Catholic Daily Reading [Eng]

St. John Vianney’s story of Mary saving a man who committed suicide Nothing is irreparable for Jesus and for Mary. A widow, desperate because her husband had committed suicide by throwing himself into a river, came to Ars and met the Curé upon leaving the church. He bent toward her and told her, “He is saved.” As she made a gesture of incredulity, the saint repeated emphatically, “I tell you that he is saved. He is in Purgatory, and you must pray for him. Between the parapet of the bridge and the water he had time to make an act of repentance. It is the Blessed Virgin who obtained this grace for him. Remember the shrine to Mary in your room? Sometimes your husband, although irreligious, united himself to your prayer. That merited repentance and the supreme pardon for him.” Before leaving, she confided to M. Guillaumet, superior of the College of St. Dizier, a witness to the scene, “I was in a dreadful state of despair, imagining the tragic end of my husband. He was an unbeliever, and I lived only for the thought of leading him back to God. Then he drowned himself by a voluntary suicide! I could only believe he was damned! Oh! never to see him again! Yet you heard what the Curé of Ars told me repeatedly: ‘He is saved!’ I shall see him again in Heaven after all!”304 See the delicacy of Jesus and of the Blessed Virgin! A person did some good which he had forgotten, but they had not forgotten, and at the right moment they made use of it, if I may put it that way. Jesus makes use of everything to save us. How astonished we will be in Heaven when we see that! Some make Him a judge who strikes men down and seeks revenge, whereas in fact He seeks to save us by all possible means.