The inauguration was conducted with a ceremony befitting the occasion. Monseigneur de Langabrie, Bishop of Belley, a prelate as remarkable for the urbanity of his manners as his superior mind, came himself to preside over the occasion. A great admirer and friend of the Curé d'Ars, he wished to give to his memory some proof of his affection. More than a hundred priests of neighboring parishes accompanying him, presented an imposing cortége. Quietly, calmly, and with recollection, they rendered homage to the remembrance and virtues of a saint. The secular and official element was represented by the Comte de Carets, a true Christian gentleman, and for thirty years the friend of the Curé d'Ars. A numerous crowd from all the neighboring country testified by repeated manifestations the ardor of its faith and sentiment. The church of Ars, enlarged by a talented architect, was entirely too small for all this wealth of offering.
The Mass was celebrated with pomp; at the gospel the Abbé Ozanam, vicar-general, mounted the pulpit, and described the most striking points of physiognomy of the Curé d' Ars. Inspired by his text from St. Paul, he showed how God always employed the same means to act upon and govern the earth; weakness to confound strength, humility to confound pride, and littleness to confound grandeur; all that is despicable in the eyes of man to confound all that is powerful and worthy his respect. A staff in the hands of an old man is sufficient for God, and well represents the instruments he sometimes employs to rule the world. The Curé d'Ars was of obscure parentage; the Curé d'Ars was humble, ignorant, illiterate, according to the world, without power, without birth, without prestige. He seems of still less repute, in that before God he so completely annihilated himself. Son of a poor farmer, with difficulty he reached the seminary, with difficulty he staid there, with difficulty he attained the different grades. Everywhere, always, the weakness of his faculties proved the signal of distrust from his superiors, of contempt from his equals. He knew but one thing, to love, to pray, to humble himself—above all to humble himself. The less he felt himself, the less he made himself; the more he was despised, the more he despised himself. But wait! the hand of God appeared, and the ordinary movement of the see-saw was reproduced. The lower the world placed him at one end, the higher God uplifted him at the other, and he became the instrument God always uses for his great works—an instrument lowly yet powerful, and that confounds, attracts, and subjugates the whole world. This humble priest—powerless, lacking ability, and awkward in appearance—saw millions of men, great and small, wise and ignorant, known and unknown, flock from all corners of the earth to hear his word, see his countenance, listen to his advice, feast on his holy expressions—to touch his vestments. He will govern consciences and hearts; he will read their souls, enlighten them, touch them. He will predict the future, will overcome nature, and subject to his will the world of mind and the world of matter. … Admirable effect of humility which produces sanctity! The most humble shall become the most celebrated, and his name resound from pole to pole. He shall agitate multitudes, and no living man can hear him without thrilling with love or anger. His image will provoke enthusiasm. The world will prostrate itself before it and kiss its very traces; and when other images, other glorified, other renowned conquerors, poets, legislators, politicians, are only a remembrance, a vain sound which cannot thrill a single human fibre, the name of the obscure, the despised Curé d'Ars will radiate in an ever new orbit of splendor, and produce emotions and effects ever new in millions of hearts. Strange consequence! Contrast truly striking; which shows that Catholicism by a brilliant overthrow of events is alone heard to give glory and immortality!
After the Mass, monseigneur was heard in his turn, and related the efforts made at Rome to obtain the canonization of the defunct whose memory was then and there celebrated. He spoke of the hope which he cherished to see ere long the Curé d'Ars and his image among the glorified ones, and placed on those altars where public veneration had already given them a place.
VII.
After the ceremony was over, the priests and some of the pilgrims coming to the solemnity united in an old-fashioned feast at the house of one of the missionaries.
The day was passed in recalling the virtues and actions of the saint, while the crowd continued its homage and demonstrations.
