Episode 152: Dr. Mary Kloska Speaks About Ven. Fr. Aloysius Schwartz (March 30, 2025)

In this episode of The Heart of Fiat Crucified Love, Dr. Mary Kloska dives deep into what it means for a soul to be on fire with missionary zeal and love. She explains the call of each soul to imitate Our Lady as the burning bush -consumed with divine love radiating light to the world -taking all suffering to herself and responding with healing grace. Dr. Mary Kloska shows how the life of Ven. Fr. Aloysius Schwartz did just this in incredible ways -and by sharing his life's story and writing she sets the listener on fire with a desire to live such radical love within his own life and vocation.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So listening to w c AT radio your home for
authentic Catholic programming.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to the heart of Fiat crucified Love.
This week, I'm excited to share with you a book
that I read this week. And I have to say
I bought it about a year or two ago, and
I actually have found multiple copies in my home, which

(00:28):
must have meant that on more than one occasion I
felt inspired to pick this book up, but it was
not until this week that I actually did so. And
it's on the life of Venerable Aliosius Schwartz, a priest,
Father Alioshius Schwartz. He was a priest that began his

(00:55):
missionary work in South Korea, but he founded a congregation
that serves really the course of the poor in many
countries throughout the world. And I found in his writing
such a deep conformity with Christ and an inspiration because

(01:16):
he is a missionaries missionary. He's a missionary like I
was trained to be a missionary, and there's many things
that all of us can learn from his vision of
what it means to live the Gospel. So I will
be sharing with you excerpts I just kind of underlined
as I was reading and folded the pages over. I

(01:38):
haven't organized it into topics, but I am sure that
as I share different little insights that he has had
with my own understanding and commentary, that you will be
greatly inspired in your life to find those ordinary ways

(01:58):
to help the poor of the poor among us. Right,
So we're going to begin with a prayer and a
song and then a thought about what it means.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
To be a burning bush.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
I started thinking about it when we read that gospel
here not long ago, and I continue to think about
it even at Mass this morning as I was praying
about this podcast. And then we'll share all of these
beautiful insights from the life of venerable Father Aliosius Schwartz.

(02:38):
I do have great hope that he will be canonized
a saint someday. People can be in heaven because of
their heroic life of virtue, but when they are canonized,
they're given a certain authority in the church that otherwise
they might not have. And I think that the way
he lived can teach all of us something very powerful.

(03:04):
And when somebody lives away that's heroic. I mean, the
book is called the Heroic Life, right, Something a little
bit more radical some people can stand in awe, but
most people they get jealous, or competitive or threatened. And
Father Alioshis experienced that both in the world and in
the church a lot, first from his own mary Noal

(03:28):
missionaries and then from the samus from the hierarchy of
the church. But he used his aloneness in the call
that he had as a way to identify with the
poor who are so often alone. So there's just much
we can learn from him. I want to I wanted

(03:51):
to sing a Russian song because the mission in Russia
reminded me in many ways of what he came up
again in South Korea. Some of the physical poverty was similar,
much of it was not, but the destitution of soul

(04:12):
certainly was. And I turned, I turned and went through
some songs this morning, and the one that I settled
on sharing with you is Blige Gaspo Tok Tba and
I want to share the words with you Nearer to
You Lord. I think there is an English version of this,

(04:34):
but it's.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Just really beautiful.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
It's it's been you know, twenty years since I have
been to Russia almost and it's been you know, many
many years since I've played Russian music, so it is
hard for me to play this and seeing as I'm
reading cyrillic, but I went through once or twice and
it'll kind of give you that missionary feel I think,

(04:59):
as go into to discover what it means to be
a radical missionary in today's world. Right, Father Alioshis was
a modern day saint. But the words of this song
is nearer to thee, Lord, nearer to thee. Even if
I had to rise up on the cross, I need

(05:21):
only one thing to be closer to you, Lord. I
am a wanderer in the desert, and the night is dark.
Only the head, only, if only my head will find
rest on this stone. If you think about like when
Jacob was wandering and he fell asleep and used a

(05:42):
stone as his pillow. But even in sleep, my heart
is closer to you, Lord, closer to you, closer to you.
And when I awake from sleep, I will sing a song,
and with your praise I will replace my weeping in sorrow.
You are my comfort, because close to me are you, o, Lord?
Nearer to me, And when I finish my earthly life,

(06:06):
when you lead me into glory, eternal joy is closer
to me, Lord, because I am closer to you.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Be closer to me, Lord.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Nearer to me the Lord. It's just kind of like
a general translation. So in the name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen, Come, Holy Spirit,
fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in all
of us a fire of your love. Send forth your spirit,
and we will be recreated. And thou shalt renew the

(06:38):
face of the earth. Sweet Jesus, in this next time,
the sex hour or more, we would like to share
with you our hearts. We're sitting at your feet as
a disciple, sat at your feet, as Mary Magdalen sat
at your feet with that contemplative stance. We ask you

(06:58):
to quiet us and to open up our hearts to
hear what you want to teach to us, especially through
the life of Father Alioshi's Schwartz. We ask his intercession.
We ask your Mother, We ask our Lady of the
Virgin of the Poor, who did everything for Father Aliosha's

(07:23):
to be with us and to intercede with us.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Come, Holy Spirit, Come by the means of.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
The powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, thy
well beloved spouse. I just need to get try us
one way through.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
M m HM.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Hm hm.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
Hm.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
That was a messy intro, but see if I can
do it better in real time.

Speaker 5 (08:30):
Please shake gaysal bye, please shake tea.

