Msgr. Braun, r.i.p.

The last time I saw him was Memorial Day 1985 at Resurrection Cemetery near Whitesville, Ky. A gang of priests was moving about the grounds praying for the dead. Msgr. Peter J. Braun was there but standing by himself in the parking lot: too old, too feeble, I figured, to join the others. He prayed the Rosary with them. He was the only one wearing a biretta.

Msgr. Braun was always Monsignor to his face, but he was Father Brown elsewhere in Ss. Joseph and Paul parish, where his was a name which brought quick change in tone to any querulous state in the life of faith. The Josephinum Newsletter tells me he died in November. Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints.

I did not greet Msgr. Braun that day in the cemetery. It would not have been proper to interrupt his Rosary. Woe betide me if I had. The feelings are familiar in the human condition: approach-avoidance. In the bustle of the aftermath, I thought no, he wouldn’t remember me.

Oh, but I remember him; indeed have kept up with the news of the whereabouts and well being of my former pastor during the years. Now, my inquiries are at an end.

I suppose I should be ashamed of myself for not making the effort to be personal in my attachment to Msgr. Braun. He was a human being with feelings. But there was no particular reason for him to have an interest in me. “I think you have a vocation,” he told me once. But he was wrong. I was just another kid in the parish.

It was a Sunday morning in the late 1950s. I was one of the servers for the Mass that morning. Father Brown was late and Father Brown was never even slightly late. I recall the news hitting the sacristy in the businesslike tension of the substitute priest. I looked out the sacristy door toward the rectory where no one stirred outside, but where inside I suspected Father Brown lay dying.

He had been overweight and a smoker. The post-heart-attack man emerged an exemplary model of health. If he had slowed, his pace belied it. He became a brisk walker and came to be joined later by a small pet dog.

I knew him to be a genial man but with bearing and reserve. That did not mean he did not speak his mind plainly. His self-discipline was the butt of jokes; but no joke could pierce his essential trait. Msgr. Braun had dignity.

His love for each one made each one know there were others to love, too. His love meant very specific, deep and uncompromising things – not things fuzzy, superficial and maudlin. His notion of repentance had to do with unequivocal effort to change.

Let’s face it, Monsignor. Some people thought you were mean. Word was you sent more than one away from the confessional with his sins retained until you could discern some semblance of sorrow. Tongues wagged about that, and even more tongues would wag today, I suppose. They say Padre Pio sent some away, too.

You were one of a kind, even though you did have a twin brother. I ached for your loneliness, but I know you were every fiber the man God called you to be. Being one of the kids in your crowd, I was never intimidated by you. I never misunderstood where you were coming from. My fear was respect for you, even reverence.

I think of the example of your life only with gratitude. I am still blessed by your blessings. They went past the sign to the mystery of the truth. You were a man of God. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on September 13th, 1987

Making God my Pilot, instead of my Co-Pilot

We’ve all seen the license plates which say “God is my Co-Pilot.” That’s a nice expression and expresses a faithful attitude, but one which, to my mind, doesn’t go far enough. The saying would be better expressed: “God is my Pilot.”

Now license plates saying that might be enough to strike fear into the hearts of motorists everywhere, having folks craning to see who was driving the car. My distinction, of course, is a spiritual one.

Having God as a co-pilot seems like a relationship with the Lord out of perspective. Either God would be taking over the controls when I let go; or even at best, He would be flying along with me. In the latter scenario, I would still be calling the shots.

I’m not saying that there’s necessarily any conflict between what I want and what God wants for me – but there could be, particularly because I have a strong inclination to sin. My point is that only insofar as God is in control am I in tune with the way things are supposed to be in my life.

So how does that work? I’ve never received any messages from God like Samuel received, or like Paul heard. I have been aware of the Lord working in my life in a lot of ways, but somehow I have perceived His Hand as I went along, or often I will see Him at work only after something has been accomplished. I will ask the Lord’s help to do some work, for example, or to help me talk to someone. During or afterward I will see how He helped me, guiding, giving insight, someway being a part. These understandings have helped me to build up my faith, to see as Thomas did that Jesus is alive.

My problem is common to most of us, I believe: It is in knowing what God wants me to do beforehand. I can think of plenty of things to do, things that are in the scheme of things wholly good and meet and proper. Which, though, should I do? I obviously can’t do everything.

