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John Vianney Quotes
1786–1859 France
Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney (8 May 1786 – 4 August 1859) was a French Catholic priest who is venerated in the Catholic Church as a saint and as the patron saint of parish priests.
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52 quotes
This is how you can overcome evil with good, and this is what it means to be holy. How many souls without history in the world will one day appear rich in all the victories against evil achieved instant after instant.
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I love St. John very much because he was so pure and took such care of Our Lord and the Holy Virgin.
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He who has lost the purity of the soul is like a piece of cloth soaked in oil: you can wash and dry it, the stain will continue to bloom again; in the same way it takes a miracle to wash the impure soul.
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Take a vase full of liquor and cap it carefully: only then will you keep the liquor for as long as you want. Likewise, if after the communion you carefully guarded Our Lord in recollection, you would feel that fire devouring longer.
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The sin is the executioner of the good Lord and the murderer of the soul. It is sin that takes us from heaven to fall into hell. Nevertheless, we love him! How crazy! If we thought about it carefully, we would have such a horror of sin that we could not commit it.
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Go from continent to continent, from kingdom to kingdom, from wealth to wealth, from pleasure to pleasure: you will not find the happiness you seek. The earth and what it contains cannot satisfy an immortal soul any more than a pinch of flour, in the mouth of a hungry man, can satisfy him.
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In Paradise there is no resentment. For this reason, good and humble hearts, who endure insults and slander with joy or indifference, begin to enjoy their paradise in this world; those who hold grudges, however, are unhappy: their expressions are worried and their gaze seems to devour everything around them.
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(About the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception) How happy! I have always felt that this ray was missing from the brilliance of Catholic truths. It is a gap that could not remain in religion.
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The earth is like a bridge to cross a river: it only serves to support our feet. We are in this world, but we are not of this world, since every day we say: "Our Father who art in heaven..." To have our reward we must therefore wait to be "in our house" in the Father's house.
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Alas! It is difficult to understand how and why what an insignificant creature like us can become proud of. A dust fist as big as a walnut: this is what we will become after death. You can be very proud of that!
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My children, the saints had died to themselves to such an extent that they did not care whether others were of the same opinion or not. It's common to say, "Oh! How simple the saints were!". Yes, they were simple about the things of the world, but, about the things of God, they understood each other, indeed! Of course, they understood nothing of the things of the world! But only because they appeared to their eyes of so little importance that they paid no attention to them.
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If we did not have the Sacrament of Order, we would not have Our Lord. Who put it in the tabernacle? The priest. Who received your soul upon its entry into this world? The priest. Who feeds her to give her strength to make her pilgrimage? Always the priest. Who will prepare her to appear before God, washing her soul for the first time in the Blood of Jesus Christ? The priest, every time the priest. If the soul, then, comes to the hour of passing away, who will resurrect it, making it calm and peaceful? Once again the priest. You cannot think of any benefit of God without encountering, along with this memory, the image of the priest. If you went to confess to the Holy Virgin or an angel, would they absolve you? No. Would they give you the Body and Blood of Jesus? No. The Holy Virgin cannot send Her divine Son down to the Holy Host. Even two hundred angels could not absolve you. A priest, however simple he is, can do it. He can tell you, "Go in peace, I forgive you." What a great thing the priest is!
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