Today is SAN GIOVANNI MARIA VIANNEY. Intercessory prayer to obtain a grace

Lord Jesus, guide and shepherd of your people, you called St. John Mary Vianney, curate of Ars, as your servant into the Church. Be blessed for the sanctity of his life and the admirable fruitfulness of his ministry. With his perseverance he overcame all obstacles in the path of the priesthood.
Authentic priest, he drew from the Eucharistic Celebration and from silent adoration the ardor of his pastoral charity and the vitality of his apostolic zeal.
Through his intercession:
Touch the hearts of young people to find the impetus in their example of life to follow you with the same courage, without looking back.
Renew the hearts of priests so that they give themselves with fervor and depth and know how to base the unity of their communities on the Eucharist, forgiveness and mutual love.
Fortify Christian families to support those children whom you have called.
Also today, Lord, send workers to your harvest, so that the evangelical challenge of our time may be accepted. There are many young people who know how to make their life a "I love you" in the service of their brothers, just like Saint John Mary Vianney.
Hear us, O Lord, Shepherd for eternity.
Amen.

Giovanni Maria (Jean-Marie, in French) Vianney, fourth of six children, was born in Dardilly on May 8, 1786, to Mathieu and Marie Béluse. His was a peasant family of fair conditions, with a solid Christian tradition, prodigal in works of charity.
His studies were a disaster, and not only for the French Revolution ...: he is not able to do it with Latin, he cannot argue or preach ... To make him a priest it took the tenacity of Abbé Charles Balley, parish priest of Ecully, near Lyon: he taught him in the parsonage, started him at the seminary, welcomed him back when he was suspended from his studies and, after another period of preparation, made him ordain a priest in Grenoble on August 13, 1815, at 29 years, while the British bring Napoleon prisoner to Saint Helena.

Giovanni Maria Vianney, just a priest, returns to Ecully as vicar of Abbé Balley. He remained there for a little over two years, until his protector's death on 16 December 1817. Then they send him near Bourg-en-Bresse, to Ars, a village with less than three hundred inhabitants, which will become a parish only in 1821 : few people, dazed by 25 years of upheaval.
The curate of Ars is among these people, with a rigorously ill-accepted rigor, with his unpreparedness, tormented by feeling incapable. An air of failure, anguish, the desire to leave ... but after a few years people from all over come to Ars: almost pilgrimages. They come for him, known in other parishes where he goes to help or to replace parish priests, especially in confessions. Confessions: that's why they come. This curate derided by other priests, and also reported to the bishop for the "oddities" and "unrest", is forced to stay in the confessional for longer (10 and more hours a day).

And now he also listens to the city professional, the official, the authoritative people, called to Ars by his extraordinary talents in orienting and comforting, attracted by the reasons he can offer to hope, by the changes that his tiny speech can trigger. Here one could speak of success, of revenge by the curate of Ars, and of his triumphant realization. Instead he continues to believe himself unworthy and incapable, tries twice to escape and then has to return to Ars, because they are waiting for him in church, who have also come from afar.

Always mass, always confessions, until the very hot summer of 1859, when he can no longer go to the church full of people because he is dying. He pays the doctor telling him not to come anymore: the treatment is now useless, and in fact he reaches the Father on August 4th.
Announced his death, "trains and private cars are no longer enough," wrote a witness. After the funeral his body is still exposed in the church for ten days and ten nights.

St. Pius X (Giuseppe Sarto, 1903-1914) proclaimed him Blessed on January 8, 1905: he was canonized on May 31, 1925 by Pope Pius XI (Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, 1922-1939), who in 1929 also declared patron of parish priests.

On the centenary of his death, on August 1, 1959, St. John XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, 1958-1963), dedicated an encyclical to him: "Sacerdotii nostra Primordia" pointing to him as a model of the priests: "To speak of St. John Mary Vianney is to recall figure of an extraordinarily mortified priest, who, for the love of God and for the conversion of sinners, deprived himself of nourishment and sleep, imposed rude disciplines and practiced above all the renunciation of himself in a heroic degree. If it is true that it is not generally required of the faithful to follow this exceptional path, nevertheless Divine Providence has provided that in the Church there were never pastors of souls who, moved by the Holy Spirit, do not hesitate to set out on this path, since they are such men especially that they work miracles of conversions ... »

Saint John Paul II (Karol Józef Wojtyła, 1978-2005), was a great admirer and devotee of the holy curate of Ars (see Gift and Mystery, LEV, Vatican City, 1996 - pages 65-66).
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his death, a "Priest Year" was proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Alois Ratzinger) dedicated to his figure, of which, below, an extract of the speech to the participants in the plenary of the congregation for the clergy (consistory hall Monday, March 16, 2009): «Precisely to encourage this tension of priests towards spiritual perfection on which the effectiveness of their ministry depends above all, I have decided to announce a special" Year for Priests ", which will go from June 19th to June 19th 2010. The 150th anniversary of the death of the Holy Curé of Ars, Giovanni Maria Vianney, is a true example of a Shepherd at the service of the flock of Christ ... »