Tag: Saints

9 min read

Joy

On The Importance of Humor

Msgr. William J. King

January 9, 2020 7:00 am January 9, 2020

9 min read

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9 min read

Some years ago a noted scientific journal published an article on the geometry of humor. The author pointed out that all humor follows a certain geometric pattern, which was both…

Some years ago a noted scientific journal published an article on the geometry of humor.

The author pointed out that all humor follows a certain geometric pattern, which was both described in a mathematical formula and illustrated as a triangle. A joke, a riddle, a pun all conceptually lead a person up an incline and give the impression that the incline will continue, but with the punch line the path drops off like a cliff. In listening to or reading a joke, or in contemplating a riddle, a person’s mind begins to project where the story line is headed, but the surprise trajectory — an unexpected and rather sudden change in direction — is what causes the reaction: laughter.

Parables

There’s something sterile about describing humor in a mathematical formula, even if one might find the effort humorous in itself. Even so, it seems that the parables of Jesus follow the same geometry: presenting a scenario, leading the listener to project an ending, then suddenly delivering a punch line that surprises or shocks. Several authors have suggested that those who first heard Jesus’ parables in first-century Palestine might actually have found them humorous, in part because of the surprise endings, but mostly because of the fanciful or unusual situations Jesus depicted. The master parable teller painted a story with familiar details that may have led the hearers to look forward to a predictable ending, only to see the story’s trajectory changed to an unforeseeable conclusion.

As soon as you recognize that a joke is in the works, you know you’re no longer on safe ground. The punch line could come at any moment: a twist, a surprise, a play on words. In the telling of a joke, everything changes for a moment. Assumptions aren’t safe. The familiar becomes unfamiliar. The listeners are anxiously expecting the surprise at the end.

It’s difficult to imagine anything that comes closer to an encounter with the Jesus of the Gospel.

Humor, however, has not always been a laughing matter in the history of the Church.

Although Ecclesiastes 3:4 tells us that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh,” and although Sarah famously laughed when angelic visitors told her husband Abraham that she would bear a son within the year, most biblical references to laughter do not bring a smile to the face. When the Bible refers to laughter it is often the scornful laughter of a sinner reviling God, or — since God gets the last laugh — the response of God to such scorn.

Similarly, the Church Fathers give short shrift to laughter, seeing an incongruity between the awareness of one’s sins and the willingness to laugh. St. John Chrysostom, one of the dour Fathers, suggests that weeping is preferable to laughing in this vale of tears.

Yet the shared experience of every human is one of both weeping and laughing, of mourning and of dancing. The author of Proverbs reminds us that laughter and sadness abide together, one never far from the other. Together with the pain of separation from God, humanity’s experience of God is replete with joy: the delight of Adam discovering Eve; the unbounded glee of King David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant; the happy leap of John the Baptist in the womb; heaven’s elation at one repentant sinner; and, ultimately, the words we all long to hear, “Come, share your master’s joy” in heaven, where “there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain” (Rv 21:4). A walk through the Bible shows that references to joy far outweigh the mention of sadness.

Part of God’s Love

Without disagreeing that our sins are cause for sadness and repentance, serious Christian thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Reinhold Neibuhr suggested that the ability to laugh at ourselves and at the foibles of the world is both a prelude and a result of true contrition for our sins. The influential 20th-century theologian Father Karl Rahner saw laughter as a gift from God, a tutor to help us understand God’s love for us. Humor helps to keep us humble, recognizing and admitting our imperfections before God.

G.K. Chesterton, a prolific essayist and author of fiction, biography, poetry and plays, finally converted to Catholicism in 1922 after his faith grew in a lengthy germination. He valued humor as a sign of wonder, and wonder as a doorway of spirituality. No reader of Chesterton’s essays can come away without a smile and perhaps a hearty laugh. And no one can doubt his faith in God’s goodness. Another convert to Catholicism late in life, Malcolm Muggeridge, saw humor as God’s therapy and looked forward to hearing “the unmistakable sound of celestial laughter” in heaven.

