In poverty, he found the greatest of riches.

The ultimate disciple. The poor, itinerant, preaching brother of penance. He who suffered in the wilderness with Christ, he who was misunderstood, betrayed by some of his own brothers and who loved Christ so much that he became the Lovescape of Christ. This is St. Francis of Assisi.

His had been a grand ambition: He wanted, a merchant’s son though he was, to become a knight, to ascend through military prowess to the ranks of the nobility. He desired to be somebody, to be influential, to matter. But in his first foray into war, he was captured in a decisive battle between Assisi and the neighboring hill town of Perugia and spent a year in a Perugian prison. It is said that he tried to cheer his fellow soldiers, but his health began to decline; and when he returned to Assisi a year later, he was a broken man who had to spend another year recuperating.

When he finally was able to venture outdoors again, nothing seemed the same; the glow of nature no longer shone for him. Was he in a state of post-traumatic shock? Was he simply depressed? Whatever the case, the things that before had stimulated and excited him—the revels, the beauties of nature, singing, and dancing—no longer lifted his spirit, until one day when he heard about another call to arms, this time to join the papal forces in Apulia, south of Rome, under the command of the celebrated Walter of Brienne.

Francis was now awakened from his torpor and once again set forth with other Assisi cavaliers to join the papal armies. But after only one day on the road, he had a dream in the nearby city of Spoleto in which a voice asked him:

“Francis, who is it better to serve, the Lord or the servant?”
“Why, the Lord, of course.”
“Then why are you serving the servant?”

Then, in a moment of insight, of epiphany, Francis realized that he had it all wrong, and he returned to Assisi, not knowing what he was supposed to do, or even what he was searching for. He began to visit abandoned churches and caves where he prayed incessantly for enlightenment.

Then one day when he was riding his horse on the road below Assisi, he saw a leper on the road and was moved to get down off his high horse, as it were—a huge gesture for the ambitious young man—and not only place coins in the leper’s outstretched hand, but on an extraordinary impulse, he actually embraced the leper, realizing as he did so, that he was embracing the Lord, Jesus Christ, who is also the Servant. In embracing this servant, he was paradoxically embracing the Lord. He had relinquished the dominance of his ego. He was no longer paralyzed. He was free.

A Poor, Itinerant Preacher

In overcoming himself and embracing the leper, Francis found true Gospel poverty; he found a poverty that was a new kind of riches. Now he had only to rid himself of whatever else was keeping him from this hidden treasure he had found. He discovered what that was in the small chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, hidden among the woods and marshes of the plain where the lepers lived.

It was February 24, 1208, and Francis was attending Mass; at the reading of the Gospel, he heard the Gospel passage that changed his life. It not only completed his vision of poverty, but it also gave him the lifestyle he was to embrace. And this is how it was, as his first biographer, Thomas of Celano, narrates it:

“But when on a certain day the Gospel was read in that church, how the Lord sent his disciples out to preach, the holy man of God, assisting there, understood somewhat the words of the Gospel; and after Mass he humbly asked the priest to explain the Gospel to him more fully. When the priest had set forth in hearing that Christ’s disciples should not possess gold or silver or money; nor carry along the way scrip, or wallet, or bread, or a staff; that they should not have shoes, or two tunics; but that they should preach the kingdom of God and penance, he immediately cried out exultingly: `This is what I wish, this is what I seek, this is what I long to do with all my heart.’”

And that is what Francis did; he became what Jesus asked his disciples to become: a poor, itinerant, preaching brother of penance. He took to the road, he had no fixed abode, and he was brother to everyone he met along the way and to all of creation. And he became a brother in another way he never anticipated.

Other men joined him, and they became a brotherhood who embraced lepers and lived out the Gospel passage, the form of life given to them in the Gospel for the Mass of St. Matthias. St. Francis relates the coming of the brothers in these words:

“And after the Lord gave me some brothers, no one showed me what do; but the Most High revealed to me that I was to live after the manner of the Holy Gospel. And I had it written down in brief, simple words and the Lord Pope confirmed it for me. And those who came to receive this life gave everything to the poor, and they were happy with one tunic patched inside and out, and with a cord and breeches. And we had no desire for anything else.”

Accepting Death

And Francis himself began to fall deeper and deeper in love with the Christ he met in the leper and in all those other servants who were really Christ: the poor, the marginal, those rejected by society, the weak, the infirm, the powerless.

For, in loving Christ, Francis realized that the servant is the Lord, and the Lord is the servant. More importantly, he realized that the penance he was to preach, and his brothers were to preach, is the penance of conversion, of letting go of one’s ego and surrendering to a love which to others seems madness, but to the true lover is sanity.

True, even to a deeply committed disciple like St. Francis, the embrace of Christ can feel at times like annihilation, like death itself, because, in fact, one is dying to something.

One is dying to a false self that tries to be God, that tries to always be in control. But that dying is really life, the new life Jesus promised to those who relinquish their own willfulness as he did when he said in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will but as you will.” 

