A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus wanted to set out for Galilee. But first, he came upon Philip. Follow me, Jesus said. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the same town as Andrew and Peter.
Philip sought out Nathaniel, said to him, we have found the one Moses spoke of in the law. The prophet too, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth. Nathaniel's response to that was, can anything good come from Nazareth? And Philip replied, well, come and see for yourself. When Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him, he said, how do you know me?
Nathaniel said, before Philip called you, Jesus answered, I saw you under the fig tree. Rabbi, said Nathaniel, you are the son of god. You are the king of Israel. Jesus responded, do you believe just because I told you I saw you under a fig tree? You will see much greater things than that.
And then Jesus went on to tell them, I solemnly assure you, you shall see the sky open and the angels of god ascending and descending on the son of man. And this is the gospel of the lord. Very mysterious. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
Today, we are celebrating the feast of Saint John Neumann, n e u m a n n, mostly identified with Philadelphia. That's that city between New York and Baltimore. But let me tell you, in the times of Saint John Neumann, Philadelphia was the top of the heap on the Eastern Coast, or or pretty near that. It was a city of the elite. Now it's very interesting that I guess it's not a coincidence at all, that yesterday we had the feast of our first USA citizen, Elizabeth Ann Seaton, that's our neighbor right up the road.
She's buried up there in a beautiful beautiful basilica. People live here, a lot of them don't even know she's up there. They don't realize how much history of the church America is right up the road in Emmitsburg. Now, these two people, Elizabeth rather let me put it this way, John Neumann was born in 1811, and Elizabeth died in '21 1821. So their lives overlapped by ten years or so at the beginning.
He died in 1860 just before the World War I mean, Civil War. Both neither one of them reached the age of 50. One was 47 and one was 49. That's very interesting. Now, they're put together.
Yesterday, we had Saint Elizabeth Seaton, and today we're having Saint John Neumann. Now the contrast between these two human beings is enormous. Elizabeth Seton came from New York from a very wealthy not just a wealthy family, but also a a family socially elite, the top of the heap. She was Episcopalian, had had Episcopalian ministers in her background. She came from a very solid, you know, American USA stock.
She even spoke the English language well. She made a very fancy marriage with a very fine young man, also Episcopalian. As you know the story, they lived happily together for a few years, had a number of children, and then he was struck down, he lost his fortune, then he lost his health, and then he died and left Elizabeth Ann Seton a widow with about three or four children Anyway, she had a number of children because as most children do, they played a big role in her life. Now, she had everything going for Because even in her widowhood, she didn't want for anything. She came of a very solid family in New York.
But she she made a big mistake. She and her husband, as you note, in order to well, to do something for his tuberculosis, they thought maybe a spell of living in Italy would help. So they they went to Italy and they landed in a in a very fine Italian family who was not only a fine family, but they also happened to be very, very devout Catholics. That was her first experience with Catholics, and you know they were at the bottom of the heap. You couldn't get much lower than a Catholic up in New York in her day.
And both she and her husband became Catholics. Now and her family, of course, as they had to do, they simply disinherited her. They would have nothing more to do with her. She was penniless. So she fled to Canada where she thought she'd find a more sympathetic, compassionate environment.
She met some Sophicians, and those men being very sensual, they said, you better go back to Baltimore, Saint Mary's Seminary over in Baltimore. Sophicians. So she came back to there, went to the Sophicians on Old Packer Street, then having these children and needing to educate them, she opened up her own little school. And that's the beginning of the parochial school system in The United States, upon which the Catholic church in USA is, believe me, built. Now, she went from there because other women joined her because they thought it was a nice thing to do, and they formed a little religious group.
They moved up to Emmitsburg, became associated with the Sisters of Charity, and you know the rest of the story. Now when we come to to this poor little guy, you know, someone in 1972 when Benedict pronounced him blessed, Time Magazine referred to him as the saint they almost forgot. John Neumann was a man you could easily forget. First of all, he was only about five feet two or four inches tall. He never got a mastery of the English language.
He came over from Bohemia practically exaggerating this in the least. He came to The United States. He had practically finished his studies for the priesthood in Bohemia, but they said we have too many priests. Go and see what you can do for yourself. So the thing he thought he could do for himself was to become a missionary to the land of the Indians.
