“When you were next to him, you wanted to be better,” said Guillaume Villier, a parishioner, about the Curé d’Ars. The same has been said of Mother Teresa. So something is happening in Ars, in the time of Saint Jean-Marie Vianney… towards whom the attraction was produced by capillarity, by influence, by propagation, by radiation, by positive contagion… And you can imagine that the Holy Curé was quick to redirect towards Christ the Savior!

But that didn’t settle all the questions of evangelization. Indeed, the anticlericals of the day continued to have a field day. Just because God acts and attracts doesn’t mean He’s going to ‘force’ people to follow Him. If he went so far as to die on the Cross to save all men, it was not to then play the policeman and force them to follow him, even once he had risen and glorified himself! It’s a real temptation to build your life without needing God, and that’s still true today. And even in HIS presence, it’s always possible to ‘miss out’…

So you can imagine: when the Apostles tell Thomas that they have ‘seen Christ’ alive beyond death, he can only ask for more explanations and reply that without physical evidence of the Resurrection (or even touching the living Christ beyond death), he won’t be able to ‘believe’! The man of todayWe’ve made our ego, our will, our reason and our desires so central, and idolized ourselves so much, that we wonder if there’s any room left to contemplate the question of God’s relevance in our lives…

In Ars, we have the testimony of the opposite: Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, to whom we ‘wanted to be better’ and why not ‘tosay yes to God’… It is therefore through this attraction on the part of the radiant witness that the turning point is made, possibly leading to the person’s ” yes ” to God.

We’re touching on an expression of divine mercy that has perhaps remained a little hidden: God gives us the grace of being drawn to Him. And He allows us to recognize Him in this radiance of serenity, light and peace, through the saint He makes us meet. He will never impose Himself… but that doesn’t mean He’ll remain silent or distant, quite the contrary: is there any greater closeness than dwelling in the baptized and therefore in the saint?

God makes us merciful with HIS presence… This is true for every baptized person, whose human life finds its crowning glory in communion with God. But isn’t life another proof of that same mercy? Did the Lord create man for anything other than the joy of opening divine Communion to him? … and, as soon as he was alive on earth – Saint Thomas discovered it today, on the^2nd Sunday of Easter – and therefore in everyday life here below? Who wouldn’t?