That surrendering of his own will to the Father’s will was the beginning of Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, for by accepting the cup the Father offers us, we accept death, but a death that is life-giving.

Many people—still living or long dead—guided me to the Franciscans. This is my vocation story.

The story of how I became a friar hinges largely on dead men. Admittedly, there were some men who were very much alive who pointed the way forward. But it seems that it was the dead men who really taught me how to live this way of life.

First, I want to thank God! It was God who called me to this consecrated religious life. At first, the call was both surprising and scary. The surprise of it fueled the scariness, and that led me to suppress the whole notion and carry it about my neck like some embarrassing albatross.

Yet this albatross led me into the quiet spaces of the heart, mind, and soul. It led me to pull back from the Greek campus life I was immersed in. It caused me to retreat from my aerospace engineering ambitions, back into the only thing I’d ever been sure about: my Catholic faith. This albatross slowed me down enough to actually listen to God’s still, small voice. Slowly, I came to know it as true. This was because the call of consumerism, materialism, and careerism no longer made any sense to me in comparison.

During that retreat from the loud and competitive life of a state university in the early 2000s, I attended daily Mass on campus and prayed with my grandmother’s rosary in an empty Newman Center chapel. There, the call became compelling so compelling that I just had to join religious life. And with supernaturally inspired endurance, I completed my engineering degree in four years. Two months later, I began formation in the Order of Friars Minor (also known as the Franciscans). But it was before leaving the university fraternity house to join the fraternity of the friars that I encountered the two dead men who would greatly impact my future.

Questioning My Call

The first came during a conversation about religion with my paternal grandmother. A Catholic, she told me to read Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain. She had told me that anyone who had grown up near the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky (as she and I both had) must read that book.

I later found out, after my grandmother died, that she had told my grandfather that very evening that I would go on to religious life and the priesthood. But before getting too far ahead of the story, what I need to say is it was through that dead man’s autobiography that I encountered my first vocation story.

The second dead man I met before I graduated from the university was discovered in a lecture hall. With only one elective at my disposal amid a jam-packed, four-year engineering curriculum, I opted to take a philosophy course. There I met an elder statesman who taught the young to think for themselves. Socrates and his dialogues woke me up to the non-scientific, non-mathematical side of university studies. And within that single undergraduate course, I began to catch fire for the Socratic method.

Oddly enough, the Socratic method served me well as a new postulant in the Franciscans. The word postulant is from the Latin postulare to postulate. My task as a postulant was to question my call, question my fitness for becoming a friar, and question the friars with whom I now lived. All those questions were to help facilitate my discernment about whether to leave or remain in the order.

A New Dream Realized

As my discernment blossomed, I encountered more dead men. First, and most obviously, I ran into St. Francis of Assisi. Through in-house courses and reading lists centered on Francis, I encountered the saint who started the group God had called me into. The stature of the man was beyond legendary. Most of what I was learning and reading from the mid-1200s was making Francis out to be a second Christ.

Having been a cradle Catholic and a daily Mass-goer for years, I was alarmed at this. Was he really that holy? With dozens of pieces of good artwork around the friary where I was living and with all the reading I was doing, this Francis figure certainly was omnipresent during my year as a postulant. Needless to say, Francis of Assisi overwhelmed me. It was not until much later that I came to see him as a brother and model, as opposed to an untouchable saint.

Yet, while being saturated and overwhelmed by Francis, I met another dead man who was far more comprehensible and impactful. For me, it came at a time when the so-called American dream had lost its luster. Following the call of God into consecrated life looked to be the remedy for what ailed me. Meanwhile, much had terrified and sickened me about the post-9/11 America of my college years. The bombing of Baghdad occurred during my first year at the University of Kentucky. It was a warlike society that did not fit in with my rural Catholic upbringing. And it was at that critical juncture that I met Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau was recommended to me amid a conversation over lunch at the friary. I was advised to read Walden. In turn, that book channeled my unbridled youth. It led me back to a place that had proved helpful in the past: a quiet, reflective place. Near Walden Pond, Thoreau challenged himself to discover how one could live a peaceful and fulfilled existence with as little as possible.

In hindsight, I realize that Walden helped bridge the divide between the American dream I had pursued for so long and the overwhelming, full-blown evangelical poverty of Francis of Assisi. The pages of Walden helped me loosen my grip enough to let American materialism fall away.

On the Road

Shortly thereafter I took a more confident leap into the second year of formation. That year is called novitiate. It is where novices, or beginners, live. There, another dead man showed up. His name was Father Arcadius Smolinski. Father Arcadius was a mixture of all the dead men I had “met” previously. He was an idealist who, like Thoreau, followed a unique call. Yet, like Socrates, he was old when he made his mark. And Father Arcadius lived the ideals of St. Francis of Assisi unlike anyone I had encountered.

