A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus wanted to set out for Galilee, the lake country. But first, he came upon Philip. Follow me, Jesus said to him. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the same town as Andrew and Peter.
Philip sought out Nathaniel and said to Nathaniel, we have found the one that Moses spoke of in the law, the prophets too, Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth. Nathaniel's response to this was, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip replied, come and see for yourself. When Jesus saw Nathaniel coming towards him, he said, this man is a real Israelite. There is no guile in him.
And Nathaniel, of course, was astonished and said, how do you know me? And Jesus replied, before Philip even called you, I saw you under the fig tree. Rabbi, said Nathaniel, you are the son of god. You are the king of Israel. Jesus replied, do you believe just because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree, you will see much greater things than that.
Then Jesus went on to tell them, I solemnly assure you, you shall see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. John Neumann.
Notice it is Neumann, n e u m a n n. John Neumann. We celebrate his feast today as Saint John Neumann, bishop of the Diocese of Philadelphia. He died in 1860. In 1836, this young man in Prague, which was then called Bohemia, found himself at the end of his career as a seminarian, but nobody would ordain him.
For one thing, was only five feet four inches tall. You know, when you put somebody up in a pulpit five feet four inches tall, you can barely see his head, especially in some of these pulpits in Europe. Secondly, there were too many priests. There was no room for him in the inn. So that seemed to be the end of the line.
Well, instead, this is 1836, his a his 25 years of old age. He gets himself on a boat or something and winds up in New York with one suit of clothes on his back and 1 US dollar in his pocket. Unordained, looking for a bishop to ordain him. That's your vocation to the priesthood, remember, when the bishop calls you. The bishop archbishop of New York ordained him and shipped him up to Buffalo, where he labored for four or five years, moving around quite a bit.
He was called a missionary priest. Notice this is 1836, and Buffalo was a little bit more primitive than it is today. Then he decided to join the Redemptorists, the congregation founded by Saint Liguori. And he was the first Redemptorist who was a professed novice or religious in this country. And then as a Redemptorist, he moved around quite a bit around Pittsburgh and in the Philadelphia area, also around Baltimore.
The Redemptorist, you know, had a big place and still have in Annapolis. Now, there was a man named Kendrick who was the bishop of Philadelphia. And here was this young priest who spoke only broken English from some outgod forsaken place in, you know, in Europe named Bohemia, although he could speak six languages. And for some reason, archbishop Kendrick, who was then appointed to be the archbishop of Baltimore, decided that he wanted this immigrant, this little shrimpy guy, this man who couldn't speak decent English, to be of all things, the Bishop of Philadelphia. Now in 1830 but this would be about 1840 something.
Philadelphia was a very primacial sea. It was a very prestigious city. It had a group of people there who were very proud of themselves, and they weren't from Bohemia, and they didn't speak broken English. They took up a petition when they heard about it, including many of the priests that archbishop Kendrick would reconsider and give them a man who at least could speak decent English. Kendrick held to his guns, And John Neumann, five feet four, broken English, from Bohemia, became the Bishop of Philadelphia.
He was a Bishop for eight years. You know, he only lived forty nine years. He died in 1860. Think of that in terms of Anne as Anne Elizabeth Seaton yesterday, how young these people were when they died, and what they accomplished. In eight years, Neumann built 80 churches.
He built churches at the rate of about one a month. This, you know, this little dwarf of five feet four spoke broken English, an embarrassment to the good people of Philadelphia, especially the clergy. In three years, and I have this not from the Catholic Encyclopedia but from Time Magazine, and you know Time Magazine is beyond all dispute. It's like the Washington Post, you bow your head. In three years, Neumann increased the enrollment in parochial schools from 900 from 500 to 9,000.
What do you think of that in three years? Of course, we were just about as fast doing eliminating the schools as he was in in in originating. How he did this, I don't know. I know he brought in religious. He brought in the holy cross nuns, for example.
He brought in all kinds of religious women, I guess, to but notice that took some doing too. How did he manage that? Everybody wanted these good nuns to teach their schools. He got them. Anyway, in three years, he increased the enrollment from 500 to 9,000.
That's a big increase. Now I this is all background. This man, he he was a very he wrote. He was a very was competent in scripture. He wrote two catechisms, all in German.
He wrote two catechisms. Remember, German was a very widely spoken language up in that in that area. And but, of course, his English was very broken. He was an embarrassment to the elite of Philadelphia. Though I want to make a point that Benedict the fifteenth made when his when he was being proposed for beatification.
The great argument against him, the argument against him was that he didn't do anything heroic. He was just a commonplace simple priest. He did simple things. He'd had simple piety. He was a work a day priest.
That's all. Nothing heroic. And the book says, you've got to have heroic virtue to be a saint. So there wasn't anything heroic about John Neumann. So ergo, no sainthood, no beatification.
Well, there's a very amusing little little anecdote here. The man who was most opposed to John Neumann, on the day that they were to meet with the Benedict the fifteenth, happened to drop dead in his barber's chair. You know, that was kind of significant. Anyway, at that meeting, Benedict the fifteenth had this to say about heroic virtue. And this is the the point of my well chosen remarks.
Here's what Benedict said in a translation. Even the most simple works performed with constant perfection in the midst of inevitable difficulties spelled heroism in any servant of God. What do you think of that? I'm going to repeat it. See, the he was John Neumann was accused of being too simple, too plain, too commonplace, too work a day.
And the the canon law said you had to have virtue to an heroic degree, and he didn't have it ergo. Here's what Benedict said, even the most simple works, the that's a superlative. The most simple works performed with constant perfection in the midst of inevitable difficulties spell heroism in any servant of God. That's us. That's us.
We are called upon for the most part to be work of day commonplace people with simple piety, with simple holiness. We're not likely to make the headlines unless we do something terribly unheroic. But we are all called upon to do some simple things with perfection. Constant perfection, Benedict said. Try it.
Saint Teresa of Lisia, the little flower. That's her whole her whole claim to being heroic. She did actually she didn't build churches or she didn't populate schools, she didn't do anything. But to to do the simplest things with constant perfection in the midst of the inevitable difficulties of life, That Benedict said, is heroism on the part of any servant of God. And so it is.
And so we are called. Yesterday, we had Elizabeth Ann Seaton, bodies up there Emmitsburg, just a few miles up the road. She's a saint. We've had three US saints, only one born in The United States, mother Cabrini, saint Elizabeth Seaton, and father Bishop John Neumann. Neumann's from Bohemia and mother Cabrini from Italy, only Anne Seton was from The United States, and she was a convert.
But we had three saints, and two of them pretty close to and and mother Caprini, of course, is is is almost local too. So let's let's see what is the meaning of these people, the meaning of their lives for us. And of course, in some ways they did heroic things, but in many ways, especially John Norman, he didn't do anything heroic. Building churches, that's just brick and mortar. And while I emphasize this school business, well, there were a lot of reasons for it, you know.
But Benedict says it well, that anyone who does this who does who constantly tries to make the little things of life perfect in their daily living, they are practicing virtue heroically. And if you don't believe him, try it. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.