Joy and laughter are part of our heritage as children of God, just as they are part of our experience as human beings. Together with weeping and sadness they frame our experience of life.

Though the Gospel writers note the tears of Jesus as He wept over Jerusalem, at the tomb of His friend Lazarus and certainly in Gethsemane’s garden, no one can doubt the joy which permeated Jesus’ public ministry. It’s impossible not to picture Jesus and His apostles as joyful at the wedding feast in Cana. Joyful feasting was a common image of the Lord in His parables.

Indeed, in His priestly prayer in John’s Gospel, the Lord is clear about His mission: “That my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete” (Jn 15:11).

Joy Is First

St. Paul reminds the Galatians that joy is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, a sign and symptom of a life lived in the Spirit of God. He also gives us an instruction toward the end of his First Letter to the Thessalonians, a practical lesson for how to live in a world that is passing away. After urging the Christians in Thessalonica to “cheer the fainthearted” who worry unduly about the final judgment, he gives a three-part instruction for life: “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks” (5:16-18).

Notice, joy is first.

The ability to find joy in all circumstances — to laugh at the vicissitudes of life knowing that God has conquered all in Christ Jesus — is indeed a sign and symptom of sanctity. The saints show us this.

St. Lawrence, deacon of the church of Rome, was arrested three days after the seizure and martyrdom of his bishop, Pope St. Sixtus. When the pagan prefect of Rome demanded that Lawrence, who as a deacon was responsible for providing aid to the poor and needy, produce the hidden wealth of the Church, Lawrence asked for three days to assemble it. At the appointed hour he gathered the poorest and neediest persons from around the city and told the prefect, “This is the Church’s treasure.” The prefect saw no humor in that and ordered Lawrence be tied to an iron grill and burnt slowly over a fire. God gave Lawrence the gift of humor in the midst of his torture, such that he is said to have joked with his torturers, “Turn me over, I’m done on this side.”

The humor of Teresa of Jesus, the Spanish Carmelite reformer from Ávila, is well known. Among the quotes attributed to her is a smiling retort to God when the saintly nun was thrown off a cart into a mud puddle as she traveled to visit a monastery. Looking up from the muddy road, Teresa said to God, “If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!” St. Teresa is also said to have given the following advice to a young novice who admitted falling asleep every day at prayer: “If you go to prayer and find yourself falling asleep, accept it as a gift from God. If, however, you fall asleep at prayer every day, find another time to pray.”

Indeed, it may be the deep holiness of St. Teresa that allowed her to maintain a sense of humor even in the midst of turmoil. Only one with a deep and passionate trust in God’s goodness could seek and treasure humor in the midst of travails and disappointments such as Teresa experienced. She wrote: “Let nothing trouble you, let nothing frighten you. All things are passing; God never changes. Patience obtains all things. He who possesses God lacks nothing: God alone suffices.” Such confidence buoys the soul and produces a light heart. It is the truest font of joy and humor for the believer.

Why is humor important? Principally because it keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously. If we recognize that here on earth we have not a lasting city, it’s perhaps best to laugh at the incongruities while joyfully accepting God’s grace to act as agents of His redemption. In other words, perhaps a believer’s best attitude in life is to change what we can change and laugh at what we cannot, completely confident that God has already bested whatever tries to keep us from joy.

Msgr. William King is a priest for the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Pope Francis on Joy

“Instead of imposing new obligations, [Christians] should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet.”

“Be courageous in suffering and remember that after the Lord will come; after, joy will come, after the dark comes the sun. May the Lord give us all this joy in hope.”

“Christianity spreads through the joy of disciples who know that they are loved and saved.”