And he was nearly a contemporary, having died only two years prior to our “meeting.” So, during my year as a novice in 2007, I was given a rough draft of Father Arcadius’ life one that was intended to promote his canonization document. I found him deeply inspiring due to his “friar-on-the-road” style. He literally walked around Europe for decades. Once, he even walked from Italy to Jerusalem and back!

I found myself wanting to keep pace with St. Francis. I wanted what he wanted. I had become ready to run the evangelical race with full force.

Father Arcadius saw himself as radically open to talking with anyone about Jesus Christ and his Church. He wanted to be on the road so that people who needed a friar could find one. Reading his story felt like my first encounter with Socrates and my days sitting by Walden Pond thrilling and inspiring. Meanwhile, Father Arcadius helped Francis of Assisi become more and more approachable.

I have told and retold Father Arcadius’ story to anyone who would listen. Other young friars were likewise inspired. Several of us became determined to seek permission to take to the road like Father Arcadius. We wanted to follow the pattern of Luke 9:3: “Take nothing for the journey.” After we begged our superiors and conscripted two 50-year-old friars, permission was granted. Thus, in the summer of 2009, four very green friars and two seasoned ones took to the roads of rural Virginia.

Fifty days of pilgrimaging ensued. We trekked across landscapes and into the lives of hundreds of benefactors. All told, we traveled some 325 miles. Our negative experiences were few, while our experiences of the true, good, and beautiful and of Christian charity were countless. During that summer, I felt as if we were bringing the lessons of my dead mentors to life. Or perhaps they helped bring me to life.

Indebted to St. Francis

Soon, I settled into the seminary. There I encountered more dead men. But it wasn’t the content at school that transformed me as much as the dead men within the Franciscan library at our friary. There, I encountered Peter John Olivi, Blessed John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.

These three medieval friars rocked my intellectual world. They helped sharpen my thinking in a manner that would have pleased Socrates. From Olivi, I gained courage to live the friar life of poverty through sound theory and demonstrable practice. From Scotus, I learned the art of the subtle argument, the centrality of Christ, and the beautiful significance of our Blessed Mother. It was the prowess of William of Ockham that deepened my appreciation for the scientific studies of my university years.

As the years continued to pass and the dead mentors mounted, I began to circle back to the particulars of my weighty call to live in the manner of St. Francis of Assisi. But before I could profess permanent and solemn vows to such a life, I was asked to spend a week reencountering Francis of Assisi through his written words. During that time, much to my surprise, I was no longer overwhelmed by Francis’ example. Instead, I found myself wanting to keep pace with him. I wanted what he wanted. I had become ready to run the evangelical race with full force and to do so in the style of St. Francis of Assisi.

And to finally speak in the present tense: The major twists and turns of the race that of final vows, seminary formation, and ordination are now behind me. Even the early challenges of my years in the priesthood are back there among the early mile markers. And all along the race, it has been dead men and their lessons that have kept me on course and on pace.

There and Back Again

Currently, I am responsible for the vocations of other men. As the director of vocations, I am the friar who helps the called to answer the call; a role I inherited from my predecessor, the late Father Don Miller, OFM, who helped guide me, in his own way, to the Franciscans.

I assist at the beginning of the process that I call “becoming a friar.” And trust me when I say that I am not the recruiter type who aggressively persuades a man to join up. Instead, trusting in the process that guided my own vocation, I attempt to stride alongside these men as they build upon and are influenced by those living and dead mentors who have carried them along.

Yes, I help men to fill out paperwork and get prepared to enter our formation program. But I’m also constantly asking them about what they read, who inspires them, what Gospel passages resonate in their hearts, what saints they pray to, and how they utilize the Blessed Mother’s intercession.

I am confident that the stories of Francis of Assisi, the characters of the Gospel, and the saints of old will assist and inspire these men far more than my own life, about which I imperfectly plod along.

Sidebar: The Labouré Society

The Labouré Society rescues Catholic vocations from the impediment of student loan debt. In the United States, there are thousands of men and women who wish to serve the Church, but are prevented from entering seminaries, convents, and religious communities because they have outstanding student loan debts. The result is or could be the loss of priests and religious at a time when the Church’s need for vocations is critical.

Using an innovative Catholic philanthropic fund-raising model, Labouré teaches these future priests and sisters how to raise funds for vocations. They raise funds as a collective class of 2022 future priests and religious. Using this model, they are able to pay back six-figure debt in 12-18 months rather than 12-18 years. The results are hundreds of vocations saved.

Operating since 2003, Labouré has delivered more than 285 men and women into formation. It has awarded more than $6.4 million to aspirants to free them from student loan debts. Ninety percent of donor gifts go to aspirants. Over 80 percent of those aspirants are currently in formation or have gone on to ordination or profession of final vows.

The Labouré Society, named after St. Catherine Labouré, who experienced difficulty in her own vocation journey, exists to help men and women achieve their religious dreams. The society’s vision is “a world where Catholic priests, sisters, and brothers exist in adequate numbers to fill the world’s needs, where young people everywhere who feel they are called to the priesthood or religious life have the opportunity to pursue that calling.”

