Of course, it is not really a new road at all, but a well trod path, begun by Father Balthasard and his flock, who sought to fix their eyes on the Lord and plead for his mercy (Cf. Psalm 123: 2cd). He, and the people he first shepherded here were described by the historian Rameau de Saint-Père as “very simply, a decent people—very mindful of one for the other, very religious and very devoted to their families, living happily in the midst of their children without a lot of worries. One can characterize these people in two words: they were happy and they were honest.”
One of the authors whose works our first pastor would have studied in seminary was by the great French spiritual writer Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard. He wrote that to be happy we must «rencontres de regard avec la Vierge Marie » …[Pourquoi] En cette manifestation toute simple de tendresse qu'est un sourire, nous saisissons que notre seule richesse est l'amour que Dieu nous porte et qui passe par le cœur de celle qui est devenue notre Mère.
to gaze frequently “into the eyes of the Virgin Mary”! For in the very simple manifestation of tenderness that we call a smile, we grasp that our sole wealth is the love God bears us, which passes through the heart of her who became our Mother.
After such a good start came the gentle Father Chicoine who sought to fix his eyes on the Lord and plead for his mercy, raising up a people devastated by the great depression, a town of shuttered factories and breadlines…raising up from these ashes the glorious monument to God in which we worship this day.
As during the Second World War, as Leominster’s sons were sent to defend freedom in Germany, Japan, Italy and the South pacific, Father Boutin sought again to fix his eyes on the Lord and plead for his mercy, inspiring the people to light candles for the troops and offer endless prayers for the defeat of Evil and the triumph of the Good.
And then God sent Father Lucier, to lead us through a tumultuous time, during which the very the future of this towering monument to the faith was questioned from below and struck by lighting from above. And when lightening struck a second time, Father Denomme the Church on French Hill to quite literally lift hight he Cross atop our steeple, so that from miles around they might see that which is our hope and our salvation.
Inside this sacred temple, as well, those years saw a deepening of the spiritual meaning of this Domus Dei, this house where God comes to meet his people. So that the child who just received her First Communion could be inspired by that magnificent tabernacle and dream of what God had in store for her, while the old man could kneel on creaking knees before the kind eyes of the Virgin and her Son.
Allow me to make a confession here. For through the years I have often snuck into your Church (now our Church) to pray before the recumbant image of Saint Cecilia over there, recalling for me Cecilia’s example of how the purity of love, even in the face of a vicious world, can move human hearts to sing the “hymn which is sung throughout the ages in the halls of heaven.”
The artist whose chipping at that block of wood so moved my heart was a personal friend, but more on Edmund another day. He preached by carving, just as Louis Charpentier, who carved the Christ upon the Cross above our heads from a single tree, was a beloved son of this great Church who even from heaven invites us still through the work of his hands to join our sufferings to the perfect sacrifice which gives it all meaning. Indeed, we are surrounded by so much beauty, beauteous not just in its artistic accomplishment, but in the wondrous ways it leads us to God.
And who can forget the work of Father Denomme’s protégé, Father Goguen, seeking again to fix his eyes on the Lord and plead for his mercy. His love for this place was as deep as any of his predecessors, as he urged the parish to look back at a glorious 100 years as it prepared for a new millenium of challenges,. Each corner of this place, including the cemetery and school, bears the mark of his care as he literally gave his whole heart to this holy place.
Then, as a mason lays stone upon stone, so Father Bruso sought to fix his eyes on the Lord and plead for his mercy, bringing renewed stability and a steady spirit to Saint Cecilia’s in increasingly challenging times, going home to God to intercede for us (it’s now his full time job) just one year ago.
God assures us that the answers to those questions will come, in his good time, as they did for those who went before us. And be assured that God will give us the graces and the strength we need to do his will. For it is only our job to listen to him, to trust in his mercy and to do the work he sets before us.
Saint Cecilia, pray for us!
