LORD, THAT WE MAY SEE: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BONIFACE AND BARTIMAEUS 170th Anniversary--St. Boniface Parish Louisville--Sunday, October 29, 2006 170 Years. European visitors may think this is not a very long time. But for us as Americans, 170 years represents serious antiquity. In the United States, as I hardly need tell you, for an institution to be that old makes it something decidedly out of the American Middle Ages. We have today in this hallowed church not only a stellar historical event. We have a stunning Gospel story to help us as we reflect on the meaning of this great moment in a parish that is not only ancient, but vital and vibrant as well. There is blind Bartimaeus, a beggar, probably a homeless man, sitting on the outskirt of Jericho, one of the earth's oldest cities. He is very likely so far down that the only way for him would be up. There is an immense crowd. Probably nobody would look twice at the poor guy. And here comes Jesus. And Bartimaeus shouts out: "Jesus, have pity on me." You have a wonder, is there anybody within these walls today who hasn't at some time uttered this cry de profundis...out of our very depths? In all that crowd, in all that confusion, Jesus gives a command to his followers. You have to love the economy of comment here. Jesus simply says: "Call him." And the people nearby have the incrediable good sense to say to him, with keen spiritual insight: "Take courage, Jesus is calling you." He springs up and tells Jesus what he needs. Bartimaeus too has an economy of words: "Master, I want to see." Here, too, we find much of ourselves in Bartimaeus. Hasn't that been our plea as well, Even if we used different categories or different words? He wanted to see, all right. He wanted physically for his eyes to behold a world's wonders. But more. Surely he, and we, wanted to see that we do not sit alone, friendless by the side of a road. He wanted to see that life makes some sense, though if offten may seem otherwise. He wanted to see, as a wise Franciscan at Bellarmine, Dean John Loftus, once wrote, that in a world's turmoil there is a God's caress. He wanted to see that he--that all of us--are connected to one another, to something or someone that is primal, lasting, kindly, caring, saving, serving and holy. He wanted to see the world precisely as Jesus saw the world and its humanity. He wanted to know that at the center of this world there is a Sacred Heart for whom each of us, all of us, are precious. And Jesus' wonderful gift to him is that he is able to see from then on, not only physically, but to see and experience his life and this world in a new, fuller, redemptive way. And that is more than anything else what we celebrate this day. That in this parish for 170 years, in this very building for over one hundred years, there has been the assurance, the enactment, and the victory of the Christic vision and the Christic call. This sacred place encodes a timeless need, and unending call, and a profoudly assuring response. But the timeless, as the Incarmation teaches us, has entered time. Every time is unique. Every time and person in time is privileged and special in some way. And so we travel back in time to 1836 in this special place near one of the great rivers of a massive continent. Louisville in that distant era was already nearly three quarters of a century old. And in that year Catholics in Louisville witnessed something new and freighted with meaning for the future. For the believers gathered under the patronage of St. Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, has created the first ethinic parish of all Catholic Kentucky. It was a fairly close call, by the way. German Catholics in Covington established Mutter Gottes, Mother of God parish, in 1842. Over the centuries ever so many people of a vast array of nationalities would flow into America and this region,--a process of internationalization that continues into our own time. But here was the primal place that this amazing process began. And it is remarkable that this parish has marked these same grounds with its same original name ever since. That alone makes it historically significant and unique. The ealiest parishioners had initially worshipped at St. Louis Church with, may we so phrase it, the Anglo community. That parish (now the Cathedral of the Assumption) had been gathered about 1806, thirty years before, by Fr. Stephen Badin, the first priest ordained int the United States. They had first worshipped in a small church near Tenth and Main, and then had moved in 1830 to the place on Fifth Street where the Catheral now stands. But the immigrant population, especially the Germans, were sizable enough by the mid-1830's, that a new parish was not only viable, but desperately needed. Diocesan priests, as you know, staffed the parish until 1849, when its care was entrusted to the Franciscan Fathers. By the time these sons of St. Francis came to take charge, nto only was the parish lively and growing, but the city itself had expanded enormously. By the late 1850's, it had become one of the twelve largest municipalities in America, sustaining four daily newspapers, including the German language Anzeiger. it had welcomed such famous personages as Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Herman Melville. Fr. Joseph Stahlschmidt had been the first pastor, and under his leadership, the first chuch building was dedicated on the Feast of All Saints in 1838. Growth in that era was continual. By the