To learn more, go to LaboureSociety.org.

American Experience on PBS, October 8 and 9, check local listings

Kids today have no shortage of distractions: Social media, video games, and streaming seem to be the preferred time sucks for young people. They’ve never been so connected and yet so detached. And many would struggle to imagine a time when kids didn’t have Google or Snapchat to experience or engage with the world. Once upon a time, children went outside. Families of the 19th and early 20th centuries didn’t have flat screens or Wi-Fi to keep them entertained. They went to the circus.

PBS’ four-hour plunge into the history and influence of this treasured pastime is as engrossing as it is overwhelming. On the surface, this documentary is about the roots of the circus in the American soil; how showman (and shyster) P.T. Barnum had the vision and dexterity to grow its popularity; how circus folk banded together in a brutal, itinerant lifestyle to create a ragtag family; and how generations of Americans found a sense of wonder under the big top.

Like all poorly regulated forms of entertainment, life for early circus performers wasn’t pretty—and as they traveled across the United States, their arrivals were often met with disdain. In the early 19th century, on the heels of a religious revival in this country, performers endured the wrath of church leaders who viewed entertainment of any kind as sinful. But Barnum’s concept could not be cast out. The lure of the acrobats, clowns, contortionists, oddities, and an ever-changing menagerie of animals proved too enticing for American audiences. We were hooked.

The Circus, meticulously researched and rendered, is a celebration of ingenuity, ability, and agility. It is an homage to the faceless entertainers who devoted their lives to the circus and its code. One early critic called performers “nomadic ruffians.” But history has a kinder retrospect. They were pioneers of entertainment—ambassadors of escapism.

One historian in the film says it best: “There is a need for the human being to try things for no reason whatsoever.”

A quiet leader, Pope Paul VI guided the Church through the sweeping and controversial reforms of the Second Vatican Council during turbulent times.

Pope Paul VI, despite his enormous impact on the Church—the most obvious being the reform of the liturgy brought about by the Second Vatican Council—is curiously obscure to many Americans. He is perhaps best known for his 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae” (“Of Human Life”), which upheld the Church’s controversial ban on the use of artificial birth control.

Paul VI has the disadvantage of being sandwiched between two far more charismatic personalities: Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II (elected after Pope John Paul I’s monthlong reign). His was often the unglamorous work of a bureaucrat, not of a beloved papa figure like John or a superstar evangelist like John Paul II. But as the man charged with implementing an enormously controversial council and shepherding the Church in its transition to facing the modern world as a renewed evangelistic force, he faced titanic challenges with intelligence, resolve, and deep holiness.

Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini was born on September 26, 1897, the last pope born in the 19th century. He was ordained in 1920, became a bishop in 1954, and was named a cardinal in 1958. He was a cleric groomed for the papacy by his work in the Vatican, serving in the Secretariat of State (1922–54) and witnessing the torments of what was arguably the most violent century in history.

At the pope’s request, from 1939 to 1947, Montini created an office that worked to find over 11 million displaced persons and provide refugees with shelter, food, and other material assistance. In addition, he helped escaped Allied POWs, Jews, anti-Fascists, Socialists, Communists, and others. It gave him a unique perspective and skill set for the work to which God would call him when Pope John XXIII died in the summer of 1963, having convened the Second Vatican Council in October 1962.

John XXIII initially hoped the council would be able to finish its work by December 1962, after a single two-month session. Montini, with a more realistic grasp of the immense challenges facing the Church, remarked of his friend wryly, “This old boy does not know what a hornets’ nest he is stirring up.”

As pope, Paul VI accomplished so much that it is difficult to summarize in a mere 2,500 words. His biographer, Peter Hebblethwaite, gives a reasonable assessment of his crowded papal career (stretching from June 1963 to August 1978) with these words:

“He managed to complete the council without dividing the Church. He reformed the Roman Curia without alienating it. He introduced collegiality without ever letting it undermine his papal office. He practiced ecumenism without impairing Catholic identity. He had an Ostpolitik [way of negotiating with Communists] that involved neither surrender nor bouncing aggressivity. He was ‘open to the world’ without ever being its dupe. He pulled off the most difficult trick of all: combining openness with fidelity.”

Shepherd of Vatican II

Pope Paul’s most obvious achievement was, of course, to shepherd the Church through the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the largest rethink of its tradition since the Council of Trent, 400 years earlier. He understood, better than most, that the paradigms that had governed the Church’s engagement with the world since the 16th century were no longer sufficient.

This did not mean that the Gospel was inadequate, of course. But it did mean that the Church needed to return to the sources of its tradition—particularly the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church—and approach the world with a view not of defending a fortress under assault, but of proclaiming good news as the early Church had done.

Paul VI understood that the Church needed to proclaim the faith with a unified voice, an irony given the hostility the council would meet. The priorities he laid out for the council were a better understanding of the Church, Church reforms, advancing the unity of Christianity, and dialogue with the world. He requested the council fathers to avoid new dogmatic definitions and to restate the faith in simple language.

