What Could God Do With a “Complete Jackass”?

St. John Vianney Had the Perfect Answer

SAINT JOHN VIANNEY (1786–1859), the famed Curé of Ars, was and is well-known for his great sanctity and humility.

Ars was a podunk little French town of fewer than three hundred inhabitants situated about eighty miles west of Geneva, where St. Francis de Sales had ministered two centuries earlier, converting tens of thousands of Calvinists to the Catholic Church.

Unlike the illustrious Francis de Sales, St. John Vianney was neither erudite nor polished. In fact, most people felt he wasn’t nearly smart enough to learn Latin, philosophy, and theology, much less pass his seminary final exams, a prerequisite for priestly ordination.

And they were nearly right!

Though clearly holy and virtuous, he was the furthest thing from an intellectual and struggled mightily to learn what seemed to come so easily to the other seminarians.

Knowing he was unlikely to make it through the seminary, John Vianney prayed earnestly every day that God would grant him the necessary clarity of mind to pass his tests.

He was such a poor student that he indeed would have flunked out of the seminary had not a kindly older priest interceded on his behalf with the seminary faculty, arguing that holiness is more important in a priest than book knowledge and that they should ordain him anyway.

Reluctantly, they agreed to do so. Shortly before ordination, John Vianney struggled with a theology exam.

According to a longstanding anecdote, the professor conducting the exam exclaimed in exasperation, “What could the Lord possibly do with such a complete jackass?!”

With just a hint of a smile, John Vianney replied, “Reverend Father, if the Lord, through Samson, could slay a thousand Philistines with just the jawbone of an ass, imagine what he could do with a complete one.”

St. John Vianney, ora pro nobis!

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Copyright © 2026 Patrick Madrid. Adapted from a section in my book On a Mission: Lessons from St. Francis de Sales (2013). All rights reserved. All text, images, and other original content are the property of the author.

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