Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Matthew (9: 35-10:1) in which Jesus says to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Afterwards, Fr Paul shares a little about St John Vianney whose feast day we celebrate today.

Fr Paul says John was born in 1786 and was the son of a peasant farmer. It took St John quite a while to become a priest but he was eventually ordained on account of his devoutness rather than any academic achievement or signs of promise.

In 1818 he was sent to be the parish priest of Ars-en-Dombes, an isolated village some distance from Lyon, and remained there for the rest of his life because his parishioners would not let him leave. He was a noted preacher, and a celebrated confessor: such was his fame, and his reputation for insight into his penitents’ souls and their futures, that he had to spend up to eighteen hours a day in the confessional.

The tens of thousands of people who came to visit this obscure parish priest turned Ars into a place of pilgrimage.

The French State recognised his eminence by awarding him the medal of the Légion d’Honneur in 1848, and he sold it and gave the money to the poor.

He died in 1859 and is the Patron Saint of Parish Priests.

So today, Fr Paul invites us to ask ‘St John Vianney… Pray for us’