December 1982 Print

 
by Phyllis Graham

Everyone knows by now that St. Mary's is quite a place.

Whatever else can be said about it, one has to admit that it is anything but ordinary, and that there is probably more significance behind its nearly miraculous reclamation than meets the eye.

Descriptions about the place by those who have visited there are usually irritatingly loaded with superlatives, plus an absence of many details which might serve to justify them. And so, an attempted narrative of, say, the annual Marian Pilgrimage might go something like, "Oh! it was so wonderful...!"

Well, there certainly is something quite wonderful about St. Mary's—a certain something, intangible and difficult to pinpoint; a sense of something anticipatory and hopeful; a sort of spirit—titanic in dimension, though only subtilely perceived, peaceful though momentous. It pervades the place and is felt, sensed or otherwise experienced by almost everyone who has been there. Once visited, St. Mary's beneficial effect on one's psyche is not easily forgotten, even by those few who say they don't like this or that about it (especially those who so strongly criticize it—which is perhaps to say that though some of us cannot take too much of our own goodness, our psyches are nevertheless unwilling to leave a really good thing alone!).

Some people move to St. Mary's very eagerly, then leave; but often to return again, if only in desire. Rarely is anyone left feeling totally indifferent about it. It's that kind of place.

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What is it that makes St. Mary's so unique? Why have so many families uprooted themselves from better jobs, larger homes, long-time friends (even family) and prettier landscapes (with all due respect to the rural grandeur of Kansas), in order to work and live there? Why do a number of other families, some of which have never even seen St. Mary's, find themselves making novenas for the express intention of realizing a dream (!) of moving there? Can it be said that St. Mary's has become a lodestar of these times? Remembering that a lodestar is a star that shows the way, a guiding principle, the center of attraction, it becomes so very feasible, reasonable, and even probable, that the real lodestar that is St. Mary's is actually the Mother of God herself, and that the real significance of its restoration has to do precisely with her and her much ignored but urgent prominence in the scheme of man's current struggle. But such mystical conjecturing is terribly tricky business, and all we can safely do is probe a little ...

Shakespeare once said, "the place is dignified by the doer's deed." If so—and Shakespeare was so often right—what, then, are the deeds that have lent St. Mary's such an awesome dignity? It takes a bit of glimpsing into her remarkable history: The deeds from which St. Mary's originated were done by men of holiness—fervent Jesuit missionaries, intrepid men who so loved God and their fellow man that they bravely pioneered the western wilderness, willing to suffer any privation and hardship, to bring Christ's divine civility to semi-savage Indians. There, in the Kaw Valley of Kansas, amidst the Pottawatomie tribe, Fr. Felix Verreydt, S.J. (the Indians called him "Black Robe"), knelt in prayer as he invoked the Virgin Mother's blessing on a new settlement, "St. Mary's Mission. From the very first, then, the establishment was laid at the feet of Mary Immaculate," that very same principle continually propounded by Father Hector L. Bolduc, SSPX, the present Superior who rescued St. Mary's from ultimate ruin! That particular deed is in a class by itself.

In the rubble left by the ferocious attack on the Church by the forces of Modernism, lay the thirteen magnificent stone and concrete buildings which comprise St. Mary's College—neglected, forlorn and finally abandoned. Eleven years of accumulated debris, dust and overgrown weeds had almost defaced the beautiful structures. At Dave Gaynor's urgent bidding, Father Bolduc had come to see it. That it was "love at first sight" inspired from above, is not something Father has ever said, but that this priest laid his wild aspiration to acquire the venerable premises at the feet of Mary Immaculate, is no secret to anyone. It had fallen into the hands of skilled investors who no doubt saw the exceptional possibility of a very lucrative profit.

It doesn't matter how many millions of dollars they were asking for the huge property (it was worth every penny) because Father did not have it; what does matter is that, with all the simple confidence of a child of Mary, and with a few soft-spoken words (which one can easily believe were chosen by the Queen of Wisdom herself), Father Bolduc mustered the audacity to ask the investors to donate the place... and they did!

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On a little hill behind St. Mary's College lies Father Maurice Gailland, S.J., who had endeared himself to both red man and white by his charity, sanctity and learning. The good priest—who had translated the Pottawatomie language into English and written a translation of the Gospels and Epistles, plus a catechism, for the Indians—had written into his diary, "Our first care was devoted to the instruction of youth." Pulling down from heaven, by their prayers and sacrifices, the invaluable intercessory power of the Blessed Virgin, the industrious Jesuits had begun to build:

They built a city for the Indian, they built a temple for His God. And then, when they could build no more, when the dying race had died, and the van of the white pioneer had appeared on the rim of the west, they took the sturdy western boy from his new-hewn home—and built him into a Christian man.

