Today January 5

Today is the feast of St. John Neumann (1811 - 1860). An introverted and even shy man, he was a good student and even amateur botanist and astronomer in his native Czechoslovakia. He struggled with twin desires to be a medical doctor an a priest. He really didn't think he had much chance to be a priest since only 20 out of the 90 applicants would be accepted. But his other said, "Well, John, if you really are thinking of the priesthood, it's only fair to yourself to try." He did and was accepted. He did s well, especially int he area of linguistics (he spoke 6 languages), he was offered a job with the government. He refused and asked to be sent to America. He had no sponsor and little prospects, but by sheer force of will he went. He walked to the port of Le Havre and sailed to New York, presenting himself, hopeful yet penniless, to Bishop Jean Dubois. The bishop laughed, since he'd already sent an invitation to him in Bohemia, but he'd left before it arrived!

He was assigned to a huge parish (over 900 square miles) in Buffalo, NY. His parishioners includes German, French, Irish and Indian people. He walked throughout the parish, always with a Mass kit, always saying Mass, always bribing the children with candy to learn their catechism. He passed out on one of trips and luckily some Indians found him and dragged him to their hut or he may have died. After that, a friend got him a horse and he rode on horseback.

Finding a need for community in his spiritual life, he asked leave to join the Redemptorists. His bishop was unwilling to let him go but finally relented. He made his vows in 1842 and soon became superior general of the order. But he wasn't popular there, because of his unobtrusive personality and his unwillingness to spread his personnel too thin. "John's sensitive soul smarted under the criticism, and he begged his superiors to relieve him of this post."- Modern Saints. They did, but if he thought he'd seen the last of being in authoritative positions, he was wrong.

A few years later he was made bishop of Philadelphia, much against his will. He lived up to the task admirably, however, and this in the difficult times plagued by the rampant anti-Catholicism of the sometimes violent Know-Nothing party (and their roving gangs.) By now he spoke a total of 12 languages. The story is told of an old Irish woman who went to confession to the bishop and after rattling off her sins in Gaelic and receiving wise counsel and absolution in the same language, emerged saying, "Thanks be to God we finally have an Irish bishop!"

In his 8 years as bishop he made it his goal to have a Catholic school attached to every Catholic church. And he made great progress toward that goal: at the beginning of his episcopate, there were 2 Catholic schools in all of Philadelphia; at its end, there were 100. Kids, in the old days everyone could afford to go to a catholic school, because each were subsidized by the parish. They were not subject to fair-wage laws nor were there prohibitively expensive laws set by the state concerning class size and curriculum. And even so, students received a great secular education as well as learning their faith better than any CCD class could do.

When he died -- in the middle of the street in Philadelphia -- his funeral was attended by thousands, making it the largest the city had ever seen. His last words, preceding as they did his sudden -- and unprovided -- death, were prophetic: "A man must always be ready, for death comes when and where God wills it."

St. John Neumann, pray for us.