Aug 29, 2024 | SPIRITUALITY
175TH, ANNIVERSARY OF PRIESTLY ORDINATION
SERVANT OF GOD THE REV. JAN SCHNEIDER
RUDZICZKA, CHURCH of the Holy Trinity – June 23, 2024.
Msgr. Waldemar Musioł
Beloved in Christ, Sisters and Brothers!
Venerable Sisters of Mary Immaculate! Dear fellow Priests!
As I approach the Lord’s altar today, I bring with you, Dear Sisters and Dear Parishioners, heartfelt gratitude, remembrance and hope. First of all, gratitude to God for the person and work of God’s servant Fr. John Schneider, whose footprints of childlike feet, and even more of childlike faith and trust in God and Mary, are preserved by this Parish Community and this temple. Although born in 1824 in nearby Mieszkowice, today part of the parish of Szybowice, he spent his childhood years in poverty and deprivation, but here he was surrounded by the love and supported by the testimony of his parents’ faith, the example of his father’s diligence on the local parish farm, and carried along by the prayers and educational support of the priests, especially Father Pastor Antoni Hoffman. As the biographers of our Servant of God agree, it was, among other things, the climate of this place that shaped his spirituality, his outlook on the world and on other people. The seeds of humanity, faith and Priestly Vocation sown here, which the local Parish Priest recognized and strongly supported in the young Johannes, then education at the Nysa gymnasium, and later studies in Wroclaw – yielded a hundredfold harvest.
It was the charism, recognized by himself and by his Superiors, of a dedicated pastor of women who – in the middle of the 19th century – because of poverty, arriving in larger centers and Cities, took jobs in factories or serving on farms, where they were exploited and often fell prey to human dishonesty, and often themselves succumbed to the temptation of easy money and fell into the snares of indecency and sinful living;. This charism gave rise to the Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the relief of these women, and finally to the Congregation of the Sisters of Mary Immaculate for the spiritual care of this work. Thus, it is legitimate today to offer our joint gratitude to God here with the next generation of Rudziczka and Mieszkowice residents and the next generation of Sisters. I consider my invitation to join it as a true honor.
In addition to gratitude, we are gathered here to remember, or rather to remember the day that the Servant of God himself used to say it was “the most important day of his life.” I am referring to July 1, 1849, on which Rev. Jan Schneider was ordained a priest in the Church of the Holy Cross in Breslau from the hands of Bishop Melchior von Diepenbrock. It was a day that was the culmination of his desires and the journey he had begun here, in Rudziczka, dear ones. I make the memory of that event today before you and with the priests present here a thanksgiving also for our priesthood. And since – struggling with the challenges accompanying it today – we necessarily need intercessors and helpers, I find him today in the Servant of God Fr. John, to whose intercession I entrust myself and my brothers, and I humbly ask you to pray for us.
Along with gratitude and heartfelt remembrance of the day of his ordination, we are also gathered here in the hope that the fruit of many efforts, above all by the Sisters present here, which efforts I sincerely admire and bless, will be the elevation of the Servant of God Fr. John Schneider to the altars, so that he can shine for the entire Church as a model of many virtues, as an example of the ability to recognize the signs of the times, as an apostle of mercy towards the poor and the lost, and to ask – as a blessed one – the graces we need in imitating these virtues. We exchange this hope today for fervent prayer for the grace of Fr. John’s imminent beatification. While each of these stirrings of the heart (gratitude, remembrance and hope) is pleasing to God and will be accepted by Him from this altar, let us not stop at them. For we do not have to wait for an official ruling from the Church to be inspired, motivated and perhaps even ashamed by Fr. John’s attitude in light of God’s Word.
The passage from St. Mark’s Gospel that we heard just now reminded us of the event of the storm on the lake and the experience of fear for life and doubt that arose in the hearts of the disciples looking at the sleeping Jesus in the boat.