From a log cabin outpost, the little mission grew into the first real school in the State of Kansas, then into an illustrious institute of higher learning and ultimately a vast seminary, prompting the Rt. Rev. John Ward, D.D., Bishop of Leavenworth, to exclaim, "St. Mary's College has accomplished much for the Church, the State and the Nation by the vigorous and well-trained army of intelligent men she has sent forth...", and the Rt. Rev. C. E. Byrne, D.D., Bishop of Galveston, Texas, said, "In the field of medicine and surgery, in sculpture, in literature, in law, in public service, in honest business, in the Christian ministry—St. Mary's can count many of her sons doing work above the average."

It will take a great deal of funds, effort and prayer to restore St. Mary's to that once again, but the start has been made.

In the best tradition of those early Jesuits, the emphasis at St. Mary's is on education. In the thriving grade school and high school, the young are taught Truth from the tongue and example of none but traditional Catholic teachers; in the new and promising four-year college, traditional Catholic professors work daily to expand the mental reaches of each one of their students while confirming them in their Catholic moral certitudes. A rare combination in education today! It is hoped that from this College will come the future Catholic teachers for schools all over the country; but what is most encouraging is that St. Mary's, more and more, seems to be occasioning religious vocations! Symbolically located in that region referred to as "the Breadbasket of the Country," St. Mary's has already started to help meet that staple so necessary for the Church's regrowth. What also captures our attention is that St. Mary's, with its truly Catholic community, revolving around the right liturgical life of the Church with the Latin Tridentine Mass at its center, is proving to be fertile ground for those who would pursue their own personal spiritual perfection. Besides the several priests, brothers and nuns in residence, the place teems with tertiaries, oblates and Heaven only knows how many saints-in-the-making, diligent souls going about their duties every day—cheerful, humble, uncomplaining, putting the cause of Catholicism above everything else, pulling together with everyone else, taking adversities as they come.

One of the brightest rays that beams from this amazing community is the visible proof it gives us that the things of God never change, that God still enables man to pursue the same course of spiritual perfection so sharply delineated by His Divine Son, and that diligent conformity to the Apostolic teachings of the Holy Roman Catholic Church is something not only very viable in this era but as satisfying to the starving soul of modern man as ever it was to him in the past. And, most of all, that the Blessed Virgin's crucial inclusion in man's spiritual strivings—a thing which has confounded unchivalrous men for centuries and still does—brings with it sure success.

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Whenever I leave St. Mary's after a visit, I sorely miss the most palpable presence of the Mother of God which permeates the place. At the last Marian Pilgrimage, as Jim Taylor recently told us in his report, Father Bolduc said that everything that is done at St. Mary's has been done for and through Mary. And Father booms it from the pulpit, "We should remember in the crises that face us today, Mary stands out as a guiding beacon! She is the light that is inextinguishable! It is on her that we set our sights so that we arrive at Jesus. She will not allow us to be forgotten! It is through her that we will gain the inevitable triumph!"

And these are not just words. In Assumption Chapel at St. Mary's, there have been placed no less than seven (I counted them) beautiful images of Mary, insistently suggesting veneration to the Virgin Mother of God—a lovely Russian icon prompting our prayers for the victims of Communism, a large replica of Our Lady of Guadalupe (originally painted by the Blessed Virgin herself upon a peasant's cloak), overwhelming us with her immense maternal affection and condescension for those of us for whom only "seeing is believing," and all of them reminding us that in her flawless obedience, she needs must concern herself with the deeds of her bequeathed children.

Sometimes I walk down the slope from Loyola Hall to a quiet, isolated spot where a grove of tall trees shade a shrine to Our Lady. The Indians had marked it with a circled stone wall to reverence the spot where a "beautiful Lady" had appeared to a small Indian girl and told her to assure the frightened people of the encampment that the tornado which was menacing its way directly toward them, would not harm them while they were in this place since, she said, it was "blessed ground." The threatening twister came close but then turned and brought its destruction elsewhere, leaving them unharmed. It is an inspiring story, but only a legend. One need not believe in it. But there is one non-Catholic man living in the town of St. Marys (which immediately adjoins St. Mary's College), who has seen in his lifetime two such tornadoes make straight for the place, only to stop at the very edge of the property and suddenly veer another way. That man believes St. Mary's to be blessed ground. The Jesuit Fathers too obviously believed in the apparition because they set up an altar within the stone circle and offered the Holy Sacrifice on it.

I think often of these Jesuits as I walk the shady path that leads from the shrine to the wide, stone stairway descending the slope, and wonder how many holy feet have trod this same ground? How much fasting, prayer and penance this place has seen through the years! What brilliant intellects developed under its auspices! What herculean efforts made at self-mastery!

St. Mary's is a holy place! Dignified indelibly by the deeds of holy men, yesterday and today; her traditions a beacon for us to follow after all other signposts have been knocked down, her Marian fealty beaming out in all directions from the heartland of a beleaguered nation and brightening today's darkness. It is a privilege to participate in her restoration: St. Mary's! A center of attraction, a guiding principle, another gift from the merciful hand of Mary Immaculate ... our unfailing Lodestar, Mary Immaculate.