For Catholics born before 1960, perhaps the most notable change was in the liturgy. Priests faced the congregation instead of the altar and spoke in the vernacular instead of Latin, and laypeople were encouraged to take a more active role in worship.

Pope Paul VI was also notably solicitous of the goodwill of the representatives of other Christian traditions at the council, sought their forgiveness for the sins of Catholics that had contributed to the disunity of Christendom, and took particular care to remind the council that many bishops could not attend because they lived under Communist rule. He understood that Christians now stood together in a world that both desperately needed the Gospel and presented the Church with a host of threats that it could not afford to meet with internecine squabbles.

Catholic Ecumenist

Pope Paul VI sought to affirm whatever could be affirmed in common with those from other faith traditions. “Unitatis Redintegratio” (“Decree on Ecumenism”) and “Nostra Aetate” (“Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions”) are the two great models for this approach. Compare them with the documents of the Council of Trent, and the immense shift in tone is plain. Trent reveals the mind of an embattled Church, struggling to condemn one false proposition after another in the heat of combat with the Reformation.

At Vatican II, under Paul VI’s guidance, the Church emphatically shifts to a glass-half-full approach to other Christian traditions and to religious traditions beyond the Christian sphere. Again and again, the Church, while not papering over the real differences between the Catholic communion and other traditions, focuses on what can be affirmed in common.

As a result, Pope Paul made unprecedented strides in healing some of the Church’s ancient and open wounds. For instance, his meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in Jerusalem led to rescinding the excommunications of the Great Schism of 1054. Similarly, after nearly 2,000 years of what had amounted to monologue (and countless shameful persecutions by Christians culminating in the horrors of the Shoah) he inaugurated respectful interreligious dialogue with various representatives of the Jewish people, as well as conversations with other religious traditions, both Christian and non-Christian.

Globe-Trotting Evangelist

Paul VI took his name in honor of St. Paul and, like his namesake, was driven by an evangelistic imperative that governed everything he did. Indeed, he declared in “Evangelii Nuntiandi ” (“On Evangelization in the Modern World”): “Evangelizing is, in fact, the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of his death and glorious resurrection.”

Accordingly, he became, like his namesake, something new in the history of the papacy: a globe-trotting evangelist. He visited six continents. He was a kind of prototype for the great popes who have followed him, leaving the Vatican to bear witness to the flock around the world and to call into the fold those not yet baptized.

This drove his reform of the liturgy as well. Vatican II’s “Sacrosanctum Concilium” (“Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy”) had declared that “all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active, participation in liturgical celebrations, which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy” (14). The Ordinary Form promulgated by Paul VI sought that, and the goal was in large measure achieved. The implementation of the Extraordinary Form in 2007, while a clear conciliatory gesture to those who prefer Latin over the vernacular, was not a rebuke of Paul’s reform of the Mass. The most obvious evidence of that fact is that the Ordinary Form remains the Ordinary Form.

Defender of the Poor

Pope Paul VI was, in many ways, “to the manor born.” His mother was from a noble family. His father had been a member of Parliament, his brothers a doctor and lawyer. This was reflected in his own career: He never pastored a parish and was funneled straight into curial work. He served three popes before he became pope himself and was accustomed to moving at the very highest levels of the Church.

He was, however, also a committed disciple of Jesus Christ who understood that the Church was called to model Jesus’ teaching to “let the greatest among you be as the youngest, and the leader as the servant” (Lk 22:26). In a dramatic gesture of renunciation, during the Second Vatican Council, he descended the steps of the papal throne, ascended to the altar, and laid the papal tiara on it. Later, the tiara was sold and the money was given to charity. No pope since has worn one.

Pope Paul understood the threats and opportunities confronting the least of these in a world where economic extremes were growing, but economic opportunity was growing as well. His great encyclical “Populorum Progressio” (“The Progress of Peoples”) addressed this, proposing a holistic view of the human person who, to be sure, does not live by bread alone, yet whose physical needs could not be ignored either. He called for complete solidarity with the least of these and a view of material goods as entrusted to the rich for the sake of the poor.

This would enable the poor to sufficient means not only to live, but also to participate in the kingdom of God. His goal in this was spiritual, not political, social, or materialistic.

As he said: “Founded to build the kingdom of heaven on earth rather than to acquire temporal power, the Church openly avows that the two powers—Church and State—are distinct from one another; that each is supreme in its own sphere of competency. But since the Church does dwell among men, she has the duty ‘of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.’ Sharing the noblest aspirations of men and suffering when she sees these aspirations not satisfied, she wishes to help them attain their full realization.”

Defender of Liberty

Pope Paul VI understood one of the great developments of doctrine that the Church slowly came to grasp: Though “error has no rights,” nonetheless, persons in error do have rights. It was this development that led to the formulation of the principles enshrined in “Dignitatis Humanae” (“Declaration on Religious Liberty”).