The storm symbolizes those experiences of life that we call adversity, loss, hopelessness, fear. A storm can be either the historical background of human life, or it can be a very personal experience. One and the other dimension of the storm on the lake was shared by the Servant of God Rev. John Schneider. For turbulent were the times in which he lived; Times that were the backdrop of his priesthood and his work in defense of women. First, the Enlightenment consequences of the French Revolution at the end of the 18th Century, and then the Industrial Revolution in the first half of the 19th Century in Lower Silesia led to extreme poverty among the rural Population and triggered their migration to the Cities, to work, where not only money awaited, but also temptations to depart from God, from his commandments, where immorality and consequent hopelessness lurked.
And at the end of Fr. John’s life, another historical phenomenon of Kulturkampf, which by a small hair,in the current of Emperor Bismarck’s anti-church activities, did not destroy his life’s work. There was also no shortage of waves hitting directly at the boat of Fr. John’s life: in his youth it was the scathing abandonment of the priesthood by Fr. Johaness Ronge of Biskupow, with whom he had been in contact, and the perversity of his teaching against the Church; and later in his priesthood, also the “logs thrown by the state administration under the feet” of the Society he had founded, and finally – and this must have been particularly painful – the misunderstanding on the part of the Church and the difficulties involved in establishing a religious Congregation and obtaining for it a proper statute and permits to worship in the Monastery Chapel.
In all these social and personal storms, Fr. John’s attitude was far from that of the disciples in today’s Gospel. It was not self-confidence or a lack of worry or fear, because Fr. John remained a human in all of this, but also there was nothing of the disciples’ reproach in his attitude: “Teacher, do you care nothing that we perish? “ (Mark 4:38). Rather, there was in him the conviction that Jesus – who is present in the boat of his life, even if, in human terms, he seems to be asleep, and in God’s terms, he is testing
– will help to pass the test victoriously and will give the right portion of grace so that the good desires, in accordance with His will, will bear good fruit. Fr. John, probably warned by the apprehensive attitude of the disciples in the boat, followed St. Paul more faithfully in carrying out the challenge from today’s Second Reading: “The love of Christ [revealed through his death and resurrection] impels us … that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again for them”
(2 Corinthians 5:14).
Dear Sisters and Brothers! The storm and what it symbolizes is often also the backdrop of our lives, both historically and personally. I have not yet found a more poignant commentary on the Gospel scene about the storm on the lake than the one made by Pope Francis on a day that I think all of us here remember very well. It was the Friday evening of March 27, 2020. In the first weeks after the outbreak, walking alone in the lashing rain in an empty St. Peter’s Square, he prayed for the whole world, for the sick and those who helped them. Commenting on the very passage of the Gospel we just heard, he made a historical diagnosis of the condition of our time; a diagnosis that, despite the passage of another 4 years, has not lost its relevance, and it seems, that each new year makes it even more relevant.
The Pope prayed thus: “In this world of ours, which you love more than we do, we have moved forward at full speed, feeling strong and capable of anything. Greedy for profit, we have let ourselves be consumed by things and bewildered by haste. We didn’t stop in the face of Your calls, we didn’t wake up to wars and planetary injustices, we did not listen to the cries of the poor and our seriously ill planet. We continued unmoved, thinking that we would always be healthy in a sick world. Now that we are on a rough sea, we plead with you, “Wake up, Lord!. Looking with a critical eye on the reality around us, we certainly notice all these phenomena in our society, including in our homeland. Moreover, generating life’s rush ourselves, succumbing to the temptation to take and enjoy the goods of this world without restraint, indifferent to God’s order of creation, deepening social polarization and deep divisions, turning a blind eye to real human poverty, which concerns not only bread, but goes much deeper, and finally also experiencing very personal storms and crises, which cannot be listed here
– Unfortunately, we are prone to brazenly accuse God of indifference, just as the disciples in the boat did: “Teacher, do you care nothing that we are perishing?”. How painful must this be for God, who – like no one else – cares about our welfare? How could He regret the gift of freedom He gave us, so that when we make a choice, we ourselves stand on the right side. But He doesn’t regret it, because He loves us, and on some issues He still counts on human reflection and repentance, including when He says to us: “Why are you so fearful?
