Like every year, we remember the arrival of Saint Jean-Marie Vianney in Ars on February 13, 1818. This is an opportunity to pray to ask the Lord to continue to send us the vocations of holy priests that we need to be trained to convert. It turns out, very providentially, that the gospel meditated on during the vocations walk is a story of the multiplication of the loaves (Mark 8, 1-10). Our generation is very similar to that great crowd of people who risk fainting on the way if they are sent away fasting, because they are in the desert and have nothing to eat. Jesus then shows compassion, because he is sent by the Father so that we have life in abundance (John 10:1-10). Notice carefully what Jesus does. He begins by inviting us to take note of the lack by emphasizing both the absence of food for the crowd and our radical incapacity to feed it. What can we do with seven loaves and a few small fish to satisfy 4,000 men? Let’s dare to tell the truth! Let us therefore take note that we are in total destitution. On the one hand, our society is completely disoriented. She lost all her bearings. On the other hand, faced with this dramatic situation, our Church is stripped of everything: we only have small numbers of Christians at Sunday masses; we lack consecrated persons and priests; our material resources continue to melt like snow in the sun, while our financial burdens continue to increase, like everywhere. And the sexual abuse scandals made us lose what little audience we had left in society. In short, we are poor before God and before our fellow human beings! But the self-emptying that we are experiencing actually constitutes a particular grace for our time. Because by being devoid of everything, we are more configured to Jesus in the mystery of his Incarnation, his Passion and his death. Deprived, we are therefore forced to make a decisive choice. Either we close in on ourselves, we give in to fear and we give in to revolt and despair. Either we trust Jesus, and we decide to truly follow him, as he himself resolutely trusted his Father when he was condemned and crucified. Instead of trying to resolve things by ourselves, in short, to react in a worldly way, in a voluntary way, by inventing entirely human solutions, we must obey in faith what the Master asks of us. It is up to us to let him do so, because it is he and he alone who is Savior. Here in Ars, we benefit from the edifying testimony of Saint Jean-Marie Vianney. His era certainly had nothing to envy of ours, because the spiritual situation was no better 200 years ago. And Jean-Marie Vianney was just as helpless as us to evangelize a population far from God and heading towards its ruin. But he obeyed and did humbly and simply what was asked of him: “There is not much love of God in this village. You will put some! “. He gave what little he could with his limited means and God did the rest! There was no shortage of miracles and the work of God unfolded beyond all anticipation. She continues to bear fruit of mercy for all those who frequent the Sanctuary of Ars. It is like the seven full baskets which remain after the 4,000 men have been satisfied. If we want vocations, let’s start by converting! Let’s take the Gospel more seriously! Let us follow Jesus more resolutely, obey God with all our hearts. In short, let us take the path of holiness; and then, like Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, we will witness a beautiful fertility, in a way that we do not suspect.