Celebrating The Feast Day Of Blessed Basile Anthony Moreau

Yesterday, my religious congregation, the Congregation of Holy Cross, celebrated the feast day of our founder, Blessed Basile Anthony Moreau. Among the first stories of Father Moreau that stays with me until this day was how in a moment of sadness and despair, alone in the small chapel of the motherhouse, he knocked on the tabernacle door and cried, “Are You there?”

I was reminded of the Scripture passage about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when He asked the Father, “if it be possible, let this cup pass.” As time went on, I would learn the origins of my founder’s feelings of rejection and doubt.

In the troubled period following the French Revolution, Basile Anthony Moreau, a priest of the Diocese of Le Mans, France, founded the Congregation of Holy Cross. On this the anniversary of his death, I want to honor the life and achievements of an extraordinary man who left deep prints and whose spirit continues in the life and service of Holy Cross priests, brothers, sisters, and lay collaborators across the world.

As we continue to struggle with the effects of Covid-19, Basile Moreau has much to teach us about sickness, loss, and suffering. More importantly, he has much to teach us about hope, Providence, and the Cross. Learning to love the Cross as a sign of real hope is at the core of Father Moreau’s life; hence the motto of his congregation, Ave Crux, Spes Unica, which means, Hail the Cross, Our Only Hope. To say this is to believe that we need not be afraid to love, to bury ourselves in the life of the hidden Christ.

Father Moreau was very gifted, and as a young priest he taught in a seminary, took on the responsibility of a group of religious brothers whose founder had become infirm, and assisted the diocesan clergy as they labored to restore religious practice following the French Revolution. He was instrumental in the founding of three distinct groups of religious women. Together, this band of men and women engaged in a variety of ministries across the world, among them the prestigious University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada, the largest shrine in the world dedicated to St. Joseph.

Venerable Father Peyton, a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, would add Family Rosary, a worldwide ministry to help families pray, to this legacy. It was Father Peyton who made famous the saying, “The Family That Prays Together Stays Together.”

As with so many founders of religious congregations, internal dissension and recriminations began to set in, and Father Moreau was forced to step aside. He died on January 20, 1873. A half century later the congregation came to restored reverence of its founder and sought his canonization. He was beatified on September 17, 2007, in Le Mans, France.

His would become a life of suffering. The 19^th-century book The Catholic Monitor reminds us, “All people of God are brought into the school of affliction and there are many useful lessons that God teaches us in this school. We learn more of the value, sweetness and suitableness of the word of God as affording support and comfort under the pressure of affliction. We are taught to observe the hand of God in affliction and to submit with patient resignation as knowing from where it comes. In this school of affliction, we also learn more of the kindness and love of God whose gracious presence enlightens and cheers us in the most dark and mournful seasons.

In a letter he wrote to the religious of his congregation, Father Moreau said, “For those who have faith, the cross is more valuable than gold and precious stones … afflictions, reverses, loss of friends, privations of every kind, sickness and even death itself—all these are but many relics of the sacred wood of the true cross that we must love and venerate.”

We sons and daughters of Father Moreau have Our Lady of Sorrows as our special patroness. She stood by the Cross of Jesus and knew grief. She is a woman who bore much she could not understand and who stood fast. To her many sons and daughters whose devotion ought to bring them often to her side, she tells much of this daily cross and its daily hope. (Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross. VIII. 120)