Read about Basil Moreau: Essential Writings Fr. Drews new book, co-authored with Fr. Kevin Grove CSC available from Ave Maria Press. This article is in the 10/3/14 edition of the Colorado Catholic Herald. Congratulations Fr. Drew and Fr. Kevin! Book sheds new light on spirituality of Blessed Moreau By VERONICA AMBUUL COLORADO SPRINGS. For decades, priests and brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross were like members of a family who are kept in the dark about a notorious ancestor. COLORADO SPRINGS. For decades, priests and brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross were like members of a family who are kept in the dark about a notorious ancestor. “We lost our founder for a number of years after his death, because he died estranged from the community,” said Holy Cross Father Drew Gawrych of the order’s founder, Blessed Basil Moreau. “There was a long time when the community didn’t look back to him too much or explore his writings.” But a few years ago, Father Gawrych and Holy Cross Father Kevin Grove set out to change all that. After months spent tracking down English translations of Blessed Moreau’s writings and searching through the order’s archives in South Bend, Ind., the two priests published their new book, “Basil Moreau: Essential Writings” (Ave Maria Press), this past Spring. The book is a compilation of sermons, spiritual exercises, meditations essays and letters written by Blessed Moreau over the course of his lifetime. Father Gawrych, who currently serves as parochial vicar at Sacred Heart Parish in Colorado Springs, said that it is designed to help members of the order, as well as those who work in its affiliated parishes and ministries, deepen their knowledge of Blessed Moreau’s spirituality. “When I was growing up in Holy Cross, the community was still learning a lot about our founder. So the picture and portrait of Moreau is one where the color is being filled in,” Father Gawrych said. “Most of his writing hadn’t been published yet, so there was a lot we learned along the way. It was the first time we had read his sermons or spiritual exercises. It was the first time we read his meditations.” Blessed Basil Moreau was born in 1799, amid persecution of the Catholic Church following the French Revolution. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Le Mans in 1821 and became a seminary professor. In 1835, he organized a group of priests, known as ‘auxiliary priests,’ to help with various programs in the diocese, and the same year was asked by the local bishop to oversee the Brothers of St. Joseph, a recently-founded group of educators. On March 1, 1837, the Congregation of Holy Cross was formed by merging the group of priests and brothers headed by Moreau. At first, the order also included women religious, but they became a separate congregation in 1857. Within a few years of the founding of Holy Cross, Blessed Moreau sent members of the order to minister in other countries around the world, including South Bend, Ind., where one priest and six brothers began the University of Notre Dame in 1842. The priest was Father Edward Sorin. When Moreau resigned in disgrace after a Holy Cross brother made an imprudent loan that resulted in the order being saddled with debt, Sorin was elected the order’s new superior general. Moreau died in 1873, and it was more than a century before he was declared “blessed” by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, with the beatification Mass taking place on Sept. 15, 2007 — the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the order’s patroness. “It’s fair to say that Moreau has been rehabilitated,” Father Gawrych said. “The fact that he has been beatified and hopefully is on the way to being canonized is a sign that not only Holy Cross but the wider church has come to appreciate in a new way just how holy this man really was and how charismatic he was.” Father Gawrych said that the book is now being given to all Holy Cross novices as a way to immerse them in the order’s spirituality. “When the seminarians got this book, they just ate it up, because this gives them access to more of what Moreau had,” Father Gawrych said, though, at more than 500 pages, the book is not likely to be a quick read. “Some of our guys jokingly refer to it as a doorstop,” he said. Father Gawrych also said that the process of researching and compiling the works of Blessed Moreau helped him and Father Grove realize that the founding of Holy Cross was not primarily a human endeavor but a response to divine impulses. “We came to a deeper appreciation of how Moreau was really a man who looked for the presence and action of God in all things,” Father Gawrych said. “Rather than setting out with his own plans, he started out with a vision and desire that he believed was from God, and then let God map the way forward for him and our community. That was really powerful for us.” The book will also be used as the basis of more formal intellectual study of Moreau’s spirituality, he said. For the first time this spring, Notre Dame will offer a class on Holy Cross spirituality, and “Basil Moreau: Essential Writings” will be one of the textbooks. “He hearkens back a little more to the patristic age of theology in the Church, rather than the Medieval age,” he said. “Reading him, he’s pulling from Scripture left and right. He’s pulling from different saints, thinkers and theologians. I think that was what Father Kevin and I found inspiring — that Moreau very clearly swam in the wider, deeper Catholic tradition.” But Father Gawrych said he also thinks that Blessed Moreau has a lot to offer lay Catholics who are simply looking to deepen their spiritual lives, especially if they are going through difficult times. “I think it was Cardinal McCarrick who said that (Moreau) could be the patron saint of anyone who has ever thought they toiled in obscurity and that their life has been a failure,” Father Gawrych said. “His life story speaks to hope because of how he was able — despite personal challenges and weaknesses, and despite challenges in his ministry and seeming failure — he was able to believe through all of that. It shows how, if we stay faithful to God and do our best to see God in all things, we don’t have the beginning of an idea of what God is actually doing with our lives.”
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 22:14:25 +0000
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