions of the day.
At every moment of the day his thoughts ran into some of the life of Our Lord, the Holy Virgin and the Saints, with a strong preference for the painful mysteries, followed the Redeemer at the various stations, to Calvary, with his wet eyes Tears of compassion for the different scenes of the Passion.
As he crossed the crowd he was so rich in his thoughts that he only seemed. His life was the integral realization of this deep thought, born of his reflection: "Faith is to speak to God as to a man."
Gradually the years and the heroic fatigue bent his shoulders and wrinkles on his face, but his spirit was always young, almost did not know the season of unceasing renewal. Again, with a poetic word, he had said a whole thought: "In the soul united to God, it is always spring."
The feeling of the presence of God was the cause of ineffable sweetness, expressed in real transports of joy. The Saint did not want these consolations for themselves. "When you have no consolations," he said one day, "he serves God for himself; When you have consolations, you are tempted to serve Him by interest."
However, these intimate sweetness helped him to live and give him courage, also because he well knew that, admitted to his Master's familiar intimacy, he could have obtained more favors.
Don Vianney had completely put his life into God's hands, erased all his desires, and worked extensively and exclusively to convert souls and bring them into eternal happiness. Despite his incredible successes, there was never any excuse for ostentation, no exclamation, no sigh or impatient exaggeration, but always his unmistakable smile, ultimately, that he would never forget whoever saw it once flourished on his lips.
