Notes by University health center director Paul Myers on the stubborn, difficult, brilliant, mysterious man who founded the University’s order of Catholic priests and brothers. Father Basil Moreau will be beatified (the second of three steps toward sainthood) this summer in France.
The numbers are easy. Basile Antoine-Marie Moreau was born in 1799. He founded the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1832. He died in 1873. He was named venerable, the first step toward canonization, in 2003. He will be beatified, the second step, on September 15, 2007. Surely at some point in the near future he will be canonized, at which point, according to the Church Eternal, he will join such eminent beings as Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena as exemplars of sanctity in this bruised and lovely world.
But who was Basil Moreau, whose life echoes through two centuries and across five continents?
*
Last summer I joined a pilgrimage of people from 12 countries who visited Basil’s childhood home, walked his hometown streets, prayed in the churches where he attended or said Mass, wandered the streets where he bought and sold land and established schools. I wanted to see through his eyes, hear with his ears, try to feel the turbulent waves in his heart. I heard roosters at dawn in Laigne-en-Belin, his hometown. I heard wine carts rumbling along the streets. I saw the sun peering through the morning fog. I saw children mimicking their elders, as Basil and his siblings may have done as children. I smelled woodsmoke from kitchen stoves. I saw cows being led to pasture by boys much as Basil had led his family’s animals to grass. I saw children racing to the town well, leaping out of barn lofts, laughing helplessly, as he must have done as a boy. I felt closer to him.
*
Basil, when he was a priest, purchased a small chapel called Notre Dame de l’Habit in the countryside. The chapel sits in a cluster of trees near small stone farmhouses. It’s a dusty 12-kilometer walk through rolling forest and open fields from Le Mans to l’Habit. He once led six seminarians there one morning, as one of them reported later. It must have been still dark when they arose, the seven men half asleep, a chill in the air. They would have gathered bread, cheese, fruit, water, and wine for the journey, and walked into the rising sun, the whistles of birds racing before them, the fields sizzling with insects, hares scurrying across the roadway. In the chapel they must have knelt before the sculpted relief of the Pieta on the rear wall, Mary mourning her murdered Son, His hands hanging near his mother’s feet. They must have prayed long. They probably prayed silently. Outside the muted songs of birds, an occasional dog barking, the sound of seven men breathing in prayer.
*
He was an accomplished and much-sought-after teacher. He was a noted preacher, administrator, deal-maker. He was dour and passionate, emotional and rational, a missionary spirit who was almost utterly homebound, a traditionalist who was also a visionary. He was obedient yet in constant conflict with the local bishop he vowed to serve. He wanted to bring men and women, lay and clergy together in one religious society (nearly two centuries ago!). He studied and borrowed from the Benedictines, the Jesuits, the Sulpicians. He insisted on the primacy of private prayer and communal life at the same time. He was misunderstood by perhaps everyone he ever met. Perhaps he did not understand himself. Perhaps that is one sign of greatness.
*
One time Basil was leading a group of young men on a pilgrimage to La Grande Trappe Monastery in Orne, in Normandy, many miles northwest of Le Mans. They were deep in the woods deep into a moonless night. Their fear rose: it was very possible they would spend a cold and sleepless night in the woods, exposed to boars and bears. Just then the monastery bells rang, far in the distance. God is calling his lost sheep home, said Basil. They followed the bells to the monastery and a roaring fire, hot soup and warm beds.
*
There is a small museum devoted in part to Basil in Le Mans. I was shaken by two boxes there. One holds two liters of his desiccated flesh, the other some of his bones. An ancient Catholic piety, the preservation of relics. But I live in Portland, in Oregon, in the 21st century. How do boxes of what was once Basil Moreau’s body fit my faith life? I stood there bewildered, moved, confused, thinking about love, and God, and church, and how crucial symbols are to us. All around me were chalices, crosses, rosaries, books, pictures, gifts, statues, letters. The collection itself is an act of love.
*
There was also a display case with Basil’s implements for self-mortification: “the discipline,” as it is called. There was a cat o’nine tails whip, and steel leg bands with barbs. I was shocked. Basil saw flesh as a source of sin and an obstacle to knowing God; but he also saw his flesh as a vehicle for self-inflicted suffering that could be a pathway to knowing God. I thought for a moment about how, when Basil becomes a saint, particles of his body will become relics that will be revered, be seen as sacred. I stood there thinking that I was a Catholic psychologist trained to prevent suffering, to heal self-inflicted wounds. I thought about the centuries of Christian identification with Christ’s pain, the long history of the idea that our suffering is a path to salvation, the teaching that there is salvific power inherent in suffering. I thought about Basil fasting, Basil wrapping those steel traps around his legs, and wondered.
*
He was both accessible and aloof. He was passionate yet cerebral. He was a perfectionist who waded into plenty of messes. He frustrated those who loved him. Many who thought him an adversary admired him. Often those who followed him were confused by him. He was the sort of man you could love and be utterly confused by at exactly the same time. Are these not the very things we say of the Christ?
