Today is the feast day of St John Neumann, once a parish priest in my diocese. He ministered to the German immigrants from whom I am descended. He built churches, including one at which I often attend daily Mass, not more than a long stone's throw from where I sit typing this note. He built schools, and brought sisters of the Third Order of St Francis from Munich to Buffalo, where they taught and attempted to civilize generation after generation of aggravating little pagans like myself. Where would any of us have been without them?St John has had a major influence in the lives of Catholics in western New York. Western New York remains ignorant and unappreciative. The high school named after him closed thirty years ago, and is now part of a wondrous office park. The sisters' residence, again, hardly more than a stone's throw from where I sit, is now an apartment complex. The grounds will be maintained as a town park. That is the world we live in.
Prayer for the Intercession of St John Neumann:
O Saint John Neumann, your ardent desire of bringing all souls to Christ impelled you to leave home and country; teach us to live worthily in the spirit of our Baptism which makes us all children of the one Heavenly Father and brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, the first-born of the family of God.
Obtain for us that complete dedication in the service of the needy, the weak, the afflicted and the abandoned which so characterized your life. Help us to walk perseveringly in the difficult and, at times, painful paths of duty, strengthened by the Body and Blood of our Redeemer and under the watchful protection of Mary our Mother.
May death still find us on the sure road to our Father's House with the light of living Faith in our hearts. Amen.