Speaker 6 (08:39):
Yeah hard yup crystal prismos po.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Not yum yeah.

Speaker 7 (08:53):
No lea le shack a sport t pier please shake
asport t p please shake tapia.

Speaker 6 (09:19):
Pool steam astraka e not tima.

Speaker 5 (09:29):
A deepna co lehn.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Do clab.

Speaker 7 (09:40):
No sad.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Fa smith plea shack a sport.

Speaker 7 (09:49):
T pier, please shake asport t pier, Please shake taper.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
E probutia sasnia psaspi.

Speaker 6 (10:15):
For crystal crystals plam nieu.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Score b hard dominie.

Speaker 7 (10:32):
Plea shake asport depa, please shakaspo tpia, please shake tpia
card sam new hugeason or conchuia.

Speaker 5 (11:02):
Cod baslove t thedio shmanya.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah sni radusm.

Speaker 4 (11:19):
Le shack asport t b le shack asper t b
le shack t.

Speaker 6 (11:31):
Berle shackspot t ba please shake t b.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Had yup christo presos pond have samna.

Speaker 8 (12:00):
Snadn le shack aasport t pier, please shakeasport t pa, please.

Speaker 9 (12:16):
Shack t pipoo steamer straa.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Coach timia.

Speaker 7 (12:34):
Or Deepna Codute.

Speaker 10 (12:41):
Clove said, Vasna, please shake asport t Pier please shake
GasPort Yeah Lee.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
Amen, in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Amen. When I play Russian, I want to just keep
going and going. But we have a podcast to record,
So the first thing I wanted to kind of share
with you are some thoughts on the burning Bush. I
was talking to my mom and dad after mass. I

(13:41):
think that was last Sunday.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Maybe it was a Sunday before.

Speaker 11 (13:43):
No, it was last Sunday. I'd sent the foster baby
home and I went over and they said something about
the burning bush and I said, well, I am supposed
to be.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
That burning bush. And they said, boy, you're really humble.
I said, well, we're all supposed to be a burning bush.
But it came out of my mouth even faster than
I thought. And then as I reflected on it, I thought, wow,
I really need to go deeper into this. You know,
there's a Russian icon of our lady as the burning bush.

(14:19):
And I actually ordered a copy to have for this podcast,
and it was supposed to be delivered yesterday. UPS said
I needed to pick it up because I wasn't here
to sign and then they would redeliver it Monday if
I didn't come in. I went in today, they said, oh,

(14:40):
they took it out to redeliver it early, but now
they won't redeliver it Monday. So long story short, it's
going to be like middle of next week before I
can go back and try to find it. So I thought, wow,
that's a lot of spiritual warfare and a mess. It's
like the monkey in the middle to get this icon.
But I didn't want to wait to do the podcast

(15:03):
until I had it. So I want you just to
close your eyes and imagine what our Lady as the
burning Bush would be. The icon is a beautiful image
of her and her son is at the center, like
where her heart would be. And he's coming like from
a vine, because Jesus did say I am the vine, right,

(15:24):
But he's coming. He is like the bush, so like
you've got his bust, but then you've got the bush
beneath him, but around him, but within her is the fire,
and it's it's the burning bush. He is the fire within.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Our lady.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
And this lent. I have decided to go very deeply
into just our Lady of sorrows and living lent with
her suffering heart. And the images of our Lady of
Sorrows have seven swords, but her heart was pierced with
infinite swords. Right, But every cut that was made to

(16:07):
her heart was an opening where this fire of divine
love that always dwelled within her could burst forth.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Right.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Imagine having a brilliant light and like a cardboard box
over it and you see nothing. The room is dark,
but if you cut into it, if you make holes,
the light starts to pour out. And I believe it
was at Mass last week when we were meditating on
the burning bush, where our Lord showed me that that

(16:39):
was what I was supposed to be like our lady.
Our lady was the burning bush on fire with the
fire of God's love that didn't consume her, but perfected
her and poured out powerfully from her. And we're called
to be that way. And every time that people come
up and pierce us with a knife, with a sword

(16:59):
with a wound, our response is to be like our
lady a forgiveness, a love, an openness, and just a
willingness to bleed along with her and Christ and to
allow the brilliant light of God's love to pour from
our wounds caused by the sin of others. And as

(17:20):
I continued to meditate on this this week, I finally
picked up this book on Father Venerable Aliosius Schwartz, and
he lived this like It was so divinely arranged that
as the Holy Spirit was showing me this here within
the last week or two, that I would be given

(17:44):
a concrete example. We are called to be the burning bush,
to be first of all, purified from all sin, on
fire with the love of God, completely mortified, willing to
suffer for others and to forget about ourselves. And then

(18:04):
when the world pierces us, we find joy and radiating
the light of Christ through those wounds. That was this
man's life. Father Alioshis was born in Washington, DC. He
was born to a poor family. His aunt was a
missionary sister who lit a fire in his heart to

(18:30):
be a missionary when he grew up. And I'm looking
for the date he was born, nineteen thirty. I think
I was sorry I should I guess I should have
done that, huh. But chapter one starts in nineteen thirty. YEP.

(18:51):
September eighteenth, nineteen thirty was when he was born. And
eventually he decided to become a mary Nol priest, and
so he went to the seminary. He was there many years,
and he heard about the great missionaries that had gone
before him, and they lit his heart on fire, especially

(19:17):
the mary Nol missionaries that lived the mission life in
a radical way. But he became very uncomfortable eventually, it
says in here, he had gradually come to see that
many of the mary Nols, like other American missionaries, lacked
a real inner struggle with poverty, and still more, a

(19:37):
longing to embrace it. It seemed that the missionaries would
often camp luxuriously outside of poverty stricken neighborhoods, and Al
not only wanted to live with the poor, he wanted
to be with them. He felt that until the walls
of physical and emotional comfort were annihilated, false gods would

(19:59):
always live in a missionary's belly, and the souls of
the poor would never be wholly fed.