Faced with a world where a third of the population were bound under the yoke of Communism, the Church profoundly stated the Christian doctrines of freedom of conscience and the necessity for Catholics to uphold liberty for all—not merely for Catholics.

Paul VI put legs on this by undertaking dialogue with a host of people and insisting that such dialogue be predicated on the equal dignity of all participants. This did not mean that he sacrificed the reality that the fullness of truth subsists in the Church, which is the body of Christ. Nor did he see dialogue as an end in itself. Rather, he had the confidence of St. Thomas Aquinas that any movement by anybody toward the truth was movement toward Jesus Christ.

For this reason, he did not fear religious liberty since, with St. Paul, he knew that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17).

Defender of Life

At the same time, Paul VI understood the distinction between liberty and license. The misuse of freedom leads, as he saw, not to greater freedom, but to slavery, the consequence of sin. The most famous and countercultural expression of this Christian conviction was his restatement of traditional Catholic sexual ethics in “Humanae Vitae,” which insisted that the sexual act was intended only for marriage between one man and one woman, that our sexual nature was made by God to bring forth children, that thwarting that nature by artificial contraception was destructive and warping to our understanding of human sexuality, and that the embrace of a contraceptive culture would inevitably lead to the devaluation of human life and human relationships, as well as the rise of an abortion culture.

Suffering Saint

Pope Paul’s life in the center of the maelstrom of change in the ’60s and ’70s made him a lightning rod for hostility, which he bore with heroic courage. In his piety, he was every inch an ordinary Catholic. He had a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, naming her Mother of the Church and asking for her intercession for the council.

Paul VI suffered much in his lifetime. He witnessed the agonies of two world wars. He loved and admired Pope Pius XII, and it hurt him to see that pope accused of failing in his duty during the Holocaust. He suffered as well from accusations of heterodoxy after the council and from the fury heaped on his head for “Humanae Vitae.” Unlike many of his predecessors, he did not excommunicate opponents and bore much opprobrium from enemies—as well as from those who thought him weak for not punishing those enemies.

In addition to the controversy, near the end of his life, his friend Aldo Moro, the former prime minister of Italy, was kidnapped by terrorists and held hostage for 55 days. Pope Paul begged for his life and even offered to exchange places with him, to no avail. Moro was shot to death and his body left in the trunk of a car. Pope Paul, heartbroken, celebrated his state funeral Mass.

As the summer of 1978 wore on, his health failed. He died on August 6, 1978. His burial was characteristically humble in obedience to his will that stipulated he be placed in the “true earth” with no ornate sarcophagus.

One of his last writings sums up well his life of patient Christian suffering: “What is my state of mind? Am I Hamlet? Or Don Quixote? On the left? On the right? I do not think I have been properly understood. I am filled with ‘great joy.’ With all our affliction, I am overjoyed (2 Cor 2:4).”

Two close friends of this popular Latin American saint have a conversation about his life and love for the Salvadoran people.

On March 24, 2015, thousands of Salvadoran Catholics and people from other parts of the world gathered in the capital of El Salvador, San Salvador, for the 35th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Two months later, on May 23, another transcendent—and perhaps the most important—event in the modern history of El Salvador occurred: Archbishop Oscar Romero, martyr of the Catholic Church, was beatified, thus becoming the first Blessed of El Salvador. His canonization is set to take place on October 14 in Rome.

I returned to my country for this significant anniversary and met the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Salvador, Jos é Gregorio Rosa Chavez. We had both lived in community with Romero in the late 1970s. Rosa Chavez was the rector of the San Jos é de la Montaña Central Seminary in San Salvador in 1977—the same year that Romero was appointed archbishop of the archdiocese.

Romero lived for a short time in the seminary where I was a seminarian. During that time, I accompanied him on his trips through the Salvadoran towns and had the opportunity to photograph him with his people. Rosa Chavez was the cohost of a radio program, Sentir con la Iglesia (To Feel with the Church). In a way, both of us were inspired by Romero to live our vocation to the Church through the media.

The following is my interview with Bishop Jos é Gregorio Rosa Chavez, just prior to Romero’s May 2015 beatification.

People ask me what Romero was like. But it is difficult for me to answer accurately. For me, he was a human being who surrendered himself to god and his people. But back then, when I met him, I did not realize the true dimension of the man and what he now means for the world. Could you tell me about the human side of Romero?

He was reserved, a person of few words, discreet, timid, introspective, thoughtful, often worried, sometimes fearful, sometimes hesitant. That’s how you and I knew him. Romero was also a man of strong character but in a humane way. No one would dare stop him on the way to church for his personal prayers. He enjoyed being with simple people. He did not like being with the important people because he saw a lot of hypocrisy in them. He was very demanding of himself and of others. He was scrupulous about not offending the Lord. Some of his internal conflicts had to do with his character. That was one of the crosses he carried but, in the end, managed to overcome when he realized the love his people had for him.