That's us. So he came over here, landed with about 50¢ in his I'm not exaggerating this, with only the clothes on his back. A poor little guy, very shy, nothing to look at, oh, easily overlooked. They almost forgot him. He went to the arch to the Bishop of New York, and, they ordained him, and then he went up to Erie and moved around in Pennsylvania.
And anyway, he wound up. Here's a man whose English was terribly poor, whose stature was minimal, who was very shy, who had practically nothing going for him except he was a Catholic priest. They made him bishop of Philadelphia, probably the most elite seat, socially speaking. And he was a washout. Nobody I mean, nobody.
But, you know, the people of any I mean, I'm talking about Catholics now. He was never accepted there. Even at his funeral, they made fun of the fact that it wasn't a place that even pickpockets would go because there weren't many people there worth picking the pockets of. That's a quotation from the bulletin. Well, that was the comment on on the the bishop's death.
He died in 1860 just before the civil war. Now the point I wanna make is this. These two people were in huge contrast no matter how you look at it, And they're put back to back by the church. And if there are any two saints that we can take to heart and say, I'd like I can do what they did because that'd be almost easy, really. There it.
There it. This man asked to be relieved of the bishopric of Philadelphia. He know he he knew he wasn't being accepted. He had a very low esteem of himself. I'm not exaggerating any of this.
You can verify it. He's it in the New Catholic Encyclopedia. When when, Benedict XV proposed him for canonization in '72 or whenever, The he said here's the gist of it. He said, the main thing about being a saint is to do simple things in as perfect a way as you can in spite of difficulties. Three things.
And I would add a fourth for the love of God. Because if that's of course, that's a but don't forget that that's the beginning and the end in the middle. But notice that you do simple things, but you do them as perfectly as you can. If you're laying bricks, you lay them as carefully and perfectly as you can. If you're a doctor, you are the best doctor you can be.
You don't become the best kind of a doctor by saying your morning prayers, do you? You become the best kind of a doctor by saying your morning prayers and being a best kind of doctor, MD. And that doesn't come with your mother's milk. You get the point. Now, Elizabeth Seton, here she is, even in spite of her widow, which was a tremendous, is one of the fine romantic marriages that we read about, where where where there was real good love and and Christianity.
We're both good solid Christians. And then she becomes a Catholic. And I think how many of us who who sit in this church, how many of us have made any kind of a sacrifice comparable to what that woman did when she became a captain? Her her family, her her uncle who was a bishop, they had nothing more to do her with her, even for her children, and even with money. They disinherited her.
She fled to Canada to escape really starvation, but in those days a woman couldn't work except at one profession and that wasn't exactly the kind she wanted, you know, the earth the oldest one. And on the other hand, here you have this man coming over here from Bohemia with nothing going for him, who becomes the bishop of Philadelphia in an embarrassment to a lot of people, and they are both saints in the Holy Roman Catholic Church. I want to just bring out one thing. There's so much you could say about these people. They are so much one of us.
Because in many ways, Neumann had a tougher time in many ways. He had a much tougher time than Elizabeth. Because once she got in touch with the Sufficients here in Baltimore, things got pretty clear for her. They were back over the whole way. Remember, they founded Mount St.
Mary's, right, which was, as you know, close to what what became St. Joseph College. The two things that this little German or Slovenian priest did when he became a priest and roamed around Pennsylvania was this: catechisms, parishes, and parish schools. And you know what, in 1990, in the last fifteen years, we've eliminated the catechism, and we've eliminated the parish schools. And we are now left with parishes, and we won't have them much longer unless we do something about the catechism and about the schools.
In other words, education, Catholic education of youth. Today, and I'm not the most ignorant person about Catholic education, I don't know where what college you could go to outside of these that have just been recently founded where you can say you will get a Catholic education. Most of these schools, no matter what they call themselves, are not Catholic in their education. So where are we today? Neumann you see, and this ties in with the courier of ours.
When the courier of ours went to that beat down parish, the first thing he did was to try to rebuild church and to teach catechism. I mean, catechism catechesis. Doesn't mean question and answer. See, somebody's off the track. Even these saints, Elizabeth Seton and Neumann, were off the track or were off the track because we're not on the same track as church, believe me.
And that's where we come in. We we are all called to holiness. That that's something we ought to get in our little brains. We are all called to be saints because you're either gonna be saints or you're gonna be lost. And how do you do it?
You do it, as Benedictus said, you do it by doing the simplest things of life as perfectly as you can in spite of difficulties, and I add for the love of God. So be it. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.