time the Franciscans and their first pastor, Fr. Otto Jair (only 34 years old) arrived, a parish school building was in place and the church had to be enlarged to serve the large and growing congregation. Other German Catholic parishes were soon established in the city as well. In fact, by the time of the Civil War, half of the eight Louisville Catholic congrevations were German-speaking. These were turbulent times as well. While St. Boniface Church itself was not damaged during the 1855 Bloody Monday riot, several Germans were killed in the neighborhood. Even within the parish there were stresses and strains. Arguments amonth the trustees of the parish in the autumn of 1851 resulted in a brawl in the church during the Mass. Let me reassure you, at this point that we have much celebrating to do today, and I am not going to take up the time by attempting much more recital of the very long history of this very old parish. So many faithful and dedicated persons lay, clerical and religious; so many activities and events would make a narrative of enormous length. The many societies, the Xaverian Brothers, the Ursuline Sisters, the St. Joseph Orphans' Society, even Fr. Abram Ryan, "poet priest of the South", struggles with Bishop McCloskey---all these come into the story. When the building of this new church was being considered in 1897, the redoubtable Bishop McCloskey had refused permission for construction, giving eighteen reasons. The following year, he told the pastor, "I cheerfully give permission." And so, with this about-face, this new edifice began to rise, and the solemn dedication took place on November 18, 1900. At the time of dedication, the pastor told the flock--with German precision--that 15,641 baptisms, 3284 weddings and 7,004 funerals had taken place in the old church that they were bidding farewell. The new monastery of friary had been dedicated the year before, and a new school building, parish hall and sister's home were still to come. Nor were the outside world and its calamities forgotten. Records indicate that the people of the parish sent financial aid to sufferers of the Johnstown Flood of 1889; the Galveston hurricane of 1900 and the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. By the 1920's, parish rolls were growing smaller as the city grew outward. In 1925, (on August 23 to be exact) it was announced here that all prayers would henceforth to be offered in English. In 1926, one of the first Masses of the Air was beamed from St. Boniface over WHAS, the "radiophone of The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times.. During the Depression of the 1930's, over 2000 persons weekly attended novenas here in honor of St. Athonly of Padua. During the 1937 Flood, eighty refugees found shelter in the parish school. And, of course, many sons of the parish gave their lives in the wars of the twentieth century. Urban forces of the later twentieth century were not particularly kind to most inner-city parishes. And St. Boniface saw its time of diminutions. It had to close to its parish school in 1970, and bid the Franciscan Fathers farewell in 1998. But now we see around us a true parish renaissance. And would it be amiss to credit not only the deeply dedicated people of this parish but in a special way, its current pastor, Fr. Tim Hogan, for a good part of this progress? We look around us today and see Liberty House, and Nativity Academy. We see the new vitality of Liberty Green, 735 mixed-income residences. We look upon a church which, as The Record reported in September, 1999, helps its neighbors to reach beyond the "culture of poverty." We see a parish of nearly 600 members. And the many things I'm sure I've missed in both the wondrous history and promissing present, I'm sure that parish historian Bill Lincoln will be only too pleased to recount. All you have to do is get him away from the keyboard and ask. And there is also available the historic display for us all to examine. I'm afraid that I have not been able to capture the full spirit of this singular place. Most of you here have been and continue to be a vital part of it all. What we all share is the deep sense of the Christ event and Christ promise that continues to unfold here, sometimes in mysterious and surprising ways. In this place, together, we can truly come to see. See ourselves, our community and our world as the Christ sees. See the world according to Boniface and Bartimaeus. I would like to close with a story that would probably have surprised the German forbearers of St. Boniface. I found it just this week in the British Catholic journal, The Tablet. And it comes from the Buddhist tradition. The Buddhist celebrate something called satanga, the gathering of past and present souls. This surely has echoes for us in this coming week of All Saints and All Souls. They tell the story that once Buddha was speaking to an assembly in the woods. He asked his follower to make room for the invisible visitors around them. "You cannot see them," he said, "but the forest is filled with spirits at this moment." Well, we have a little satanga of our own here today. We are gathered together, and the spirits of those who have contributed to this day--over 170 years--are surely among us. And we all gather, the living, the dead, and thos yet to be, under the power of the Befriending Spirit of God, who helps us all truly to see, truly to serve, and truly to become the persons and the people that God is calling us to be. Clyde F. Crews Bellarmine University