When Father Octavio Ortiz Luna [a Salvadoran Catholic priest] was killed [on January 20, 1979], we all went to the funeral Mass. People surrounded the bishops, and Romero uttered a beautiful statement: “How well people respond when we know how to love them.” At that point, he felt very much embraced by the people.

On a theological level, I understood the meaning of being embraced by people; there is a kind of reciprocal affection and commitment. That is very much the tone given by Pope Francis when he says that one must be a shepherd with the “smell of the sheep.”

At the international level, Romero advocated a dynamic change in a preference for the poor. Was he radical, or was it simply that he had always had that sentiment for the poor in his heart?

One Wednesday, I interviewed him and asked him, “They say that you have been converted; what do you think of that?” And he said, “I would say that it is not a conversion but an evolution.” When he was the bishop in another diocese, he saw reality in a different way. Then he arrived here, saw the reality of ingrained injustice, and realized that he had to accompany the people in denouncing the injustice. He was attentive to what God was asking of him.

In the Diocese of San Miguel, it was a quiet, nonthreatening atmosphere, and suddenly here he encounters all the injustice of military, economic, and political power that massacred people. So he had to respond to that reality.

There is another question that was posed: “Aren’t you afraid that they will kill you?” His answer: “I’m not afraid, but apprehensive. God goes with me, and, if something happens to me, I am willing.”

That enduring sense of martyrdom linked to his ministry ran throughout his time in San Salvador.

Romero is a martyr for faith. What is the significance of that?

The case of Romero marks a stage in Church [history] regarding martyrdom that highlights the position of the Vatican on the model of pastor. Romero was a product of the Second Vatican Council; he is a model of the pastoral thrust of the council. His ministry also reflects the world Synod of Bishops in“Pastores Gregis” [an apostolic exhortation by St. John Paul II], where the profile of the bishop is described: to be pastor of the poor, fighter for justice, defender of the weak, a prophet who denounces. When one reads the document, one could easily say that profile describes Romero.

Romero’s death is martyrdom for the faith. It wasn’t the typical martyrdom [brought on] by pagans. People who called themselves Christians killed him, people who went to Mass on Sundays and received Communion; that is unusual.

How can that be explained?

Romero was killed because he followed Jesus Christ in his choice for the poor, for justice, for human dignity, for a more dignified life for all, which is what the Church demands today. So that is a recent rationale for the argument that makes theologians say that he is a martyr of the Church. In the doctrine of the Church, this marks a novelty and an advance. There are many cases like this, so they will now be understood as martyrdom.

Thirty-five years ago, you wrote a symbolic letter to Romero after his death, in which you gave a general idea of how the people were doing. If you were to write it again, what would you say?

Yes, I remember that letter. I wrote it a month after his murder. In it, I told him that people were going to put flowers at his tomb, that we felt as if he were still among us, that the problems in the country continued, that the people needed hope, and that his words were very alive in their hearts. It was a letter that came out of my heart. Yesterday, at the anniversary memorial, we could see Romero still present on the lips of people—believers and nonbelievers.

Romero is an interesting phenomenon. A journalist was asking me if we would forget his legacy over time. Note that it doesn’t work like that with him. Usually as time goes by, you forget people who have died. Here it is the opposite; more and more people know and love him. And what will happen on May 23 is that we are going to see a saint, a saint who impacts the whole world.

Those feelings are the same today. There are still people carrying flowers to his grave, and there are problems in the country. There is a lack of hope. Why doesn’t the situation in El Salvador change?

I have also been asked why the process of canonization took so long. For 20 years, we had the same government guiding the country, one that rejected all that Romero had done, who never spoke well of him. One slogan that the people chanted during the Saturday Mass was: “If Romero is holy, why did it take so long?” One reason was that the government did not support this process and did not let it proceed. This same mind-set hindered a solution for the roots of the crisis that led to the civil war. It was a structural crisis of injustice, inequity, and exclusion.

That was the tone for 20 years. Then the gap widened, and the poor became poorer and the rich became richer. Mauricio Funes arrived in 2009, changed direction, and emphasized social progress. So now Romero was resurrected in the public discourse. That’s how we arrived at the current government, which took a step closer to national dialogue and created an autonomous council, in which all are represented. Romero was killed because he followed Jesus Christ in his choice for the poor, for justice, for human dignity.

And there I am with three other representatives of the Catholic Church. An action plan has been developed with goals, budget, international assistance, and a period of five years for implementation. We are entering a new stage in the history of the country, and the world is aware of this. There is worldwide sympathy within the United Nations and the European Union for this initiative.

We did not have this before, but now we have broad international support, and there is optimism that we are going to take off.

What has been the prophetic role of the church after the death of Romero?

