of Blessed August Czartoryski
Aug. 2, 2010
Collect
Salesian Retreat, Haverstraw, N.Y.
In our Opening Prayer on this proper Salesian memorial, we besought God that we might be “encouraged by [the] example” of Blessed Fr. August Czartoryski and that we might be “docile to the action of the Holy Spirit,” open to the promptings of divine grace, to serve God “humbly in needy young people.” The prayer singled out just one virtue of Fr. August: that he followed Jesus Christ, “who, though he was rich, made himself poor.”
In general terms SDBs need no introduction to August Czartoryski, son of a Polish prince living in Parisian exile (like that alliteration?); grandson of a Spanish queen; step-grandson of the duke of Orleans, pretender to the throne of France; close friend of Ven. Andrew Beltrami; Salesian priest; victim of TB. Perhaps years ago we read Two Friends, the dual biography of August and Andrew, one of those famous (or infamous?) pieces of Salesianità produced on the novitiate’s Gestetner machine and home-bound with cardboard, metal fasteners, and library tape. Or we might have read Fr. Phil Pascucci’s booklet condensed from Two Friends in the Salesian Missions series of biographical pamphlets. Or we might have read the 7½-page bio published in the pamphlet “Family of Holiness” when the prince was beatified in 2004.
The prince was born in 1858 and died less than 35 years later. When he was 6 his mother died of TB. The family, who were leaders in the Polish government in exile, hoping for the restoration of the country’s integrity and independence, raised him lovingly and devoutly. In fact, for 3 years in the early 1870s August’s tutor was Joseph Kalinowski, who would leave his service in the Czartoryski household to enter the Carmelites and would eventually be canonized by JPII. It was Kalinowski, apparently, who introduced August to the lives of the Italian prince Aloysius Gonzaga and the Polish noble Stanislaus Kostka, with whom he found an affinity because of their earthly status and their pursuit of a spiritual life notwithstanding that status. He liked Kostka’s motto, Ad maiora natus sum, “I was born for greater things.” It’s probably not a coincidence that both of these heroes in August’s eyes became Jesuits, both died young, and both attained holiness.
Pursuing a deeper spiritual life was in fact a passion for young August. Despite his status as the eldest son of Prince Ladislaus, despite his father’s worldly ambitions for him, despite the social and diplomatic circles that the family inhabited, August wasn’t attracted to any of that. He wrote to his father in 1878, “I have to tell you, I’m tired of all this. They are useless amusements and they distress me. It’s a nuisance having to meet people at so many banquets.” Young August was already progressing from “though rich, to making himself poor.” He also turned down several marriage proposals.
The other pursuit of most of August’s youth was better health. Like his mother, he was frail, sickly, had a persistent cough. He traveled to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and North Africa seeking a climate that would be beneficial. Nothing helped much.
The decisive moment in his life was his meeting with Don Bosco in Paris in 1883, when our founder, on one of his fundraising tours thru France, was invited by August’s stepmother, Princess Margaret of Orleans, to celebrate Mass in the family’s private chapel. Prince Ladislaus and August served the Mass. After Mass Don Bosco spoke to August those mysterious words, “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.” Had he foreseen this in one of those famous dreams?
One purpose of the invitation to Don Bosco was to ask for Salesians for Poland. They were thinking of needy young people, of course. Don Bosco replied, as he so often did, that he didn’t have adequate personnel—which usually meant in numbers, but in this case also meant he didn’t have anyone who spoke Polish. Prince Ladislaus made additional pleas, and in July 1886 he and August went to Turin to see Don Bosco again and ask again in person for Salesians for Poland. Fr. Francesia teased August: “Why don’t you become a Salesian, and then Don Bosco right away will send you to open a house in Poland.” They laughed.
But Don Bosco was the answer to August’s dream of a life in pursuit of sanctity. He’d given some thought to becoming a Carmelite like Joseph Kalinowski or a Jesuit like Gonzaga and Kostka. As early as 1884 he was inquiring about admission to the Salesians. Don Bosco, leery of accepting someone accustomed to wealth and comfort, and perhaps mindful also of the family’s opposition, put him off. Early in 1887 August did what Therese Martin would do a short time later: he appealed directly and personally to Leo XIII. Unlike Therese, who was too young to enter the Carmel at Lisieux, August got the answer he wanted: he was to go to Don Bosco and tell him it was the Pope’s wish that he be accepted.
Which he did, after renouncing all his wealth and family rights in favor of his younger brothers. Don Bosco accepted him as an aspirant in June, and within 2 months he started his novitiate, living as spartan a life as any of his younger companions. And 19th-century Salesian life was spartan, as you know from reading the Biographical Memoirs and the biographies of the early SDBs. August’s classmates, like Beltrami, were 16 or 17; he was 29. He was placing himself humbly at the service of needy young people, including to some extent his new peers. Don Bosco vested him with the cassock in November, but it would be Fr. Rua who received his vows in October 1888.
August’s story was published in the Salesian Bulletin, including in Poland. It attracted a number of young Poles to come to Turin and enter the Salesians over the next few years.
