It's the memorial of St. John Vianney. Because I'm pressed for time this morning, I present an excerpt from a work I abandoned awhile back. It's a bit (just a wee bit!) more serious than normal TDE fare, but it'll have to do:
I think it's safe to say that John Vianney was not an intelligent man and may have had an intellectual quotient lower than average. While a seminarian at age 19, the other students (adolescent boys) giggled at his intellectual inability and grew frustrated when he delayed lessons with his slowness. He couldn't meet the intellectual requirements for becoming a priest, even though the requirements were relaxed at that time in order to alleviate a priest shortage following the Napoleanic Wars. He failed his examinations at major seminary and was asked to leave. Given another chance and a vigorous 3-month tutorial by a learned friend, he failed again. He finally passed, after being allowed to take the exam in special surroundings (a relaxed atmosphere, so he wouldn't get too flustered).
But he was also a simple person. As a boy, he worked hard for his father with no thought–much less complaining–about the difficult labor. As a 19-year-old seminarian, John kneeled at the feet of a 12-year-old fellow student who became exasperated with him, and asked the boy to forgive his slowness. As a new parish priest, he declined the help of a household servant. As pastor, he showed little, if any, regard for his own well-being, opting to pray constantly for the salvation of his parishioners' souls and listening to confessions for over eight hours a day. He left his parish only twice during his 29-year stint as pastor of Ars, and spent one of the stints caring for the souls of hundreds of pilgrims who found him as he tried to take a brief, well-merited break from his duties.
His simple self-effacement was combined with a penetrating wisdom (actually, if I'm right about this, his self-effacement resulted in a penetrating wisdom). This was apparent in his early years at the seminary, when, although he couldn't articulate the lessons well, a teacher said his application of the lessons was superb. As Pastor at Ars, his constant teaching (he is known as the man who out-talked the Devil) converted a spiritually-moribund village into a sphere of piety. Today, he is widely quoted–his words are fetched by priests hoping to give insight and assembled by publishers hoping to sell wisdom.
He was able to pass along truths in words that the simplest person can understand–strong evidence of deep understanding. He did not, for instance, need a lengthy exegesis to explain the philosophy of death and justice (embodied in the Greek word Thanatos). He merely told listeners, “To die well we must live well.” He did not need to understand psychology to note that the “way to destroy bad habits is by watchfulness and by doing often those things which are the opposite to one's besetting sins.” He did not need to study and read the Stoics, Plato and Aristotle to understand the oneness of virtue: “It is only the first step which is hard in the way of abnegation. When we are once fairly entered upon it, all goes smoothly; and when we have this virtue, we have every other.” He understood the principal of connaturality (which says that sin muddles thinking) so well that he could summarize it for his rowdy parishioners as “It is just those who have the least fear of God and his judgments in their hearts that have nothing but pleasure in their heads.” The examples of his simple wisdom could go on and on.
The reason for the combination of simplicity and wisdom is not easy to understand. It lies in a theological problem that starts with the book of Genesis. But the problem has an explanation and its explanation helps reveal the importance of spiritual existentialism.
The book of Genesis tells us that this world is God's creation. As a result, the world is related to God and, at some level, reflects Him, just as this book, at some level, reflects my personality. This world bears some likeness to God, or, to use the terminology of theologians, this world is “analogous” to God. This is especially true of humans, creatures made in His image.
It is crucial to understand that humans are analogous to God in their existence, not through their essences. Essences are characteristics that give form to a thing. If a person is described as six-feet tall, ill-tempered, quick-witted, and a good typist, his existence is not described at all; only his characteristics are described. It would be ridiculous to attribute these characteristics to God through analogy.
Moreover, our essences can cloud our existence to the extent their forms, like greed and ambition, emanate from excessive self-regard. A spiritual existentialist like John Vianney lives a life that strips away the forms. When a person stops thinking about himself–when he starts to just exist, to just look out–he sheds the various forms that gratify the self because he's not thinking about himself. As a person sheds the forms and returns to the simple act of existence, he becomes more analogous to God, which–because God is the source of all things and the font of wisdom–tends to make the person wiser.
A radical spiritual existentialist like John Vianney who lives a daily life of simplicity tends to cultivate deep understanding because he lives a life as analogous to God as possible. That simple life inevitably issues forth in a stream of wisdom, regardless of earthly limitations or characteristics because wisdom issues from being, not characteristics. Raw intelligence becomes a secondary concern and wisdom can shine forth in an otherwise-unintelligent person.