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6 min read

Saints

St. Hildegard of Bingen: A Prophet of the Living Light

Sandra Miesel

December 17, 2019 11:15 am December 17, 2019

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6 min read

Hildegard was one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. She was an anchoress, nun and abbess who founded two religious houses, as well as a writer, theologian,…

Hildegard was one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. She was an anchoress, nun and abbess who founded two religious houses, as well as a writer, theologian, preacher, pioneer free-verse poet, prolific medieval composer of Latin chant, healer, advocate of Church reform, correspondent of prelates and rulers, compiler of scientific learning and inventor of an artificial language with its own alphabet. All of these activities reflected her role as prophet of the Living Light, commanded by God to “say and write” the divine mysteries that He showed her in visions.

Abbess and Prophet

Hildegard’s long life (1098-1179) spanned the first flowering of high medieval culture. The year of her birth saw the First Crusade marching on Jerusalem; within a decade after her death, Saladin reconquered it for Islam. The youngest child in a large aristocratic family, Hildegard was born near Mainz, Germany, in the Rhineland. At age 8, her parents offered her as a living “tithe” to God by sending her to live with the anchoress Jutta attached to the Abbey of Disibodenberg. Jutta taught Hildegard to read from the Latin Psalter. The Bible was to remain her primary textbook.

Other noble maidens joined them so that the anchor-hold developed into a small — and very crowded — Benedictine convent. When Jutta died in 1136, Hildegard was chosen superior. In 1150, Hildegard moved her nuns to a new foundation called Rupertsberg at Bingen on the Rhine. Fifteen years later, she would plant another convent across the river at Eibingen.

Meanwhile, in 1141, in the midst of her administrative duties, Hildegard finally accepted her call to prophesy. She had been having visions since childhood, but had been unwilling to speak of them except to a few intimates. Suddenly, “Heaven was opened and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came and permeated my whole brain, and inflamed my whole heart and my whole breast.” The Living Light illuminated the Scriptures for her and commanded her to share her infused understanding.

Yet Hildegard continued to stall, and then fell ill. After encouragement from the abbot of Disibodenberg, she rose from her sickbed to start writing her first visionary work, Scivias (short for “Know the Ways of the Lord”). It would take 10 years to finish.

Meanwhile, the abbot described Hildegard’s project to the arch-bishop of Mainz, who passed the news on to the pope, who was then visiting Germany. After a papal commission investigated the work, the pope himself read parts of Scivias to a regional synod. Hildegard was directed to keep transcribing whatever God communicated.

Far from “silencing the female voice,” ecclesiastical authorities generally offered warm support. They consulted her, praised her as the “Sibyl of the Rhine,” and even invited her to preach to them. Hildegard made four long tours through Germany addressing clerics and mixed groups of clergy and laity — at assemblies, not during Mass.

Champion of Authentic Reform

Hildegard received these unprecedented privileges because she clung to her status as a prophetess — in the sense of speaking for God, not making predictions. Presenting herself as a frail, unlearned female mysteriously chosen to be God’s “trumpet,” she made an asset of her weakness. (Many another holy woman did the same.) This gave her an opportunity to campaign for reform of the institutional Church and to criticize secular interference in Church governance.

In one letter, Hildegard described the Church as a beautiful but disheveled woman bewailing her abuse by sinful priests: “They have spattered my face with dust, torn my robe, darkened my mantle, and blackened my shoes with mud.” The message is still relevant: Pope Benedict XVI quoted this passage in an address to the Roman Curia on Dec. 20, 2010, deploring the recent clerical scandals.

Even when denouncing Church abuses, Hildegard never threatened the ecclesiastical hierarchy itself nor denied the superiority of the clerical state, as the Cathars and other heretics were doing. She acknowledged male headship, the complementary roles of the sexes and took class privilege for granted. Though her status was unique and her visions sometimes mysterious, Hildegard’s faith was orthodox.

Hildegard’s one clash with ecclesiastical authorities came in 1178, but it turned on a question of fact, not doctrine. She allowed an excommunicated knight — a patron of the community — to be buried in her abbey’s graveyard because she knew that he had died reconciled with the Church. For her kindness, she and her nuns were placed under interdict, forbidden to sing or receive the sacraments, until the archbishop of Cologne vindicated Hildegard six months before her peaceful death in 1179.

