15 MARCH

This is the feast of the Redemptorist saint, St. Clement Mary Hofbauer. The link here gives the basic facts of his life. This is what Pius Parsch relates of him in “The Church’s Year of Grace”:

Only a very great soul, one that trusts entirely in God, could write to Kuestrin from the confinement of a fortress as Faher Hofbauer did when all his life’s plans and hopes were shattered: “It is sweet to suffer when there is nothing for which conscience can reproach one . . . in all things I recognize the will of God! At all times may He be praised! God has permitted this because we were not as we should have been.”

Calumniated and vilified from the very first day, he never knew at what moment he would be banished. A policeman met him upon entering Vienna, and he continued to be annoyed by the authorities until death. At one time, he wrote: “How often I wished I were in a desert, for with sorrow in my heart I see what work could be done but cannot do it.”

Nevertheless, with joyful surprise, he noted that well-disposed persons in the world about him were slowly being converted. It must be regarded as a “veritable miracle that so simple a man could effect countless conversions. There was nothing about him that attracted worldlings. His power to draw others came from within, and had its source in his soul’s vitality and grace. His clothing was simple and worn, his shoes big, with thick soles, his back bent. But his face was always cheerful, kind, and inspiring; his voice was soft and sweet; nothing authoritarian in his manner, a truly humble person. Nevertheless, this venerable man, in spite of his apparent simplicity, plainness, and soft, sweet vioce, possessed a most remarkable dignity.”