EPILOGUE

John Nepomucene Neumann spent the whole of his adult life striving to live as a total Christian. Nevertheless, no one would have been more shocked than John Neumann at the thought that one day he would be canonized a saint. The possibility never crossed his mind. While his whole consciousness was directed toward serving God in immediate relationship with Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints, he was constantly aware of shortcomings in saying his prayers, in faithfulness to the rule of life he had set for himself, and in the accomplishment of his daily duties.

These apparent failings were a constant concern in his daily examination of conscience. They form the greater part of the entries in the journal of his soul that he kept as a seminarian in Prague and a pioneer priest on the American missions outside Buffalo. And they were a primary detail in matters he discussed with his confessors. One of the latter declared that in his considered judgment, the Bishop of Philadelphia had never been guilty of a grave fault, much less of a mortal sin.

In the journal of his soul, however, there is a preoccupation with infidelity to God's grace, spiritual laziness, and an occasional veiled reference to "the abyss" into which he almost fell. These self-accusations generated considerable difficulty during the examination of his life by the Vatican commissions. So did the letters he wrote to the Holy See as a Bishop, claiming that he was not fully equal to governing the Diocese of Philadelphia. What the Holy See decided was that in both circumstances Neumann was indulging a type of exaggerated conscientiousness. If there were faults in these matters, he was allowing his humility to outdistance his honesty -a weakness on the side of the angels.

It is certain that Neumann spent a good deal of his life concerned about these matters in the interior of his consciousness. He was a highly introspective person whose spiritual training served to heighten such worries. But they did not overwhelm him. The greater part of his time he was literally on the go, carrying out his duties as priest, pastor, preacher, confessor, counselor of the afflicted, prelate, teacher, administrator, and confidant of the poor and lowly. This is exactly wherein his sanctity was accomplished.

Window depicting Pope Benedict XV's proclamation that John Neumann's service to God was heroic.

Early in the proceedings leading to the declaration by Pope Benedict XV that John Neumann had practiced heroic virtue, the Pontiff felt it necessary to insist that such holiness required no extraordinary feat of piety or religious fervor. What it meant was that in all he had done, Neumann practiced ordinary virtue in a quiet but extraordinary way.

The paradox raised here involves the basic problem of interior, self-conscious honesty. Considering the weaknesses of human nature, no one with any sensibility would be tempted to consider himself or herself a saint - one without faults or failings. But neither does Almighty God nor the Church require "angelicism" - living in this world as one imagines the angels and saints to live in eternity.

During his lifetime some of Neumann's associates agreed with the opinion of the youthful Father Stelzig who wrote to the Redemptorist Superior in Vienna: "Father Neumann has only half the necessary qualities of a good superior, namely, exemplary conduct and regularity. He lacks the all-important quality in America of force or authority. He never had this and he never will." Among his contemporaries, a number of bishops considered him holy but inadequate to the task of Philadelphia's pastoral needs.

Neither of these impressions fits in with the conviction of the people he served as pastor, confessor, counsellor, and bishop. In the end their intuition prevailed. Immediately after Neumann's death they spread the word that he was a saint.

While the official Church at first ignored, then played down this notion, it could do nothing to prevent people from spreading devotion to the deceased Bishop. Nor could it prevent the Holy Spirit from indicating, through the claim of favors granted by the Bishop's intercession with God, that Neumann had lived as a saint. Eventually, the Holy Father accepted the fact that the vox populi - the voice of the people - was the vox Dei, the voice of God.

The most important thing about Bishop Neumann's life was not that he was a priest and prelate nor that he instituted the Catholic elementary school system; introduced the Forty Hours devotion on a diocesan scale; and gave new impetus to a number of congregations of nuns. His most important achievement was in being true to his inner self. Despite his interior worries and concerns he lived a contented life, busy about God's will, and the innumerable tasks with which he was entrusted in the Church. There is little doubt that had he remained in the world as a doctor, teacher, savant, or merchant, he would have lived an extraordinarily good life. But the world would certainly have lost sight of him.

In canonizing the "Little Man" from Prachatitz and Philadelphia, the Church is rediscovering for itself and the world, a human being whose genuine qualities simply would not disappear from the annals of history. From now until eternity, the Church's calendar will sparkle with the recollection of St. John Nepomucene Neumann.