Speaker 10 (20:05):
Right.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Ever, since the first seed of foreign missionary work was
planted in him, he had imagined his days lived in
poverty as he served in catechise the ignorant and the abandoned,
returning alone in the evenings to withdraw in to a
small dwelling to read scripture, pray his office, and contemplate
Jesus Christ as a poor man. The Mary Knowles and

(20:29):
their heavenly, heavily Americanized missionary style left him disillusioned. Right
the way that even today the Americans are missionaries are
very different than a lot of these radical saints that
went before us. You know, you look at Mother Teresa
and when she opened up a hospital, an AIDS hospital,

(20:52):
I think it was in California. These businessmen came and
they said, you know, this building is awful, and you know, look,
we fix the whole thing up for you. We put
a nice carpet throughout the whole thing. And she said,
we can't have carpet. We have to have hard floors.
And they said, well, we already put it in and
it's you know, it's free, it doesn't cost. And she said,
I'm not you know, you're not going to be very

(21:14):
successful if you, you know, reject gifts like this. And
she said, I'm not called to be successful but to
be faithful. Right, she also was very faithful to the
call that the Lord gave her to be poor like
the poor. Right, it says put simply al wanted to

(21:38):
be poor, which she feared that the Mary Knowles would
never be. Only the poor and fully sacrificial priest answering
God's call to give up all would radiate a lasting,
unfiltered light. And he looked to Saint trez I decided
to sit here as I do this podcast because he
had such a love for Theresa of Lsou and she

(22:01):
is the patron saint of missionaries. And then behind me
here in the shadow box are all sorts of missionary
saint relics. I have relics from many saints and we
asked their intercession. They all lived the Gospel in a
very radical way. Right. But it says that Saint Theresa
of Lsu would resolved to offer every human humdrum moment

(22:25):
of her life to God as a miniature holocaust of love.
And that's what Al tried to follow. Al took her
as a model offering up everything. And you know that's
how you and I can imitate our lady in being
a burning bush in this world. By taking every little

(22:45):
humdrum moment of our life and offering it to God
is a miniature holocaust of love. Saint Theresa made her
life into a game of inches. Offering yourself is a
sacrifice to God. Unnumbered times throughout the day, even in
the smallest details, Al began to offer the scuffling noises

(23:08):
of rats and mice, the incessant pounding of siblings footsteps
above him, and the stifling conditions of his bedroom as
a renunciation of self and a sacrifice to God for souls.
This is when he lived, and he had moved when
he was at his famili's into the basement where it
was very dirty and there were mice all over. He

(23:35):
knew that there was a rejection of self that would
be the sole method of raising like incense to God.
He wanted to be the poor man, to have poor
man poverties such as Christ lived, and he knew that
that was going to be painful. He said, Christianity is

(23:58):
the religion of the incarnation, and as such it always
deals with man, not as an abstraction, but as a concrete,
flesh and blood reality which he is. And he wanted
to paint his life not with the mediocre missionary call
that he saw in his fellow marin Ole brothers, but

(24:20):
instead with the palette of the great saints. He wanted
to introduce into his missionary call the spirituality of Anthony
of the Desert, right alone with the alone, that hermit call,
that contemplative call, a call to fight with the devil.
Nobody had such spiritual warfare as Anthony of the Desert.

(24:40):
He wanted to be like Patrick, who is cold and
tethered to an Irish mountainside, to be like Saint Benedict
in a cave Francis alone in a crumbling temple in
the forest. He wrote, Christ himself was marked by the
sign of poverty. He was born under it, lived under it,

(25:03):
died under it. If not, we could end the discussion
of poverty right here. But the fact is the historical
Christ chose to be poor, and a concommitted fact is
his disciples have no choice but to follow in his footsteps.
So he felt this radical call to poverty is not
too radical. He felt like it was the call that

(25:26):
every missionary had, and so he decided to write to
the Samists. It was a religious community in Belgium that
would allow him to go through the seminary and then
he would be sent to work under a bishop in

(25:48):
one of these foreign, poor, poor countries. Right, So the
idea is that they would form them to be missionaries.
But then he would end up instead of living in
like a big salmon community, he would be set and
he would be responsible to the bishop of a very
needy diocese. And when he told everyone that at twenty

(26:10):
two he was leaving the mary Noles and leaving America
because he had to go to the finish seminary with
the Samists, and he had to do it in French.
He didn't know French. He said. No one, not even
his aunt, who was a religious sister, thought that he
should leave the mary Noles conventional, time tested missionary structure.

