By Fr. Timothy Pfeiffer

We call those men who go before us and clear the way, blazing the trail to follow, Pathfinders. In the spiritual order of the present time, such were those priests of God who remained faithful to the Catholic Faith in face of perhaps the greatest tempest ever to sweep the Church. It was they who found the true measure of fidelity to the Church despite diabolic sophisms spread to confuse the trail of Tradition. If ever pathfinding was of great importance, it was certainly in those times when, as enemies of the Church within were obscuring all the old paths, a handful of faithful priests were blazing the path of resistance in the line of Tradition. How true that the flame of Tradition and Faith has been kept alive and burning by such priests. It is due to their labors, into which we have entered, that the path to follow to us seems clear and easy, and often causes us to wonder why others can not see what we see so clearly. Perhaps these others have had no pathfinders to follow, and though they have access to the same Tradition as we, nevertheless without the guidance of wise and experienced men, they have gone shipwreck concerning most grave matters of Faith. But we who have had such pathfinders owe them no less than the salvation of our souls.

Now one such man was Fr. Urban Snyder, born in Louisville, Kentucky, of Catholic German stock, the stuff that catholicized the majority of what was catholicized of the Ohio Valley from Pittsburgh to St. Louis. Baptized in the Church of St. Paul in Louisville on Good Shepherd Sunday, he died on the feast of St. Paul, January 25, 1995. From one end of his life to the other, the working of Divine Providence is as visible to us who look back over his life, as it was to him who lived it. A man who never anticipated God’s Providence, Fr. Urban was one who always awaited its signs, and once seen clearly, he would follow it resolutely and firmly, like the Catholics of old, not second guessing God nor faltering in his step. From the days of his youth his will was firmly set on God’s service, and unto the end Fr. Urban was a man of whom anyone could say, “he seeks always the will of God.” While we can not delay on all the episodes of his life, nevertheless at every stage which marks a change in how and where Fr. Urban served God, he saw and followed distinct signs of Providence, recognized and followed by him as such. It is little wonder that he was a man of spiritual vigor and energy, always prepared to preach, speak, write, listen, and go where he saw himself needed as God’s minister.

The stamp that Divine Providence had left on and continued to leave on Fr. Urban impressed itself on others. He helped numerous souls, and especially those who felt themselves carrying the burden of the difficulties of this life. To them he would so often say: “Whenever God closes one door, he always opens another; you must wait for him to show you this door.” And so people wrote him and received similar advice adapted with great unction so typical of him to their particular circumstances. When around or near Fr. Urban, one always had to carry in to him a pile of mail or announce a visitor calling, or tell them he wouldn’t be around for a few weeks because of another peregrination (for this cause he called himself the “Kentucky Pilgrim”). Folks with rather special problems didn’t aggravate his calm. “They’re unique!” he would say with a twinkle in his eyes which left no trace of impatience. Another of his favorite sayings to souls was: “Ask Mary to give you Her Heart to love Jesus, and ask Jesus to give you His Heart to love His Mother Mary.”

For a youngster, waiting for Fr. Urban to come back from Europe was like waiting for a page out of the History of St. Bede or some other medieval chronicle to come to life again. His conversations at table brought one into contact with barons and countesses, bishops and archbishops, saints and martyrdoms, ancient places and their histories, customs of Trappists and customs of peoples. For the youngster, it roused in him the desire to see, do, read and feel as the stories told... or foretold. Out of him flowed stories about Cologne, Ecône, Rome, Padre Pio, Montalambert’s History of the Church, Eucharistic miracles...and he had been there and could tell you things you could never read about. In short, one was dropped for the time of that table conversation into the time or place talked about. When Fr. Urban was around, you learned how to take a long time eating!

Such language and daily conversation which came out not only in his words but also in his actions and habits, could only stir up and encourage numerous vocations. The monk-novice master became the priest begetting other priests. In a 12-year-old boy he instilled a long-range desire to go to a far-away place which became a reality some ten years later. Later, the presence of Fr. Urban helped the 18-year-old young man in front of one shut door to his vocation, soon find the other door that led to the realization of his vocation. This kind of influence is the providential stuff in the scale of the minor miracles which are seen best only in hindsight. How much hindsight on Fr. Urban many a soul will have bound up in his life story will be the delight of the Mercies of God on Judgment day.

Another grace of Fr. Urban was in giving a long range view on a short term problem. The long range view came from his love of God’s will, and the application to the short term problem arose from his knowledge of human nature coupled with his gray hairs and wisdom which gave him a deep keel in human affairs. He would say, “Keep your eye on heaven.” To analyze a project or comment on some new political situation, he would ask, “Does it save souls?” And the cross was no stranger to Fr. Urban. He could recognize it when he saw it because he had lived it. He would relate many an occasion when he could barely give a conference due to sickness, but providentially he came out just well enough at the last moment to proceed. Hence, when recognizing the cross shared by others he would say, “Don’t let the sufferings of life go to waste.”

Fr. Urban was a man of balance, something the best thinkers of modern times would have acclaimed as being exactly according to the dictates of reason and grace. Small as he was and somewhat frail, he nevertheless had a good appetite and he loved to comment that “God has given me a special talent for sleeping.” No doubt, deep inside his soul and beside his contemplative spirit of the Gethsemani Trappist monk, he was thinking of the rest of the soul in contemplation of the Truth. No doubt now--or at least very soon--this talent of his can have its full and perfect expression before the Beatific Vision. Let us hasten the perfection of his talent and pray for his hasty appearance before the Lord of Hosts, counting on our own benefits in the sharing of his graces through the communion of saints.