The life of St. John Vianney, also known as the Curé d'Ars (priest of Ars), is marked by boundless humility and obedience to God. When this simple French priest was assigned in 1818 to the parish of Ars, a town containing barely 250 inhabitants, few would have guessed that it would lead to his international recognition. Disturbed by the religious ignorance and indifference brought about by the French Revolution and openly displayed by his congregation, John Vianney began work in his parish that quickly flowered into a radical spiritual transformation of the community and its surrounding inhabitants. By 1827 he was receiving visitors from all over France and beyond, sometimes spending up to sixteen hours a day in the confessional. Despite his success in Ars, Vianney longed for a contemplative life free from his public obligations; but even though he fled from these several times, he always returned to Ars, where he died in 1859. Henri Ghéon's portrayal of this saint is thoroughly engaging while avoiding being overly sentimental; he presents a man of great holiness and inner turmoil, but most of all, of dedication to his parish and community.

Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, T.O.S.F., (1786 – 1859), was a French parish priest who is better known as the Curé d'Ars. He became internationally notable for his priestly and pastoral work in his parish because of the radical spiritual transformation of the community and its surroundings. He is venerated in the Catholic Church as a saint and as the patron saint of all priests.

Sermons of St. John Vianney St. Jean-Marie Vianney was born in 1786 at Dardilly, France. After being drafted, leaving the army, and opening a school for village schoolchildren, he joined the minor seminary of Verrieres in 1812 and was ordained a priest three years afterward. While famously serving as cure of the town of Ars, he saw to it that his parishioners understood their evil pastimes, spending long hours in the confessional at a time. St. Vianney died at Ars-sur-Formans, France, in 1859, and was declared a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1925. His feast day is celebrated on August 4.

Catholic wisdom stated in a simple, sublime, penetrating way. His sage counsel on 36 important topics. Probably the most persuasive exhortation ever urging us to renounce sin.

Saint Jean-Baptiste Marie Vianney, known affectionately as The Curé d'Ars, was a peasant priest. In the aftermath of the French Revolution and Napoleonic rule, in a time of anti-clericalism and social and economic disarray, he was appointed parish priest of the obscure and dispirited village of Ars. Over the next forty years, he was the agent of a complete spiritual, social, and material reform of his parish, which became a joyful refuge and a place of pilgrimage. Men and women would travel for weeks simply to confess before the humble and holy man. His particular devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is manifest in this book of twenty-seven meditations, which had its first English edition two years before his canonization in 1925. St. John is now celebrated as the patron of parish priests.

St. John Vianney, the Cure d'Ars, though he was not thought competent to preach or hear confessions, became one of the greatest preachers and confessors of his age. The 19th century was one of optimism for French Catholicism, but, following the horrors of the French Revolution, there was also a feeling of lukewarmness and an approach to the moral life that felt sin could not be all that bad. St. John Vianney, on the other hand, would not suffer to see souls be damned for lukewarmness. His preaching permeates with the love of God first and foremost, and clear prescriptions for leading his flock to heaven. Reprinted exactly from the 1901 Wagner edition and unabridged, the Sermons of the Cure d'Ars are arranged for every Sunday of the year according to the 1962 Calendar, as well as the principal feasts of the year as they were in his own time.