(26:34):
But he said, about that time, everyone was convinced I
had lost my reason. Everyone. I recall my aunt, a
very holy nun, sister Malfrida, who was very devoted to
me and was living for the day of my ordination.
It was announced that I was going overseas, and she
wrote me a letter. I got it the day I

(26:55):
was leaving, and she said, you are making the.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
Biggest blunder of your life. She was so upset.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
She also considered the Solomon in our family, was considered
the Solomon in our family, the wise old nun, and
this was her advice. And I was going against it.
I had a cousin who was a Dominican, and I
saw him the day I was getting on the boat.
He told me I was stupid. My brother told me
I was stupid. Nobody encouraged me. This was the atmosphere

(27:24):
in which I left and went to Louvaine, which is
where he was going to finish his seminary. And so
he went because Father Al always did exactly what God
asked of him, and he didn't care that. You know,

(27:46):
he was accused of everything from you know, great sin
to imprudence to insanity by his family, by the church,
by those who were threatened by what he was doing,
not only from the very beginning when he went to
join the Sammist, but then eventually when he left the Samis,
when he went to South Korea, as he continued to

(28:08):
work in toil all the way up to founding his
last girls town and Boystown in Mexico as he was
dying of als. But Father L had a deep connection
with the Lord and he knew he had a moral
obligation to follow that which God had asked of him,

(28:31):
and he wasn't going to do anything less. Father L
was a very smart man, a very kind man. He
was always at the top of his class. He was
very athletic. He was known. Even doing the hardest work
in the missions, he would go running every morning. He
was like a marathon runner, and he would get the
poor to run. He'd get the sisters he formed eventually

(28:54):
to run. But he did very well in his studies.
And there was a priest who was a missionary to China,
father Frederic Vincent Leb, who had a great impact on

(29:16):
Father L's life. He only heard stories about him, but
he seemed to be a saint in himself and a
wonder worker in China where he worked and gave his life.
And that was the inspiration that Father L took. But
just as he saw contradictions within the marin No community,
he started to see them within the Samists. And he

(29:39):
made a great mistake. He got through the seminary, he
was ready to be ordained. He was being sent home
to be ordained in the States, and then he was
going to go on and to serve in South Korea. Well.
He wrote a very blunt letter to his religious superior

(30:00):
criticizing the persecution that he had received within the Samists
for being American.

Speaker 10 (30:06):
And.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Showed some of the in in inchragruities within the community,
ways where they were not being faithful to what they
were called to. And long story short, the superior decided
a week before is Our Nation to cancel it and
send a letter to the bishop in America, while the

(30:30):
priests who had been spiritual directors of Father and others
came to his aid, and he jumped on a boat
or a plane I think that time, and went back
to Belgium and met with the bishop from that area
as well as well as with others. And long story short,

(30:53):
the bishop, who also was a superior of the Samists, said,
you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to
release you from your vows to the Samus and I'm
going to allow you to be to be ordained under me,
and then I will send you to South Korea. So
he went home with a letter from the bishop there

(31:15):
and he was ordained back here in the States in Washington,
d c. Before he left Belgium that time, though, he
went to visit a beautiful apparition site that is not
well known. I had actually never heard of it, but
I am getting to know it better. Our Lady of Badu,

(31:35):
I think is the way you say it, it's the
Virgin of the Poor, where our lady had appeared to
a poor not even that faithful, little eleven year old
girl from a family who barely went to Mass in
the mountainside, just very simple people.

Speaker 10 (31:51):
And.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Asked for faith and trust, asked it to shrine belt
there healings, miracles have happened, and asked for people to
be kind and generous to the poor.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
She said that she came for the poor.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
And I've actually been looking for just like a set
of the actual apparition, like the words that our lady said,
and I can't find anything more than just like a
quote here and a quote there. But Father was very
struck by this apparition, and so was the bishop that
kind of came to his aid. And that's where they connected.

(32:30):
And so Father went back and consecrated his whole priesthood
to Our Lady of the Poor, telling her that he
wanted to give his whole life to the poor, and
he really trusted that she would provide and she did
incredible things for him.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
So you know, in the end, everything worked out for him.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
As I said, he took many different holy priests as
his example along the way. It's almost like he would
gather up examples to put before him and then try
to compete interiorly to live up to their example. The
one Father Leb, who was the Samist that he used
to read stories and sermons by him all the time,

(33:15):
had once said, if my suffering isn't enough to make
saints of you, I will suffer more. That is kind
of what Father Alioshis's attitude was. With all the persecution
from his family, from within, the Samists, within the mary Knowles,
within the later the hierarchy of the church, his fellow priests,
the mafia.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
He would he would always be at peace.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
He was never ruffled by what he came up against.
He would he would say with Father Leb, if my
suffering isn't enough to make saints of you, I will
still suffer more. What a beautiful example to all of us.
And so Father Elioshius went to see the Virgin of

(33:58):
the Poor, or Lady of Banu, and he always attributed
to her the salvation of his priesthood. He would later write,
Mary of Benu chose me at an early age, just
as she erupted in the night of the Life of
marietto Becco, that little apparition visionary. She suddenly appeared in

(34:23):
my life without any preparation. She brought me to Belgium,
where I discovered her. I had never heard of Banu before.
So my priesthood in a special way belongs to our
Lady of Banu. My apostolate is hers, and I would
like to be buried at her feet and say that
all praise, all glory, all honor for anything good accomplished

(34:45):
in my life goes to her and to her alone.
And Al's brother Lou once wrote, what he offered to
Mary in Banu was his entire priesthood, and I imagined
that was as pure as it gets. I imagine that's
why everything he did grew. It also grew because he

(35:05):
wanted to be a martyr. He would never share that
desire with me, but I knew it because of the
saints that he was drawn to, so many of them
were martyrs. And he did end up dying as like
a white martyr. He ended up getting als, and he
had a very painful death, a slow death where he

(35:26):
had become more and more vulnerable and be stuck with
all of his faculties in a body that wasn't going
to work. Anymore, and so he ended up in South Korea,