There is a growing self-awareness in the Latin American Church. After the 1979 General Conference of the Latin American Episcopacy and Caribbean (CELAM) in Puebla, Mexico, the Latin American Church missed the opportunity to emerge as a force for justice, as if disinterested in the world it had to serve. Hence, its prophetic role was diminishing. But then the more recent 2007 CELAM in Aparecida, Brazil, brought back that fervor. And there was also Jorge Bergoglio, the current pope, who as a cardinal coordinated the team that drafted the final document. That connection gave his pontificate the link to the Church’s role in history as a prophetic Church, and that is why Pope Francis has so much affection for Romero.

There is so much similarity in both [men]. The magazine New Life of Spain published an article where I compared the two of them in seven points. For Pope Francis, Romero incorporates what he wants for the Church and for the world.

What would these seven points be?

Marian devotion, so deep in both; shepherds with the smell of sheep; a Church for the poor and with the poor; a vision for a missionary Church that proclaims the paschal mystery; seeing in the poor the flesh of Christ; a Church that is present in the world as yeast, as light and salt. Finally, both evangelize as they are, what they do, and with what they say.

The similarity between both shepherds is amazing. Since you knew Romero so personally as the rector of the seminary, what was your personal experience with him?

You know, when he was named archbishop, I was just beginning in the seminary. That same month and year, we were reopening it after it had been closed during a period of crisis. We removed cobwebs, cleaned, swept, mopped; it was like a building ruined. Romero arrived, and he asks, “Do you have a little space for me to stay?”

So we prepared an apartment for him. He lived with us for several months in his quarters, where he set up his office. It was there that he started something interesting, the radio program Sentir con la Iglesia, broadcast on Wednesdays. He was the host. There were two microphones, and we talked with each other about issues regarding the Church and the country.

I was already familiar with his method of communication from the time when I was an adolescent seminarian. When he had been in San Miguel before that, he had a radio show that was called Oracian de la Mañana (Morning Prayer). One day, we ate dinner together as we were listening to Vatican Radio, and Romero said to me, “Let’s go to the sacristy after dinner.”

There [in the sacristy] was his recording equipment, and he was getting ready to record his radio program. I was standing by, listening to what he was saying, when he suddenly said, “I have next to me a seminarian by the name of Gregorio Rosa, who will say a few words.” He gave me the microphone without any prior warning, so I improvised a few words. He continued recording, and at the end he said, “That turned out very nicely.” I remember that phrase very well; it was the beginning of my vocation as a communicator. He was passionate about the radio. This shy man who we met with those human limitations became a prophet of the people in front of the microphone. There the spirit of God moved him.

If you read his diary, this topic [of the radio program] appears almost every day: What if the radio program was ruined? What if it was sabotaged? What if the program did not go well or didn’t air? The radio would always be on his mind. One time, they [the Salvadoran government] almost blew up the radio [station], and he uttered this famous phrase, “Even if we lost our radio station, each one of us must become the microphone of God.”

I am like the 100 million Americans who make New Year’s resolutions: 80 percent don’t keep them. Why can’t I stick to my doctor’s and dentist’s orders?

Faithfulness to the “in-between time” is critical for both medical and spiritual health. Good habits, disciplines, and routines keep us in good shape. The value of habits, such as eating right and prayer, calls us to daily work. They seem insignificant, but they are the reason we can celebrate feasts and good health.

I compare my medical life to the liturgical seasons of the Church. The big feasts are going to my doctor, dentist, or a routine medical test. Lent is the time before medical tests. Good Friday is when I get a tough diagnosis. When I finish my annual physical, it’s Easter for me!

Ordinary Time

Ordinary Time is important because it is the middle work—our compliance to medical and spiritual duties—that is critical preparation to make the bigger feasts happen. The feasts may get all the attention, but my faithfulness to the tedious work of this time goes hand in hand with happy, holy moments.

Ordinary Time encompasses that part of the liturgical year that does not fall within the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter. The Catholic Church celebrates two periods of the year as Ordinary Time. It can last up to 34 weeks, depending on where the feasts fall.

The first period begins after the feast of the Baptism of the Lord has ended until the Tuesday evening before Ash Wednesday. The second period of Ordinary Time runs from the Monday after Pentecost until Evening Prayer is said the night before Advent begins. This includes Christ the King Sunday—the final Sunday of Ordinary Time.

Not So Ordinary

Ordinary Time isn’t ordinary. It celebrates “the mystery of Christ in all its aspects.”

The “stuff in the middle” is important if we try to be good stewards of our bodies and souls. The humdrum middle should be celebrated. When people are honored for 25 years on a job, or being married for decades, we are really celebrating their faithful time in the midst of life.

The stuff of our Ordinary Time is challenging. Like the white stuff in Oreo cookies, or the middle pieces of a good loaf of bread, it is simply a part of the whole. There can be no extraordinary feasts like Easter or Christmas—or a good diagnosis—without our work of Ordinary Time. Blessed be the middle!

Handy Tips

• Let the green liturgical color call you to your medical and spiritual duties.
• Remember that an anniversary or retirement celebrates ordinary faithfulness.
• Acknowledge that if you stop your duties, you can start them again anytime.

Next Month: God Bless Parish Nurses