“Shadow of the Living Light”

Hildegard’s three major works, Scivias, Liber vitae meritorum (“Book of the Merits of Life”) and Liber divinorum operum (“Book of the Divine Works”) record visionary experiences like few in Church history. These were not apparitions, trances or dreams, but sights perceived while fully awake within the bright “shadow of the Living Light” that constantly illuminated her soul. She recorded, dictated and perhaps even sketched each episode, aided by a secretary and interpreted by illustrators.

Barbara Newman, a leading authority on Hildegard, lists a few of these colorful visuals: “mountains, cosmic eggs, spheres of shimmering light, colossal figures, towering walls and pillars.” The sparkly spots and architectural forms resemble migraine phenomena as do the symptoms of Hildegard’s intermittent illness. “Scintillating scotomata” has been proposed as a diagnosis, yet Hildegard’s visions cannot be reduced to a neurological malady. Her migraines were the occasion of contact with God, just as bodily pain has often been a medium for saints to share in the sufferings of Christ.

Each of Hildegard’s prophetic books consists of visions followed by her explication. A bare list of subjects cannot convey their peculiar richness. She treats the Fall of Man, the Trinity, the Incarnation and Redemption, the sacraments, virtues, angels, heavenly joy, vices and their remedies, time and timelessness, the Gospel of John and Genesis, the Antichrist and the end of the world. The titanic women who populate her visions — Church, Synagogue, Wisdom, Justice and Charity — are personifications with “personality,” not to mention forms that must be seen to be appreciated. For instance, Liber divinorum operum opens with a vision of a glowing figure with four wings who holds the Lamb of God and balances a graying, bearded man’s head on her own while trampling a monster and a giant serpent. In Barbara Newman’s translation she identifies herself this way: “I am the supreme and fiery force who kindled every living spark, and I breathed forth no deadly thing — yet I permit them to be. . . . And I am the fiery life of the essence of God: I flame above the beauty of the fields; I shine in the waters; I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars.”

She is Caritas — Love — who could also stand for the Holy Spirit, supporting the Father and holding the Son.

Sandra Miesel is a frequent contributor to the Catholic press and media.

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4 min read

Saints

St. Marguerite Bourgeoys: A missionary to Montreal

Michael R. Heinlein

December 11, 2019 9:17 pm December 11, 2019

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4 min read

It’s unclear what St. Marguerite Bourgeoys was discerning about her future in October 1640. But something happened that changed the course of her life and the history of the blossoming…

It’s unclear what St. Marguerite Bourgeoys was discerning about her future in October 1640. But something happened that changed the course of her life and the history of the blossoming North American continent to which she would go as a missionary. No indications are given that she was inclined to religious life, although she would go on to establish a new women’s religious congregation of apostolic life.

While attending a Rosary procession in her hometown of Troyes, France, on a sunny October day in 1640, St. Marguerite had a profound encounter of grace when she gazed upon a familiar statue of Mary sitting atop the entrance to the Benedictine abbey in the ancient city. She wrote about the experience many times throughout her life. In her fullest account, she described the moment that changed the course of her life: “I found myself so moved and changed that I no longer recognized myself. When I returned home, this was apparent to everyone.”

In addition to starting a school and congregation, St. Marguerite also helped girls from France prepare for marriage by teaching them the skills they would need as wives on the Canadian frontier. The Crosiers

A spiritual director guided St. Marguerite toward religious life. First she pursued the cloister, desiring to devote her life to contemplation, prayer and penance. She did not give into sadness, though, when she was rejected by the Carmelites and other communities. Instead it became clearer that God had other plans in store for her.

The Congregation de Notre Dame in Troyes had been established as a teaching community. Although obliged to accept the cloister to obtain ecclesiastical approval, they also established an extern congregation. The members would live a modest, simple life in their own homes dedicated to prayer and education. St. Marguerite took religious vows as an extern with this community.