(35:49):
and he speaks about when he first started walking through
and what he saw, if you know, the Korean War
had ended, and the whole country had been torn to pieces,
had been slaughtered, he said. When he met the priest
who was supposed to help him, they left the rectory
at daybreak and walked the long bridge that stretched from

(36:11):
Busan to ye Gondo, an island notorious for its several
thousand of terraced shacks built onto a mountainside. The huts
were almost indistinguishable from the mud brown mountain on which
they were located. To Father Al, this bridge acted as
a metaphor. It struck him that setting foot onto the

(36:34):
island represented the first day of the remainder of his life.
This was his turning to Jerusalem. It was where he
could finally enter to bear the cross of the socially
leprous and to offer his priesthood as a crucifixion to
unite himself with them. He stopped on a span of
the bridge, lingered a bit, and began to pray. Father

(36:59):
was wearing an old, old navy coat over his cassock.
He probably wore that coat for almost ten more years
until the Sisters of Mary Bottom a new one. We
were in the middle of the bridge. You could see
not only the downtown, but the slopes of the Bear Mountains,
where there were thousands and thousands of shacks and squatter huts.

(37:20):
Father Al was leaning against the guard trail of the
bridge and attentively looking at the shabbily clothed people walking
over the bridge, with their stooped bodies against the cold
winter sea and wind blowing against their rough faces. He
looked very serious and seemed to become resolved that he
would proclaim the good news of salvation to them in

(37:56):
his soul. The path up this mountain seemed like a
red carpet crowning his marriage to innumerable days of dry martyrdom.
His home was now in the midst of lonesome, unmarked places,
in garbage dump homes, cruel government run tubercular wards and
shanties outside his rectory where the insane lived. Here, Father

(38:19):
Al could effectively crawl into the skin of Jesus Christ
the starved man. He spoke about the poverty of the
people that he served. He said that if they were
lucky to have work, they earned four cents a day

(38:41):
that didn't even buy enough rice to survive for one person,
And as he was given a tour of the area,
his tour guide said, now, Father, you know what it's
like to be poor in Korea. In the days at
five followed, Father l considered more deeply the reality of

(39:03):
the lives of the poor he passed in the streets
each day. He believed that God could shower them with miracles, sustenance,
and endless measures of his grace. But he also knew
that until they experienced God through the witness of those
willing to enter fully into the cave of their poverty,
willing to become them, the poorness would remain outside. The

(39:27):
poorness would maintain its hold. These hundreds of thousands of
war ravaged Koreans and the dark communities where they resided
required one on one, flesh and blood witness of God's love.
They needed to be rescued. They too were capable of

(39:47):
God's inheritance. Father al also knew, of course, that the
slums would forever remain as unvisited colonies of lepers unless
someone resembling Christ stepped into them. There had to be
a cost to save them. There had to be a Crucifixion.

(40:08):
You know, you can hear what I've read thus far
and what I will continue to read, and feel like
it's distant from you. You know, maybe you live in
Pittsburgh and you're like, you know, how can I relate
to Father Al?

Speaker 4 (40:21):
We all can't.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
The Gospel needs to be incarnated into the world, right,
And I look at the way, the varying different ways
that the Lord has called me to do that in
my life, going into Russia and living that poverty of
the people there, you know, going into the depths of
Africa and living that poverty there here, you know, living

(40:49):
with the ordinary and taking in like these foster babies,
right and making the pain of the addict parents and
the you know, this burnout bitter social workers, and all
of that my own right, having the courage to get
splattered with the dirt.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
That's coming from their frustrated lives.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
But I also see it in the call that I
have had that I never chose myself these last several
years to work and serve amongst the ordinary as a nanny,
to work and serve amongst the wealthiest of the wealthy
in our country. These are also lepers in a way.
These are people who have not seen the Gospel incarnated

(41:35):
into how they live their lives. And you look at
some of the Holy Catholic musicians or actors or people
that are in Hollywood. They have a real call and
there's a poverty to what they're called to do. You know,

(41:57):
there are certain clothes that I've had to wear, just
be because I work in a billion dollar home, right
or yeah, I mean maybe not quite that, but very
nice homes. Right. And there's a certain way of integrating
into their lives where then I have to know how

(42:19):
to act in order to be accepted by them, and
then to teach them the gospel, to place Rosary beads
with the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady next to them
on their bed pillow every night as they go to sleep, right.
And you know, even here in the United States, there's
a balance of you know, when I have tried to

(42:41):
live the radical poverty I lived in Africa, here people
didn't understand and it wasn't helping them. So instead to
create beauty and simplicity and to invite people to see
how God can be can be a light just in
the ordinary little island I live on in Indiana, right

(43:07):
where the poorest of the city are right here outside
my window and knock on my door for help. And
yet I'm still have the other arm, you know, reaching
into the homes of the more affluent and being stretched.
It's a different form of the cross, and I think

(43:28):
I've shared with you all before. Up to the stairs
in my missionary, my office, work room, whatever, my mission room.
People always comment when they come in there, they say,
why do you have a bunch of herds of sheep
on your wall? Well, I have two big posters of
different breeds of sheep, and it's to remind me that

(43:50):
I am a shepherd. It's like Christ a shepherd. But
the sheep he brings me varies all the time, and
I have to remember, just like a shepherds, to know
what kind of sheep he's hurting. Some do better together
in a group. Some are more lonely. Some you know,
need a particular kind of food or a water. Some

(44:12):
get sick more easily, Some do better up on the mountain.
Some are better friends for children, Some are better meat,
some have better wool. You have to know the sheep
that you're hurting. And in my life, God has given
me the whole world in some ways, And I have
to remember, are these Pakistani sheep? Are they, you know,

