July 30th - Blessed Father Solanus Casey

Today, we honor Venerable Fr. Solanus Casey, who died July 31^st, 1957. Barney Casey, baptized Bernard, was the sixth of sixteen children born to Irish immigrants Bernard and Ellen Casey. The date of his birth was November 25, 1870. The place was a three room log cabin on a farm in Hudson, Wisconsin. In the Casey home, prayer began every day at the domestic “church” and family Rosary and night prayers began promptly every evening at 7:00. As a young man, he had a variety of jobs, including lumber jacking, hospital orderly, prison guard and street car operator.

At this point in his life there was nothing extraordinary about Barney. He was devout, said the daily Rosary, and was looking for a wife. One day, while driving his streetcar through a rowdy section of the city of Superior, Wisconsin, he witnessed a crazed, drunken sailor stab a woman to death. The scene remained with him. To him the brutal stabbing and the sailor’s hysterical cursing symbolized the world’s sin and hate and man-made misery.

This horrible crime was the occasion for the stirring in his heart of a desire to become a priest. In 1892, at the age of twenty-one, he entered St. Francis seminary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which city at the time was heavily German. In fact, classes at the seminary were not given in English but only in German and Latin. Knowing neither language, Bernard Casey could not keep up with the scholastic requirements. One day as he was praying over this problem before Our Lady’s statue in the chapel he heard her sweet voice telling him to “go to Detroit.” So this is what he did. Arriving in Detroit in 1897, Casey was received into the Capuchin order at St. Bonaventure’s monastery where he was given the name Solanus. He was ordained in 1904 as a “simplex priest,” and was not permitted to preach sermons or hear confessions. This humiliation the thirty-three year-old friar received with great joy.

Father Solanus was sent for his first assignment as a priest to Sacred Heart parish in Yonkers, New York, where he was to serve as sacristan and later doorkeeper. Here it was that he began his life’s work with the promotion of the Seraphic Mass Association. Reports started coming in of quickly answered prayers and miraculous cures. People were astounded, and the news of the power of the Association and Father Solanus’ prayers spread rapidly.

After fourteen years at Sacred Heart, Father Casey was transferred to Our Lady of the Angels Church in Harlem. Here, again, he took up his assigned post as doorkeeper. The miracles continued. For twenty years he did this work in New York, one soul at a time, day after day, sometimes receiving as many as two hundred visitors in one day. Before his death in 1957, Father Casey had filled seven large notebooks with 6000 stories of miraculous cures and conversions. Father Solanus always attributed the cures to the Seraphic Mass Association. However, when other priests enrolled members there were no such miracles.

In 1924, Father Solanus was reassigned to St. Bonaventure’s. Father Solanus would continue his work here at Saint Bonaventure’s for twenty-one years. If his superiors had hoped to give him a reprieve from what he had endured in New York, they were mistaken. The crowds that came to ask for his prayers and counsel grew even larger in Detroit.

In 1957, Father Solanus had to be rushed to the hospital for food poisoning. After his release his brother friars noticed that he was walking at a slower pace and scratching his legs. Upon investigation they found that the skin was raw and infected so he was taken back to the hospital. By the end of July there was hardly anything left of Solanus Casey to give. The skin disease had consumed every inch of him and his legs were black to the knee. When it seemed as though his life was nearing its end, Father Casey waited until all the family had left the room before surrendering his soul. Only the nurse saw him pass away. He was speaking inaudibly with his eyes closed when suddenly he opened them and stretched forth his hands and said, “I give my soul to Jesus Christ.” It was 11:00 am, July 31, 1957. It was fifty-three years to the day and to the hour that he ascended the altar to offer his first Mass. He was originally buried in the Capuchin graveyard at Saint Bonaventure’s Friary. But is now buried inside the friary, where the public can venerate his tomb.

He was beatified in 2017. Today, let us give thanks to God for this holy Franciscan priest, and may we ask him to help us to understand the beauty and power of being obedient, with joy. For to be humble and obedient is what made Fr. Solanus Casey, such a holy man and someday a holy saint.