The following 13 years formed St. Marguerite for mission in North America. She received educational training and developed an educational philosophy geared toward the poor and underprivileged, focusing on skills the poor needed more than reading and writing.

Although her attempt to establish an apostolic community in Troyes did not succeed, St. Marguerite did not give up hope. Her dream was realized, however, alongside the dreams of many other French laity who desired a missionary and apostolic life and had established the Ville Marie colony in modern-day Montreal, Canada. She joined the mission, founded to bring the Gospel to the native peoples of North America, in 1553. Bravely embracing the missionary’s adventurous life in the New World, St. Marguerite arrived in New France filled with the hopes and aspirations that came from the knowledge that she was doing God’s will. Her desires to provide education were stalled at first because of high infant mortality rates, but she built the first public school in an old stone barn. She also built the first permanent church in Montreal, dedicated to Our Lady of Good Counsel.

In the New World, St. Marguerite established the new apostolic community for women, dedicated to following “the state of life of the journeying Virgin Mary,” a life which followed Mary as her Son’s first disciple. “Even without veil or wimple, one could be a true religious,” she wrote.

The Congregation of Notre Dame was organized by St. Marguerite as an uncloistered women’s religious community of apostolic life, dedicated to education and service to the poor. On trips back to France, she recruited members and obtained the protection from the king so the local bishop could not enforce cloistered life upon her new community.

St. Marguerite led the congregation she founded until 1693, and she spent her last years in prayer and composition of her autobiography, some of which still exists. She died Jan. 12, 1700, at the age of 79.

Her feast day is Jan. 12.

Michael R. Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic. Follow him on Twitter at @HeinleinMichael.

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3 min read

Saints

St. Sebastian: A saint for athletes

Thomas J. Craughwell

December 11, 2019 4:01 pm December 11, 2019

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3 min read

The first Christians saw a connection between the courage and endurance of the martyrs and the courage and endurance of athletes. In his second letter to St. Timothy, St. Paul,…

The first Christians saw a connection between the courage and endurance of the martyrs and the courage and endurance of athletes. In his second letter to St. Timothy, St. Paul, knowing that his martyrdom was not far off, compared himself to a boxer and a runner: “I have fought a good fight,” he said. “I have finished my course.” A few decades later, about the year 110, the martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote to his fellow bishop St. Polycarp urging him to act like “an athlete of God [for whom] the prize is immortality and eternal life.”

Ignatius and Polycarp were elderly and Paul was probably in his 60s when they gave their lives for the Faith — perhaps not the most athletic period of their lives. But for centuries artists have portrayed St. Sebastian as a handsome young man with the physique of a personal trainer.

Although there is no doubt that there was a Roman martyr named Sebastian, and that devotion to him dates back to the fourth century, the earliest surviving life of the saint was written a century or more after his death. According to this story Sebastian was a Praetorian, a member of an elite troop of soldiers who served as the emperor’s bodyguard. When Emperor Diocletian began his persecution of the Church, Sebastian used his status to visit Christians in prison. This was dangerous business, and it was not long before he was denounced to the emperor.

Enraged that one of his own bodyguards was a Christian, Diocletian ordered the Praetorians to take Sebastian back to their camp and shoot him to death with arrows. Aft er perforating their former comrade, the Praetorians assumed that Sebastian was dead. So did everyone else who heard of his martyrdom. Aft er sunset a Christian woman named Irene crept into the Praetorians’ camp to retrieve the body and give it a Christian burial. As Irene and her serving woman cut Sebastian down, they heard him groan. Incredibly, he was still alive.

Instead of carrying him to the catacombs for burial, Irene brought Sebastian back to her house where she and her servant nursed him. As soon as his strength returned, Sebastian went off to confront Diocletian. He found the emperor on the steps of the imperial palace. Furious that his former bodyguard was still alive, Diocletian demanded of his entourage, “Did I not sentence this man to be shot to death with arrows?” But Sebastian answered for the emperor’s courtiers. He had been made a target for archers, “But the Lord kept me alive so I could return and rebuke you for treating the servants of Christ so cruelly.”