(44:33):
the West suburbs of Chicago sheep? Are they you know
Hollywood sheep? Or are they you know, my former children
from Africa sheep? Are they my foster sheep? Are they
the regular parish sheep? Who is the Lord asking me
to shepherd? So as you listen to these stories of

(44:55):
how father al integrated into the community, they should inspire.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
You to give or to be more.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
But it doesn't mean you have to run off to
these places. It means that you have to look around
and say, who are the sheep the Lord's entrusted to me?
How can I incarnate in their lives better? It might
just be your children, But do you run your household
doing your own thing, supplying for their needs haphazardly? Or

(45:22):
do you sit on the ground while your baby is
doing tummy time and reader a book and enter into
her little world? Do you, you know, have long conversations
with your teenage son about what he's reading in school? Right?
Or you know, go help and practice basketball if you can.

(45:42):
Are you being incarnated to whatever sheep you're being given
to factory workers? Right? If you're in a factory, how
are you ministering to them? So that's the kind of
the lesson we can get, and it's by allowing, like
Terrez in the little things every day to be consumed
by divine love. We become that burning bush. And as

(46:02):
difficult as it is for us, the more we radiate
light if we just accept it and allow ourselves to
be pierced open with suffering, with swords.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
And to bleed that onto the people.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
The wealthy who I've worked for have not been easy
or kind, but I always take that and I offer
it in love for their souls, the poor that I.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
Help, the social workers.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
I mean, I'm taking these kids. They're rude. Sometimes they're mean.
Have you ever picked up a scared, starving child from
the streets? They could bite you, right, I have. But
you accept. You know, maybe you're trying to love your
family and they're bitter and they're resentful and they do really.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
Mean things to you.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Maybe it's a priest, maybe it's somebody at your parish,
maybe your sister in a community, it's your fellow sisters.
But what we're called is to recognize that as the
people serves form of poverty, to take that suffering they
give us to allow ourselves to be ripped open, to
offer it for their salvation, to allow it to enkindle
in us, to be like ember, to enkindle the fire

(47:11):
of our love more and more and more. The degree
that you're sacrificing is the degree that you will change
the lives of those around you. Right, Father Al never
thought about himself. He never said woe is me. He
looked to be a flame of love. He was a

(47:32):
brilliant one. There had to be a cost, there had
to be a crucifixion. Father Al said, being capable of
God is a description of man in his most sublime dimension,

(47:55):
poor little finite creatures. Though he be, man is still
a to be filled with God, as a glass with
wine or a room with sunlight. Man has within himself
the capacity to become a child of God and to
share fully in the divine life. Every Man is granted
that people who are hungry are not as receptive as

(48:18):
people who are well fed. Nevertheless, they are capable both
of hearing the word of God and also of accepting
their heart. One would be doing the poor and injustice
by stating dogmatically that they are incapable of learning about God.
Praying or grasping in some manner at least the eternal
truths of salvation. So Father Al served in these slum perishes.

(48:45):
But then he also traveled through the neighborhoods to find
the people left on the wayside. He tended to ill,
nourished bodies crumpled on the sidewalk in sane men in
cardboard boxes, dying men shivering beneath the bussan bridge. Father
Al was visiting people who lived like animals, said Monsignor Golasinski,

(49:08):
who was a good friend with him. Korea had been
ripped in two and he was there to see it.
He saw things that nobody sees. He was blown away
by the poverty. No villager had ever seen a priest
in the villages where he visited. Father Al was invited

(49:31):
to stay in a small thatched cottage with no furniture. He,
like everyone else in the village, slept on a quill
on the earthen floor, dined at a low table on seaweed, soup, barley,
and boiled eggs. Everyone seemed to have one change of clothing.
He watched boys in the hills reach their hands into

(49:52):
cold streams in search of snails for food, which was
a great delicacy that the villagers offered to the visiting
Catholic priest. In the stark poverty, far from the din
of the city's noise and smokestacks, these villagers witnessed a
steady and harmonious rhythm of order. They lived in staggering, staggerly,

(50:19):
staggeringly poor conditions, but had found great joy in their
small community. Most didn't even know Christ, but mysteriously, to
Father Al, the Holy Spirit seemed to dwell like a
warm light within these villagers. They were ordered by natural
law that they neither knew nor could articulate. These villages

(50:42):
seemed to him as ordered as a small and holy
home of the scorned town of Nazareth. He saw that
Nazareth's spirituality in these people. There was a young man
named Michael who was one of the orphans on the street,
and Father Al took to him and really tried to
help him, and he helped Father Allan his work. Eventually,

(51:06):
he became very sick with tuberculosis and he was cursing.

Speaker 7 (51:09):
God, and.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Father Alan did everything possible to help him before he
finally died because he had no will to live. But
he said to Father l Once the church tells me
to pray, Father, and that's fine. Tell me this, though,
how can I pray when my belly is empty? Tomorrow?