Nothing could be more striking than the appearance of the village of Ars during this fête. The spectator goes backward several centuries; he lives in the earliest age; legend becomes reality in his eyes, and the natural world is entirely forgotten in the consciousness of the supernatural that surrounds him. M. Renan speaks somewhere with contempt of times and populations for whom the natural and supernatural have no exact limit. Ars presents every day, and especially those days in which the saint is honored, the same character. The natural and supernatural touch and mingle. The multitude kneels, it intercedes, it asks; and sometimes, in the simplest manner, extraordinary favors are granted, which strike with wonder the Christians of our day, so much less habituated than others to the manifestations of the immaterial world. The church is always full; the tomb of the good pastor, recognizable by a black slab, covered perpetually by an eager crowd. Some are kneeling, others standing awaiting their turn, and prostrating themselves as soon as a vacant place offers itself. They dispute a corner of the tomb of the Curé d'Ars, as during his life they disputed a corner of his confessional or an end of his cassock. All pray, some weep, others kiss the funereal marble. Mothers bring their sickly children, and rest them on the slab. Paralytics and the lame take their places. Each one touches the tomb with his cross, his medals, or his beads, and carries it away persuaded of its renewed efficacy. Every object, every part of the church, bears the trace of what I may call a pious vandalism. The confessional, the pulpit in which the holy priest passed nearly all his life, are cut in a thousand places. Each one has chipped the wood to carry off a relic.
Outside of the church the eagerness and veneration are no less. The places frequented by the defunct are pointed out, and into the old presbytery they hurry and almost smother each other on the stairs. One has to pause on his way a quarter of an hour sometimes before reaching the bedroom of the Curé d'Ars. The chamber has been barricaded, and provided with an opening in the wall, that it may escape the general devastation. The door is armed with a strong grating and plated with iron. Without such precaution all would have been long since broken open, demolished, and carried away. As it is, there is more than one hole in the wood-work, and even the walls are broken in, in places. It is said that workmen armed with crow-bars have attempted to throw down the wall. The shrubs and herbaceous plants in the court-yard are spoiled incessantly; as if the visitors, unable to molest the walls, revenge themselves on the flowers and verdure. But they cannot penetrate into the chamber and are forced to stay behind the barricade. They succeed each other, as on some grand occasion of public curiosity in Paris, when the crowd is unusually large. From the kind of vestibule which forms the opening in the wall the visitor can take in the whole apartment, if not entirely at his ease, on account of the pressure of the crowd, at least without losing any detail. Everything remains as it did during the life of the Curé d'Ars. Here is the bed, sheltered under its green tapestry, a present from the Comte de Carets, in place of another bed which was burned under extraordinary circumstances. Here is the wooden chimney where the priest came each day—after spending from sixteen to eighteen hours in the confessional—to revive his exhausted body by the still living flame of a simple branch. The table is always set, as if it awaited its old companion. An earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon, a little pitcher, also of earth, which held the milk, an earthen plate, and a coarse linen napkin; and nothing more. This modest service, and the necessarily modest repast it supposes, had sustained, for nearly forty years, the most valiant and fruitful life of the age. Man lives not by bread alone; this man lived almost without it; a little milk sufficed him, and on this he existed nearly all his life—a trait not less astonishing than the power and energy with which this milk seemed to inspire him. Two oaken chests, presented also by pious persons, some sacred engravings, enough books to fill the simple shelves, two or three straw chairs, complete the furniture of this poor chamber, as popular today as the apartments of the Louvre or the Museum of Sovereigns. A niche in the wall, covered with a glazed partition, preserves and exposes to the piety of the pilgrims the cassock and cap of the poor priest.
The presbytery is no longer inhabited. No one has been reported, or felt himself, sufficiently worthy to occupy it after its last possessor. There is no longer a Curé d'Ars, there never will be a Curé d'Ars—no one feeling strong enough to struggle with such a remembrance, nor bear the legendary title. The missionaries who during his lifetime were established near the presbytery, do the duties of the parish and suffice for the pilgrims.