The Royal Road of the Holy Cross (3)

[Weedy]

The Royal Road of the Holy Cross (3)

Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and you shall enter
eternal life. He Himself opened the way before you in carrying His
cross, and upon it He died for you, that you, too, might take up your
cross and long to die upon it. If you die with Him, you shall also
live with Him, and if you share His suffering, you shall also share
His glory.
--Thomas à Kempis ---Imitation of Christ Book 2, Chapter 12

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• October 23rd - Bl. Arnold Reche
(Also known as Arnold Jules-Nicolas Rèche; Jules Reche;
Julian-Nicolas Rèche; Nicholas-Jules Reche)

(1838-1890)
Nicholas-Jules Reche was the firstborn of Claude and Anne Flausset
Reche, villagers of Lorraine. His parents were not a happy couple.
Claude was zealously religious but poor. Anne was driven by their
poverty into fits of depression.

Nicholas-Jules inherited his father’s propensity to religious fervor.
He was reported by his teachers to be the “only serious pupil” in the
catechism class, and eventually he began to teach catechism himself. A
devout participant in religious devotions, he communicated well and
was by nature earnest and hardworking. But throughout adolescence he
showed no other signs of a religious vocation.

When he reached 21, Nicholas found employment as the coachman of a
well-to-do family. Next he was hired as a mule driver by a contractor
who was building a new church. In this job he became more devotional.
His fellow workmen, surprised at his reciting the rosary while
directing the wagons at the building site, came to refer to him as
“the bigot” or “the fanatic”. Actually, Reche was giving more time to
prayer and self-denial. He also began to help the local Brothers of
the Christian Schools in giving instruction to the teenagers at their
Sunday evening classes. In fact, his relative success in this work
prompted him to consider joining these teaching brothers. He did so in
1862, receiving the name Brother Arnold. All went reasonably well, and
in 1871 he took his final vows in the Community.

From 1863 to 1877 he was on the faculty of the Brothers’ boarding
school at Reims. Eventually he won his teaching diploma in Paris, and
was also awarded a decoration by the International Red Cross for
nursing both French and German soldiers who were casualties of the
Franco-Prussian War.

Despite, however, his apparent progress as a teaching brother, Brother
Arnold considered himself a failure. True, he was not a good classroom
teacher. Only when he was teaching Christian doctrine did he hold his
students’ attention. At other times he found it hard to maintain
schoolroom discipline. Timidity, he believed, was the problem. “Pray
for me,” he wrote to a kinsman, “that I may not be altogether useless,
that I may accomplish all the good that God expects of me, that I
won’t be an obstacle to the good work that the Brothers around me are
trying to do.”

In 1877 his superiors assigned him to a task better adapted to his
talents: a director of novices. Here he could speak out of his own
prayerful experience without being brushed off. His theme with the
novices was the vital importance of strict obedience to the Rule, and
the need not only of humility but of daily humiliations. Attentive to
his own devotional life, not only in community practices but in
private practices, the “failure” had now hit his stride. In March 1890
he was appointed director general of the Brothers’ house at Courlancy.
Although by then in poor health, he accepted the task out of
obedience. That same October, however, he suffered a cerebral
hemorrhage that brought about his death. His tomb in the public
cemetery at Reims soon became a focus of pilgrimage, and miracles were
reported by his devotees. Hailed as “an admirable guide for the young
in the ways of prayer and charity”, the cause for his canonization was
launched in 1938.

What Brother Arnold had considered his largely “useless” life had
actually been a slow-paced evolution engineered by God at every point.
Many of us, I am sure, are more successful in God’s eyes than in our
own. For Him the key question is whether we have served well the
unique purpose for which He created us. He does not always reveal that
unique purpose during our lives. Pope John Paul II beatified Brother
Arnold Reche in November 1987.
–Father Robert


Saint Quote
I recommend to all of my brothers and sisters that they serve God
faithfully. Granted, it is sometimes difficult to resist evil and
remain virtuous. But with the grace of God that we obtain from prayer
we can do anything. All we have to do is to will it.
--Blessed Arnold Reche

Bible Quote:
All things are full of weariness; man cannot utter it: the eye is not
satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. [Eccles. 1:8]
DRB


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A Prayer for Enlightenment

Eternal light, shine into our hearts,
Eternal Goodness, deliver us from evil,
Eternal Power, be our support,
Eternal Wisdom, scatter the
darkness of our ignorance,
Eternal Pity, have mercy on us;
that with all our heart
and mind and soul and strength,
we may seek Your Face
and be brought by Your infinite mercy
to Your Holy Presence;
through Jesus Christ, our Lord
Amen.
--St Alcuin of York (735-804)