As I get older, every year seems to pass by more quickly. It seems like yesterday that Pope Benedict XVI inaugurated a “Year of St. Paul,” and now it’s already over.

Did you and I profit by it? I would like to think so. Using some of the many resources published during the past year, I was able to focus on the life and teaching of the great Apostle. However, the high point for me was the visit I made in Rome to St. Paul’s Basilica and tomb when I was there on business last February. It was an occasion for me to ask St. Paul to help me be a better bishop and to intercede for our Diocese of Toledo.

Since ancient times, Christianity has celebrated special commemorations, anniversaries and feasts, pilgrimages and processions. God speaks and acts in history. In Jesus Christ, God was born in time. Our faith is not about abstract ideas, but is very concretely manifested in persons and places, in personal relations in this world and the next, all made alive in the Risen Christ. For us, a person like St. Paul is not at all dead, and the places associated with him have a spiritual significance.

This year, from June 2009 to June 2010, the Holy Father is inviting us to look in another direction by celebrating a “Year for Priests.”

2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. His remarkable life illustrates the way God chooses the “nobodies” of this world to confound the world and to accomplish great things. The circumstances of his ministry also give us hope for meeting the pastoral challenges of today.

He was born a shepherd’s son in 1786 in France, and grew up amid the chaos of the French Revolution, which left the Church persecuted and in disarray. He had no aptitude for learning and was ordained a priest having met only a minimum academic standard. In 1818 he was named pastor of Ars, a small remote parish that was “almost godless.” There he effected a wondrous transformation by the Christian education of his people in the ways of faith, by prayer centered on the Mass and eucharistic adoration, by the sacrament of penance, and by the offering of their personal sufferings and mortifications in reparation for sin.

Thanks to this transformation, due in no small part to John Vianney’s own ceaseless prayer, fasting and mortification, thousands of people from throughout France were eventually drawn to Ars, especially for the sacrament of penance. Toward the end of his life he spent 16 to 18 hours a day in the confessional. He had the gift of reading souls, much like another great confessor of the last century, St. Pio of Pietralcina.

Like so many saints, John Vianney was criticized and attacked by some within the Church, so much so that the bishop had to conduct an inquiry that totally vindicated him. He also suffered diabolical attacks throughout his life, much like St. Pio. It would seem that nothing arouses the devil’s rage as much as a great confessor.

After 30 years of heroic priestly ministry in Ars, St. John died exactly 150 years ago this month, on Aug. 4, 1859. He was canonized a saint in 1925. In using the anniversary of his death to proclaim a “Year for Priests,” Pope Benedict’s goal is to “deepen the commitment of all priests to interior renewal for the sake of a stronger and more incisive witness to the Gospel in today’s world.”

“Interior renewal” says it all. It was not by intellectual prowess or argument, not by worldly ways or natural gifts that John Vianney succeeded in his mission beyond anyone’s wildest imagining. Rather, it was by his interior life of prayer, fasting and heroic virtue that he became a vessel of divine favor, an instrument of God’s power, for the salvation of the world.

“Interior renewal” is not a challenge for priests alone. Without an interior life it is not possible for us to come close to God, and there is no interior life without spiritual discipline. Spirituality can be defined, simply and basically, as an individual’s lifelong response, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to Christ’s ongoing invitation to repent and believe the Gospel. It expresses itself in an ever deepening communion of faith, hope and love within the Church, and an ever more faithful witness in the world to Christ and the truths of the Gospel.

As our diocese prepares for an evangelization effort this coming fall, we would do well to heed the prayer that St. John Vianney offered upon his arrival in Ars, where religious practice was in a sorry state. “Lord,” he prayed, “grant me the conversion of my parish. I am willing to suffer whatever you wish, for my entire life.”

How precious are the souls of our neighbors to us, the clergy, religious and laity of today? How willing are you and I to “fast and pray” that Christ will be known and loved by all, for their salvation and the salvation of the world? This is part of the interior renewal to which the Holy Father is calling us through the life and witness of St. John Vianney.

I know you join me in praying for this to happen in our diocese, so that we too can say: “To him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine, by the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Eph 3:20)

+ Most Reverend Leonard P. Blair
Bishop of Toledo