This time the emperor took no chances: Diocletian ordered his guard to beat Sebastian to death there on the palace steps, while he watched. Once he was certain that Sebastian truly was dead, Diocletian had the martyr’s body dumped into the Cloaca Maxima, Rome’s main sewer. Nonetheless, Christians recovered it and buried Sebastian in a catacomb known ever since as San Sebastiano.

St. Sebastian is the patron saint of archers and of the Pontifical Swiss Guards. His feast day is Jan. 20.

Thomas Craughwell is the author of more than 30 books, including “Saints Behaving Badly” and “This Saint Will Change Your Life.”

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4 min read

Saints

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton: A Saint for Converts

Michael R. Heinlein

December 10, 2019 9:00 am December 10, 2019

4 min read

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4 min read

Imagine the suffering of a 29-year-old American widow returning home from Italy, having just buried her husband. Underneath the pain, she couldn’t have guessed this, amazingly, was an integral part of God’s plan. Unknown to her, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was on the path to becoming the first canonized saint born on American soil.

The daughter of a physician, born in New York City in 1774, 3-year-old Elizabeth was acquainted with suffering early with her mother’s death. She married a wealthy importer, William Seton, in 1794, and together they had five children. Stress from the bankruptcy of his business in 1802 worsened William Seton’s existing tuberculosis, and doctors prescribed the Italian climate. Elizabeth didn’t leave his side until his death in an Italian quarantine two days after Christmas in 1803. The couple originally planned to stay with his business partners in Italy, and the young widow enjoyed their hospitality until she could return to America. The Filicchi family home had a private chapel, and there Elizabeth had her first experience of Catholicism. Her life was forever changed.

Fascinated by the Church’s liturgy and the Real Presence, the committed Protestant who went to Italy would soon return to America with a Catholic heart.

Antonio Filicchi helped Seton informally begin her study of the Faith on the voyage to New York.

Seton’s conversion to Catholicism brought about many hardships. Hostility from her family was just the beginning of her sufferings in an anti-Catholic New York City. Seton made the Profession of Faith and received her first holy Communion in March 1805 at St. Peter’s Church on Barclay Street, the city’s oldest parish. As a victim of prejudice, Seton had trouble finding stable work to provide for her family, and she wrestled about what to do.

God gave the answer when Seton was invited to Maryland by Sulpician Father William DuBourg, who interestingly, as bishop of the Louisiana Territory, worked with St. Rose Philippine Duchesne. In the Catholic-friendly state of Maryland, Seton would establish a school and start a religious order. First teaching in Baltimore for a year, Seton pronounced religious vows in 1809 in the presence America’s first bishop, John Carroll. He gave the foundress of the first religious order established in the United States the title “Mother Seton.” The Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s lived the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul’s Daughters of Charity with a few alterations from Carroll to provide for a mother with children to enter the new order.

Establishing a free school for poor girls near Emmitsburg, Maryland, proved to be a daunting, but not impossible task for Mother Seton. With guidance and assistance from Sulpician Father Jean Dubois — the future bishop of New York who ordained St. John Neumann — Seton and her sisters opened St. Joseph’s Free School in 1810, and for this she is remembered as the mother of Catholic education in the United States.

Seton’s trust in God was undying, although it was tested in her final years on the rough Maryland frontier, especially when two daughters died of tuberculosis by 1816. Persevering in the Faith to the end, Seton exhorted those near her deathbed, “Be children of the Church.” She died of tuberculosis at the age of 46 on Jan. 4, 1821. Seton’s spiritual director, Sulpician Father Simon Bruté, himself a candidate for sainthood, memorialized her saying, “O, such a mother! Such faith and love! Such a true spirit of prayer, of true humility, of true self-denial in all, of true charity to all!”

