A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus wanted to set out for Galilee, but first he came no. That's the wrong one. It's from Saint Mark. Today is January 6.
The theme of John's preaching was this is John the Baptist. The theme of John's preaching was, one more powerful than I is to come after me. I am not fit to stoop and untie his sandal straps. I have baptized you in water. He will baptize you in the holy spirit.
During that time, Jesus came from Nazareth to Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John. Immediately on coming up out of the water, he saw the sky rent in two and the spirit descending on him like a dove. And then a voice came from the heavens. You are my beloved son. On you, my favor rests.
And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Today, we are celebrating the feast of brother Andre Bessette, b e s s e t t e. And some of you, I'm sure, have seen this magnificent basilica up near the city of Montreal on Mount Royal, which of course is for the most part his work. He is as far as I as far as my research goes, he is still blessed.
He has not been fully canonized. He died in 1937. And, when I was in the seminary and after I was ordained, his name was very familiar down around these parts. And then later on, I had the opportunity of conducting or leading a pilgrimage up to the basilica. Now yesterday, we had the feast of Saint John Neumann.
Before that, we had the feast of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. Now the the the theme of these lines is this, and it's what Benedict the fifteenth enunciated when they were trying to get John Neumann beatified. The argument against his beatification, that is the the bishop of Philadelphia, John Neumann, the little guy in only five feet two inches, who spoke broken English and was an embarrassment to the intellectually elite of Philadelphia to have such a man as their leader. The argument against him was that the the law of the church says you to be considered a saint in the sense of being canonized, you have to show evidence that you practice virtue to an heroic degree. Well, I suppose immediately you think of Maximilian Kolbe.
Oh, you can think of plenty of people, plenty of saints. Saint Peter Claver with the with the the slaves down in Cartagena. Plenty of names come to mind. And you say, that's the that's the pattern of being a saint. Benedict the fifteenth said nonsense.
Nonsense. That the simplest works notice the he used the superlative. The simplest works done with constant perfection can well spell heroic virtue on the part of God's servants. Now I don't think there's anything more important than that that we need to get into our heads. We are all called upon to be saints.
Let's not forget this. You have no choice. You either become a saint or you're lost. Now let's face it, that's an alternative. If there's anything in the New Testament that's clear, that is perfectly clear, in spite of the fact that it's sort of said very quietly today, if it's said at all.
Now the thing that comes out with these lives is their simplicity. That in many ways they did very simple things. And for the three that I've mentioned, Elizabeth Seaton and John Neumann and brother Andre Bessette, this last man is the is the he is the really the king of the crop. Here's a man. He was born about 1845, something like that.
He was very close, you see, to father Moreau who founded the Holy Cross the Order of Holy Cross for priests, for brothers, and for nuns. Notice the second, brothers. Here was a man who who from his infancy was supposed to die. They never thought he'd get out of the cradle. He lived to be 91.
Secondly, he was born into a very large family, wound up with, I don't eight or nine or 10 children, and left and then left an orphan. When he went and asked to become a brother with the Holy Cross Order near Montreal in a college called Notre Dame. They didn't want to take him for a lot of reasons. He couldn't read or write. His health was terribly poor.
He was kind of his his physical appearance wasn't too good. They said, what can we do with him? I remember when a religious order accepts somebody and they take vows, they're responsible for them. Keep that in mind. So it was it was only by pulling strings that this very illiterate, unpromising young man became a brother.
And the only thing they could find for him to do was to keep put him in charge of the front door. They called him a porter, which many he opened the door to people, he closed it on people, but more than that, he had to keep Carter's clean by getting down on his hands and knees and scrubbing the floors. There was nothing spectacular about his life. He was known he was known as good, humble man, but mighty eccentric. Mighty eccentric.
And one of his main eccentricities was his devotion to Saint Joseph. He had this from the very beginning of his life. So here's a man, very reluctantly, the Holy Cross fathers took him in, very reluctantly. They turned him down as a matter of fact, and and they were right in doing that. They were perfectly right.
Yet the bishop interceded for him and got him in there, so he became finally became a brother and took his vows. And then he was just a man of all work around the college, that's all. Now this man would put for nearly forty years nearly forty years spent his life just doing that. Opening the door, closing the door, welcoming the parents of the boys in the college, meeting them, trying to be decent with them, comforting the parents, and so forth. Scrubbing floors, keeping corridors clean, running errands, doing the shopping, running into town, you know, all of those things.