(51:32):
Maybe I'll be dead. Then I'll go to heaven. When
I'm in heaven, I'll pray. But sometimes, Father, I think
I might lose my mind, Michael continued. In America, people
ask themselves a question, how can I make my body thin?
In Korea, people ask the question, how can I make
my body fat? In America, people wake in the morning

(51:54):
and ask how can I make my life enjoyable? In Korea,
people wake in the morning and say, how can I
stay alive? Today? When he found out he had tuberculosis,
Michael said, please tell me this, Father Al, is God
charity or cruelty? If God is charity, how can he

(52:15):
do this to me? His words left Father l empty.
He had no response. He offered to pay for Michael's medications,
hospital bills, food, anything that would restore his help. He
paid for Michael's transportation to the countryside by the sea,
where doctors encouraged him to rest. I was wasting my time,

(52:38):
Father Al said. He was of the sick, and I
was of the healthy, and the vast chasm that lay
between our respective worlds was too great. A short time later,
he received a letter from Michael that was shattering. With
little food to eat, Michael was forced to kill and

(52:59):
eat his only comeon, a small dog. His relatives, whom
he rarely saw, worked long days in the fields, were
too tired to pay him mind. A few months after
sending the letter, Michael showed up at Father El's doorstep,
appearing demented, and within a few weeks he was dead.
Father Al believed he had lost his will to live.

(53:21):
He said Michael tried again and again, at times violently,
to break away, to live, to breathe to be happy,
as everything in him cried out to do, but it
was of too much for him. Finally, broken and exhausted,
he gave up and died. Michael was the face of
the starved and the silent of Korea. Individuals such as

(53:44):
him were strewn throughout every corner of the country. They
had no food, no voice. Yet Father Al knew the poor,
like Michael were of immense eternal consequence. The needy of
the earth will rise up to Budjuss. Father l once prophesied,
echoing John of the Cross, they will decide and determine

(54:07):
who receives eternal salvation and who receives eternal damnation. The
next chapter talks about the beginning of his sickness. Father
l was diagnosed with als and he one day when

(54:28):
he went up to the altar and he was lifting
the chalice for consecration, he crashed to the floor and
the chellice spilled, and and he wasn't able to complete
the mass. It was. It was very sad, And that

(54:49):
was when he knew that his own crucifixion was going
to begin in the more physical way. He had already
been greatly persecuted by the bish and the priests, even
in Korea, in the United States, the fellow clergy. But
instead of despairing as this happened, he went back to

(55:10):
the Virgin of the Poor, to the Virgin of Benu,
and he wrote this prayer. For a long time. Now,
I've entrusted to you all that I have, all that
I am, and you have taken all I have nothing.
Jesuis pavre, I am poor my health. You have taken
my good name. You have taken I am now counted

(55:33):
among the disobedient, or psychotics or fools, I do not
think I exaggerate my country, Korea. You have torn from
me my mission, vocation seems to be lost. My friends,
for the most part, leave me to my own devices.
Materially I have little, Oh Virgin of the Poor. I

(55:54):
thank you. I wanted poverty, and it embraces me fiercely. Virgin. No,
I give you nothing. You have given me the gift
of poverty and suffering. By these two pearls, I am
ground into a host, Oh Mary, I dare not say
I have nothing more to give, or what remains I
do not know, will be torn from me as from

(56:15):
as a limb. So I renew deeply, conscious of what
I am, my weakness, my imperfection, the words of consecration,
all I have and all I am Virgin of the poor. Yes, yes,
but oh Mother of pity, I am a beggar and alone,
I am so weary. But I will risk all, all, all,

(56:38):
Oh Virgin of the Poor, of pity on me. Look
at my tears. Have pity, Have pity, Have pity. There
was even a time where Father Al got up to
say Mass, and as he began, he began to black
out and stagger, and he looked in the back of church,
and he saw a random priest that was just sitting
in the back, and he had them call him forward,

(57:00):
and he said, will you take my place at the altar?
Feeling like he was losing even his very vocation of
his priesthood was painful, but he never said no to
the Lord. He knew that by offerings suffering, he was
saving the souls that he had grown to love.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
He came to really identify.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Deeply with the victim Christ, the priest on the Cross.
When he heard that a number of nearby parish priests
had begun to mock his chosen living conditions. They regarded

(57:45):
him as morbid and unnecessarily theatrical in his gestures of
piety and aestheticism. Whenever he was confronted by a member
of the clergy about his radical decision to live like
a poor man, he said that he felt that God
had called him there, for God is often and most
easily found in a desert. Some approached him to say

(58:09):
he had made a spectacle of himself, but Father Al
wondered about this in his journal, privately writing, perhaps my
lifestyle is a silent reproach to them. They found this
difficult to accept. Why don't you live like everybody else?
I understand that right. That was a frequent question that

(58:32):
people threw at me. Why are you what are you
trying to prove? Why don't you live in a place
where you can adequately work and function as a pastor?
Some priests called my house the monkey cage because it
was so poor. I had no intention of giving a
lesson to anybody, and I was somewhat embarrassed by these

(58:53):
questions myself. However, I thought the positive aspects outweighed the
negative ones, so I opted to continue as I was
going along. My years living in the poorhouse that I
had fashioned as my home were ones of light and grace.
I look back upon this period of time with gratitude

(59:14):
and nostalgia. There was a time where even his very
poor concrete little rectory, one room shed he thought was
too great, and he moved into something that was more
like an outhouse. And the rats would get on him
at night and he'd have to fight them off. But
he wanted to be poor with the poor. He from

(59:41):
his rocking to your Father, al read not only church
documents and scripture, but the biographies of contemplatives and saints.
He saw the indwelling of Christ most powerfully, and the esthetics,
the mystics, the martyrs, gravitating towards Saint John of the Cross,
Trees of Avala, John Vnna, Charles de Fucot, Damon, Damian

(01:00:02):
of Malachi, Ignacious of Loyola, Francis to Sails, and Catherine
of Siena. He rode in these early days as a
priest of being moved by Martin of Tours, sharing his
cape for the street beggar, by Charles de Fouquot, launching
out into the bleakness of the Algerian desert for the