Seton’s life as a loving wife and mother, a faithful teacher and a holy consecrated woman leaves a lasting example. Blessed Pope Paul VI dispensed with the then-necessary fourth miracle required for sainthood and canonized her in the Holy Year of 1975, exhorting Americans, “Rejoice for your glorious daughter. Be proud of her. And know how to preserve her fruitful heritage.”

Her feast day is January 4.

Michael Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.

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4 min read

Saints

St. John Neumann: A Saint for Catholic Teachers

Michael R. Heinlein

December 10, 2019 8:59 am December 10, 2019

4 min read

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4 min read

When a young Bohemian immigrant arrived in New York City on a rainy June day in 1836 his hopes for priesthood were uncertain. Due to an ordination moratorium imposed by…

When a young Bohemian immigrant arrived in New York City on a rainy June day in 1836 his hopes for priesthood were uncertain. Due to an ordination moratorium imposed by his homeland’s government, St. John Neumann could not be ordained at home. Forsaking the comforts of home and family, desiring only his life’s oblation in love and service, Neumann chose to go to America. He read accounts of such storied missionaries as Frederic Baraga — a current candidate for sainthood — and he hoped to follow in their footsteps. Little did the young seminarian know when he set foot on American soil that the path God had in store would result in his canonization as the country’s first male saint.

Born in modern-day Czech Republic in 1811, Neumann grew up in a devout Catholic home, and he had many siblings called to religious vocations.

New York’s bishop John Dubois — the one-time advisor to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton — was impressed quickly by Neumann’s intellect and missionary zeal, ordaining him a priest within his first month in America. Dubois assigned him to regions near Buffalo, New York. While there, Neumann expressed how he faced many hardships and bouts with loneliness. Outwardly, he seemed successful, having established many parishes between Buffalo and Erie, Pennsylvania. But Neumann knew he needed a change. With the help of several priest-advisers, Neumann recognized his need for the support of a religious community to settle his troubled spirit, and he set out for the Redemptorist novitiate in Pittsburgh in 1840.

Neumann proved himself to be a competent and talented administrator, responsible for finishing the building project at St. Philomena’s Church in Pittsburgh, where he ministered alongside a fellow Redemptorist, Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos. Neumann then went on to pastor several other churches, mostly in Maryland. A surprise came when Neumann was appointed the American provincial of his order in 1847, requiring a move to Baltimore, where he became a naturalized American citizen the following year.

Administration of his order brought heavy burdens to Neumann since Redemptorists in America at the time tended to work independently. Neumann was chosen to provide unity among his brothers, and proved to be successful. In Baltimore, he also served as pastor of his order’s St. Alphonsus Church and provided much needed support to many religious orders of women in the area. Neumann’s talents as an administrator would change directions in his life yet again in 1852, when he was named fourth Bishop of Philadelphia by Blessed Pope Pius IX. He was ordained a bishop in Baltimore on his 41st birthday.

Neumann received an overwhelming welcome in his new diocese, and he was immediately recognized as a fatherly, kindly and even saintly pastor. His legacy as bishop includes the establishment of the first American diocesan schools system, the founding of religious orders, starting the Forty Hours Eucharistic devotion, and care for the poor and the city’s booming European immigrants. Neumann led his flock courageously amid the rampant anti-Catholicism and anti-immigration prejudices of the Know-Nothing party.

Neumann excelled in the virtues, most notably humility, without which he said “other virtues could be neither genuine nor permanent.” Neumann desired sanctity, praying at his first Mass, “Dearest God, give me holiness!” No matter what obstacles presented themselves in his life, Neumann responded with a total “yes” to God.

A life of love and service came to a sudden end when, on Jan. 5, 1860, at age 48, Neumann collapsed from a stroke on a Philadelphia street. In 1977, when Neumann became the first (and to date, only) American bishop to be canonized, Pope Paul VI said that for Neumann to accomplish his great works, “love was necessary. And love meant giving; love meant effort; love meant sacrifice. And in his sacrifice, Bishop Neumann’s service was complete.”

His feast day is January 5.

Michael Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic.

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