All those. Could anything be be more simple than that? He learned to read and write after he he became a brother, but he's never very good at it. Now for forty years, that's what he did, till about 1906. But all this time, he had a very fervent devotion to Saint Joseph.
And he with permission, he was an extremely humble man, utterly obedient, never questioned his superior whatsoever, never defended himself when he was blamed for a lot of things he had no reason to be blamed for. But he was an eccentric. He gets permission to start a little shrine, and that little shrine begun in around '25 or something, by 1937 was this tremendous basilica. Now you explain that. Meanwhile meanwhile, when they it's about nineteen o nine or something like that, when they decided to make a real have a church in honor of Saint Joseph, that is the Holy Cross Fathers of Mount Royal, they put him in charge of it as the guardian.
So he spent the rest of his life, about twenty years, as the guardian of this he saw it grow from being just a hole in the ground to being the it wasn't completed in his life, but it was very nearly completed, all the externals were. And, of course, associated with him, I mean with his with brother Andre was a were a lot of so called miracles. Now I say so called, I only know wonderful things happened. And if any of you've been up there, you've seen the evidence. Now, here I just want to leave this thought with you.
I I, you know, I can't exaggerate. Let me tell you what let me tell you what some of his peers thought of him. They called him they some of his own fellow religious. They called him the illiterate eccentric, the fake healer, the quack doctor, the old fool who pretended to perform miracles. You see, he was well thought of.
Now when that man died, there were a million mourners came to that facility. A million, or more. And as I say, as I was growing up, his name was very very prominent, even more so than Lourd or Bernadette. Now, when he died in his little room, he had a little room in the basilica. Here's what was found in his room, and I saw a picture of it.
Someone gave me a very, very thoughtfully gave me a biography of him yesterday. There's a picture of the room, of his little cell. There's a stove, remember this is Mount up in near near the city of Montreal. You need a stove up there if you're going to live during the winter. He had a stove, he had a bed, he had a chair, he had a desk, table.
The most impressive thing on the wall is a great big crucifix. Great big one. There's a little statue of Saint Joseph, and there's a picture of the sacred heart. His books, the bible, the missile, and Thomas Akempa's following of Christ, the imitation of Christ. That was it.
He owned two sutans or two cassocks, one for the weekdays and one for Sunday. That was it. But the point I wanna make is this, the crucifix on the wall. Now as I said several days ago, one of the big problems that many non Catholics have with Catholicism, people who become come into the church as converts have a problem, and some Catholics have a problem. They say that our attention to saints, our devotion to our blessed lady, that these distract us.
They pull us away from god, and god comes first. Or if you wish, our blessed lord, Jesus Christ, the son of Mary. And that's perfectly true. But my point is this, where you have authentic devotion to Mary or the saints, you have, a fortiori, authentic devotion to Jesus Christ, the son of God and God himself. Invariably, invariably.
Saints don't make the mistake of thinking saints are God. There's no there's not even a suggestion. And here remember, you're dealing here with an an illiterate man, a man of no education, no culture, an orphan. And yet he decent job before he became a Holy Cross brother because he didn't have the strength. He lived to be 91.
So the the point I want to make is this, don't underrate yourself. You are called upon to be saints, all of you, each one of us, not not collectively, individually. God calls us each one by name. He knows us, and he loves us, and he calls us to do what? His work.
And what is his work? Who knows? Who knows? You do what you what seems to need doing at the time. That's all I can say.
For the most part, the will of God is perfectly clear. It's just that we don't wanna see it sometimes. We and in many instances, we don't wanna see what ought to be seen, the immediate job we have to do. This man was scrubbing floors and opening and closing doors for forty years. That was his complete life.
And yet he prayed he was a man of great holiness, austerity, penance, and charity, and love, and benevolence. He was all I'm not exaggerating this, but he was an he was an eccentric. Eccentric. All the saints were eccentrics. Keep that in mind too.
Jesus Christ on the cross was an eccentric, believe me. So I come back to this Benedict the fifteenth, the simplest works. Now that's the superlative. Done with constant perfection. Spells out heroic virtue for the servants of God.
Don't forget it. Opus Dei, the work of the Lord. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit. Amen.