In the meantime, August’s health broke down. The superiors sent him to the more favorable climate of the Mediterranean coast, and sent Beltrami with him to look after him, tho he wasn’t in the best of health himself. Both offered themselves, as their biographer says, “on the altar of suffering” instead of in the active Salesian life. It was the humblest way of serving young people—indirectly, vicariously. But they did manage to complete their theological studies, and August was ordained on April 2, 1892. His family refused to attend—an indication of how much August had renounced to follow his vocation; but there was a reconciliation about a month later. By then his TB was well advanced, and just a year later, on April 9, 1893, he entered eternal life.
Fr. August’s funeral was celebrated at Alassio, where he’d died. There were memorial services also at Turin, Paris, and Krakow. When family members went to Turin for the rites there, they were greeted by 120 young Poles studying to be Salesians. Four years later some of these returned to their homeland to begin Don Bosco’s work at Oswiecim. Some of their religious offspring would be pioneers in our own province, especially at Hawthorne and then Ramsey. At nearby Krakow other offspring would become martyrs in the 1940s—after having laid the foundation, in St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish, of the priestly vocation of Karol Wotyla, destined in God’s providence to beatify the princely Polish Salesian.
Bl. August’s life story, his vocation, may leave us SDBs in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century with 2 lessons. The whole Congregation, most recently thru General Chapter 26, is calling us to make ourselves poor in order to serve the needy young. The other lesson is more particular to our demographics, how to deal with ill health.
1. We are called to “make ourselves poor,” as Prince August did. Const. art. 73, the GC’s starting point on poverty, notes Don Bosco’s “austerity, hard work and much initiative,” and says that imitate him by living “detached from all earthly goods,” participating “with a spirit of enterprise in the mission of the Church and in her struggle for justice and peace, especially by educating those in need.” We give witness to poverty, sharing our goods in common, and thus help young people “to overcome their selfish possessive instinct and [open themselves] to the Christian sense of sharing.” In sum, our poverty is at the service of our apostolic mission, and our poverty offers young people a model of Christian virtue.
The challenge is to discern what poverty means in America today. While it doesn’t mean that we should live the way the poor do in Bangladesh or Haiti, does it mean living like the upper middle class, which is probably how most of us do in fact live?—with an abundance of food, clothing, secure housing, means of transportation, health care, annual vacations, plenty of consumer goods. How many of us have come on retreat with a laptop, iPod, cell phone, Facebook, Twitter? In this week’s Catholic New York you can read Christina Capecchi’s syndicated column Twenty Something, which is this week is titled “Off the Grid, Out of the Grind.” She reports that soon she’ll be making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and someone had inquired whether she’d be tweeting from there. After thinking about it, she writes:
Personally, I’d rather go off the grid, as they say. I’m not keen on that kind of accessibility. There’s value in traveling lightly—no footsteps or footnotes.
I’m seeking the kind of discovery that comes with disappearing. After all, Jesus needed 40 days (in a desert I’ll soon see!). So I’m packing my suitcase and preparing an out-of-office message. Do you know how good that feels? Do you know how rarely I use that feature?
I’m inspired by my Uncle Mike, who went off the grid for two weeks last fall to serve as the keeper of a historical lighthouse. He watched birds soar across sunsets, playing his flugelhorn into the glassy water. Sans electricity and Internet, he attuned his body to nature’s rhythms.
Uncle Mike is going back again this fall, and he’s planning to pack even lighter. He knows how to keep the light burning.
How do we teach the young to be detached from a consumer society and tuned in to God, to let God light up their lives, unless we’re detached, tuned in, lit up by God ourselves?
It’s certainly a challenge is to make ourselves poor, to “develop a culture of solidarity with the poor in the local context,” as GC26 says in Guideline 13; to make “choices that have an impact on the tenor of our lives,” as well as to educate young people “to bring a critical spirit to their interpretation of the economic and social phenomena of our time” and “to choose areas of greatest poverty when opening new works.” If the Holy Spirit has been speaking to the Congregation thru GC26 and the teachings of the Rector Major (I wrote that last week; I’m delighted to be in synch with what [Fr.] Steve [Schenck] said to us last nite and this morning)—then the challenge is for us to be, like Bl. August Czartoryski, “docile to the action of the Holy Spirit.”
2. The 2d lesson from Bl. August’s life is living with illness, poor health, fragility. [Fr.] Tim Ploch once told me (as I was getting ready for one of my carpal tunnel surgeries) that once you turn 40 everything starts to break down. About 35 members of our province are in their 80s and 90s, and another 35 or so in their 70s—all together, close of half of our province. If all of us over 40 are starting to falter—actually, 40 would feel pretty good, wouldn’t it?—how much more those who’ve reached that biblical sum of 70 years, “or 80 if [they] are strong” (Ps 90:10)? As a Salesian who couldn’t be an active apostle in a school or oratory, August Czartoryski offered himself as a sacrifice on behalf of those who were active and on behalf of young people. He exercised the apostolate of prayer and suffering. A lot of us are already called to such an apostolate, and many of the rest of us will be called to it in the future. We may be “encouraged by [the] example” of Bl. August to be “docile to the action of the Holy Spirit” also where our health and physical stamina are concerned, where a different kind of self-offering is required of us than the wear and tear of the classroom, the playground, or the rounds of a parish priest.
By our practice of poverty and by our self-offering, may we “humbly serve [our Lord Jesus] in needy young people.”
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