Leviticus 23:1, 4-11, 15-16, 27, 34-37 / Matthew 13:54-58
(Memorial of St. John Vianney, Patron of all Priests)
To label and categorise things can be useful for the purpose of inventory and stock-keeping.
But to label and categorise persons is quite another matter. It may say something about the person in question, but it says a lot more about us.
Whatever earlier impressions of that person, especially those that are not favourable and disadvantageous, are stuck on our minds and we have somewhat boxed up the image of that person with those back-dated opinions.
Such was the case with Jesus when He came to His hometown and when He taught in the synagogue, His own people were initially astonished with His wisdom and miraculous powers.
But then came the labels and categorisations: He is the carpenter's son; is not His mother the woman called Mary? They knew who He was and where He came from. They were too familiar with who He was. But they did not realise that their knowledge was backdated.
Jesus has "changed" but their ideas of Him did not. Jesus had moved on but they were stuck in the past. Their labelling and categorising of Jesus revealed more about themselves than what they know about Jesus. And that also closed the door for any more miracles for them.
Fast-forward to the turn of the 19th century, there was John Vianney, a son of a peasant farmer. He was a slow and unpromising candidate for the priesthood. Nonetheless, he was ordained on account of his love for Jesus rather than any merit or achievement. But initially he was not allowed to preach at Mass or even teach catechism, for fear that he would end up teaching something heretical.
In 1818, Fr. John Vianney was sent to be the parish priest of Ars, an isolated village some distance from Lyon. It was thought that it was not much he could do there and he would fade off in obscurity.
But it was there that he became known as a confessor with spiritual insights into the heart of the penitent, and he had to spend many hours in the confessional.
But there is something else about his ministry in the confessional. When St. John Vianney was asked about his method in the confessional which caused even hardened sinners to melt, he replied, "My recipe is to give sinners a little penance and do the rest myself."
So St. John Vianney practiced penance not as his own work but as a minimal participation in Christ's sacrificial offering of His life on the cross for the salvation of sinners.
He was ordained because he had a heart for Jesus. But as a priest and in the confessional, Jesus made his heart like His, full of love and mercy for the sinner.
St. John Vianney preached about the necessity of prayer - When God sees us coming to Him in prayer, He leans His Heart down very low to His little creature, like a father who bends down to listen to his child.
St. John Vianney, being a man of prayer, knows the Heart of Jesus as he prays. But he also says this - Nothing afflicts the Heart of Jesus so much as to see all His sufferings of no avail to so many.
And so St. John Vianney did what he could to bring souls back to Jesus, be it at Mass, at preaching, at the confession, in everything he did.
If he had subjected himself to the labels and categorisations that others have of him, he won't be available to what Jesus wanted him to be. And now the Church honours him as the Patron of all Priests.
But let us remember this simple but profound saying of St. John Vianney - Anything we do, without offering it to God, is wasted.
So besides offering up our penance, our reparation and our expiation to Jesus for the salvation of souls, let us also offer up those who are lowly and despised, labelled and categorised.
May their lives not be wasted, but offered to God, so that He can make a miracle out of them, just as He did with St. John Vianney.