How does a person decide, for example, to be a teacher, or a brick mason, or an engineer, or a janitor? Each of these things can be pleasing to God but one occupation is more suitable to one person, another to another. In our more common experience, among all the charities that beg for support, which one deserves my attention? Should I take the initiative to go to this neighbor or that with a kind word or a help, or should I keep my mouth shut and mind my own business?

I wish I could have a clear and unequivocal word from God about things out front, but alas it doesn’t work that way.

Like my friend Dick is wont to say: “God’s voice often sounds an awful lot like mine.”

The answer to the dilemma of making God my Pilot instead of my Co-Pilot I believe can be found in the very nature of the relationship I have with God. The more intimate and enduring the relationship I have with Him, the more I am going to “know” what He wants me to do. If my wife and I never talked, I would not – could not – be sensitive to all the things I “know” about her. Of course, many are the circumstances when I simply have to ask my wife what she thinks. So it is with God.

The more I come to Him in prayer, the sacraments and in reading His word in the Scripture, the more I will know Him, and understand how all that He has said and has to offer applies to me in the nitty-gritty circumstances of my life. If I never talk to Him, never receive Him into the home of my heart, never hear His word spoken eternally in the Bible, I just won’t know Him, that’s all.

If I keep the Lord on as Co-Pilot only, I may find myself high and dark and trying to find my way on instruments I can’t read. I need to become sensitive to His direction and guidance. If God Himself is just my Co-Pilot, there’s a poor pilot indeed at the controls. Maybe the motorists ought to be afraid of that. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on February 2nd, 1987

A vocation view

What do you think Jesus meant when He said, “Take up your cross and follow Me?”

Could it be that this is the question we skirt as we wrestle with the dilemma of our shortage of priests?

To be sure, we have to look elsewhere for the cause of this difficulty.

- We blame celibacy

- We figure there are plenty of fellows being called, but they’re too selfish to answer, or the world has them dazzled, or we commiserate with their rejection saying nobody could be expected to live such a life.

- We suspect the staid influences are gone. Home life isn’t supportive or sufficiently faithful. Our schools are full of lay teachers. Can any good come out of such a place?

- We boo the strident right-wingers and hiss the screaming liberals.

- We quietly harbor the notion that there’s something wrong with the Church.

Our focus has been on him and them and it and that and See! Here is the problem, or No! There it is. Perhaps we don’t want to look in the mirror and say, “What do I think Jesus meant when He said ‘take up your cross and follow Me?’”

No one can fathom the mystery of the Cross. But surely it meant for Jesus what it means for us. It means obedience.

Can we look out across our Church today and see a wide-spread hunger to do, not what I will, but the will of my Father, Who is in heaven?

Do I find myself saying to my children, “What do you think God wants you to be when you grow up?”

In these New Testament times, the people gather around the center of the Holy of Holies. The priest celebrates the Sacrifice made once and for all, and lifts up the Living God, giving Him into the very body and soul of the people He loves.

That is the cross of the New Testament priest. It begins by his taking it up the way Jesus did: with a simple yes, Thy will be done.

If I’m a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker, that is my cross. It is if my life is a showcase of the road not taken: not because I’m a dreamer or a vagabond, but because I have obeyed God.

Those He sends, He empowers. They will be nothing more, nor nothing less than what He would have them be. If I have been obedient, my meats will feed His people, my cakes will delight His people, my candlesticks will bear light to His people.

Brother Raphael, the story goes, was the gatekeeper at the monastery. Visitors always met him first and found in him a warm greeting, a ready listener and a sage counselor.

So valued and inspiring became Brother Raphael’s word, that the monks of the monastery began to seek him out, and his fame spread from the visitors to the area roundabout.

Raphael began leaving his gat and giving sermons and retreats. He published books and treatises and went abroad for lectures.

One day in the monastery chapter, Brother Raphael sat pondering the homilies he was to deliver a week from Sunday, when an old monk entered and knelt behind him.

The old monk, a denizen of his cell for 30 years, leaned forward and whispered a word in Raphael’s ear. “Phony,” he said.

Tears streamed down Raphael’s cheeks. He ran to the Abbot and fell to his knees before him and begged for the privilege to again be the gatekeeper.

It must be that if doing God’s will, of taking up my cross, came into vogue, then surely that would have an effect in many ways.

I suspect that when I turn away from the self will in my life, when I surrender my life completely and say not my will but Thine be done – then I will be doing what those who are called to the priesthood are asked to do. Then it may be that somewhere a bishop will place his hands on the head of a weak, surrendered deacon and empower him to lift up the Living God.

written by Thomas A. Russell in March of 1986