How lacking in faith you are!” (Mark 4:39-40).
So, remaining in the boat of life and aware of the winds that are battering it, let us ask: How can we respond to this reproach?; and today, additionally: How can we be inspired by the attitude of the Servant of God Rev. John Schneider to correct this painful Franciscan diagnosis? Two things I would like to point out: faith and mercy!
First, on Fr. John’s aforementioned faith and trust in God, taught to him by the One to whom he entrusted his life and priesthood from the beginning, and then his subsequent works, first an association and then a religious congregation – Mary. His Primate Mass, celebrated on July 2, 1849, in the Marian Chapel of the Wroclaw Cathedral, was arguably a special moment of this entrustment. Since we today tend to take the place of God, we need to awaken awareness in ourselves and others,
That we are not self-sufficient, that we are sinking on our own, that we need the Lord like the ancient sailors of the stars. Let the awareness of the inadequacy of human efforts in the struggle for the spiritual future (ours and that of all mankind) make us more courageously invite Jesus into the boat of our lives to experience, that with Him on boat there will be no disaster, that despite difficult experiences He will bring peace of mind into our storms and tempests, that with Him life never dies. May trust in God, patience in enduring adversity, perseverance in achieving goals combined with obedience to Fr. John’s Church be an aid to us in giving the helm of our lives to God.
In the life of the Servant of God Fr. John Schneider I find another antidote to today’s “letting ourselves be absorbed by things and bewildered by haste” – both on a historical and personal level. It is mercy. Authors of Fr. John’s biography sometimes reach for the term: “the Lower Silesian apostle of mercy” to describe his sensitivity and commitment to the spiritual defense of women. His merciful eyes – not in a human, but in a Jesus-like, pure way – looked not only at his parishioners, but at the women of the cigar factory in Elm, where he was curate, and then at the wards of the Society of Mary Immaculate, and finally at the Sisters of Mary Immaculate at the time of the formation of the new religious Community. His merciful hands – adorned with a desire to serve and a distance from his own possessions and comfort – opened the pockets and wallets of donors, not excluding the greats of this world, who generously supported the Association’s relief work. The rhythm of his merciful heart was heard long after his death.
And not only in Wroclaw. At this point, I can’t help but mention one echo from this merciful rhythm of Fr. John’s heart, which was the participation of the Sisters of Mary Immaculate in the creation of the Branice Town of Mercy and the support of Bishop Joseph Nathan in this work. It is impossible not to mention this also because today the Second Reading from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians includes the words of his episcopal call: “Caritas Christi urget nos – Christ’s love impels us,” and he himself – we believe
We firmly believe in it – will receive the glory of the altars alongside Fr. John Schneider.
May the example of both of them be an encouragement to us today to use the key of our mercy: merciful eyes, hands and hearts to open the doors of human hearts and the gate to the future of the Church, our homeland and the world. What does this mean? First, the ability to name and recognize human poverty and deprivation, which is no longer just a lack of material things, and therefore the ability to read
the signs of the times. Then the ability to enter someone’s story to recognize the genuineness and rightness of his needs. Finally, activating whole layers of sensitivity and generosity present in our hearts, so that with them the Lord God can towards people, both “consumed by things and bewildered by haste.” and therefore the spiritually poor, as well as those who experience other forms of poverty in the form of poverty, exclusion and loneliness (like the women of Breslau in the 19th century) – write more pages of their history of salvation, the history of their love for man.
Dear Sisters and Dear Brothers! I think it is the time to end, although the book of life of the Servant of God Fr. John Schneider still contains many inspiring pages. I believe that our gratitude, remembrance and hope today, and finally the attempt to draw from his example for the duration of our life’s voyage through the rough waters of everyday life will contribute to the fact that to this book, you, Dear Sisters and you, Dear Parishioners of Rudziczka, will often reach and effectively read from it a method for holiness and a way for eternity. Amen .