(01:00:23):
poor and the unbaptized, being inspired by Francis of Assisi,
throwing off every degree of comfort to renounce his life
for Christ. He articulated the severe method of forsakenness in
the following way. Father l Row in the Psalms, the
Holy Spirit says, and he is quoting God. I dwell

(01:00:45):
in a place which is the dry and waterless. God
dwells in a desert. He dwells in nothingness, emptiness, extreme poverty.
If you want to find God, renounce all your possess
and seek God. Jesus died poorer on the cross. He
is stripped naked, he has no good reputation. He gives

(01:01:09):
his mother. He is alone. His disciples have left him.
He has no friends. The blood leaves his body, Health
and strength and life leave his body. He empties himself completely,
and the figure of Jesus on the cross is that
of total, absolute, terrible, frightening poverty. Jesus says, if you

(01:01:32):
wish to be my disciple, you must renounce all that
you possess. All means, visible possessions and invisible possessions. What
is on the outside and what is on the inside.
All as he moved from place to place, the heartening

(01:01:58):
parable of the Good Samaritan and transitioned into a haunting
record that spun within his own head. Like the Samaritan,
he wanted to grab hold of the broken man, place
him on a donkey, and bring him to an inn.
But in a city stained by war and destitution, too

(01:02:19):
many of the innkeepers were uncarying and corrupt. He knew
that there were tens of thousands of people who needed saving.
In the darkness of his shack, an invisible hand led
him to a life changing recognition. He was to become
the innkeeper of the Parable. At that night, on the

(01:02:43):
front porch. Father al rocked in his second hand chair
to the sounds of the Korean night, and he understood
that it was God who, in his permissive will, paradoxically
prescribed his long illness, as well as the contradictory medicine
of desperation, isolation, and physical pain trials so unrelenting that

(01:03:04):
they had sent him home to America in humiliation. He
didn't consider his state side encounter with all of the
new donors that he met as happenstance. God had put
the convivical direct mailing expert beside him, dish towel in hand.

(01:03:25):
He's talking about when he was sent home because he
was too sick to convalescent in South Korea. God arranged
for him to meet all of these donors who started
to donate to his work in Korea, and it's from
that that he started the Korean Mission Fund that ended
up growing to collect millions and millions and millions to

(01:03:46):
eventually fund his projects with his congregation. The hardest thing
about leaving Korea at that time was leaving his one friend,
who was Sister Gertrude the Carmelite monastery. It's written that
no one would ever come to know the young priest,
hidden struggles, inner workings of the soul, joys and travels,

(01:04:11):
as well as this nun would whom he regarded as
spiritual mother. Every time he had an issue, every time
that the bishops wanted to shut him down and he
went to meet with the papal nuncio or the cardinal
at the Vatican, Sister Gertrude would spend the whole time
in prayer and fasting, and she would win these battles
that seemed impossible. When the mafia man came after him

(01:04:33):
and threatened his life, it was Sister Gertrude's prayers that
saved him. He wrote, I claim that the confrontation I
had against my bishop with the cardinals in Rome had
been won by Sister Gertrude. I could write a book
about my impossible mission to Rome. I felt like I

(01:04:56):
was walking on a tight rope which stretched from Korea
to the Holy City, to the US and then back
to Korea, and there was no safety net under the
typrote At every step of the way, I was at risk.
One false move and everything would be lost. However, I
felt like I was being guided by a clear wisdom

(01:05:17):
and I was being helped by an invisible power. When
I returned there, Saint Sister Gertrude told me she had
been praying for the success of my first mission day
and night, so she was the one that achieved this victory.
There was a spiritual faith which united us in our hearts.

(01:05:39):
We were one in Jesus. Seemingly overnight, Father El's korn
Korean Relief Foundation had become one of the largest relief
services in the world. He was thirty four years old,

(01:05:59):
and he wrote a letter saying, God does not want
me to dig a hole in the field, bury it
and sit on it. He wants me to use these
monies from the donations effectively, thereby generating more grace, giving
him more pleasure and glory. He had worked in wealthy
homes and he went back to beg from them, to

(01:06:22):
ask them to help his poor, and people responded in
an astounding way. We can all ask Father El's intercession.
I do all the time, not only for the personal
holiness that he lived, but for help with the foundation.
I've had several priests, even a bishop, ask about founding

(01:06:43):
a congregation that would work with the foundation and the
Children of the Cross but all of this would have
to be done like with him, God doing the work right,
God raising up donors, God providing what we need, so
we ask his intercession for that. The whole the Blessed

(01:07:09):
Sacrament was the center of his life. He spent three
hours a day in adoration and prayer, and he insisted
when he founded the Sisters of Mary they do the same.
When he founded the Sisters to start taking in these orphans,
he didn't want educated sisters, and the bishops fought him
on it. He said, we don't need people with degrees,

(01:07:30):
then they'll end up in an institution teaching. We need
mothers who come from the poor, who will pick up
the broken, bleeding, abandoned children and be their mother. And
he based all of their fruit on the time that
they spent praying. And it's true, I'll tell you, in

(01:07:51):
all the missions I've gone to, it is without that
foundation of hours and hours and hours of prayer, nothing
bears fruit. Right. He wrote to the Sisters that their
service should go completely unnoticed except by the poor themselves.

Speaker 3 (01:08:15):
He didn't want for them to be in the limelight.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
And what he asked about the Sisters with their work
with the orphans I take to heart with this work
with the foster children as well. Our God is a
god of silence. He dwells in silence. When Jesus seeks
to father, he goes into the desert. And if we
wish to serve really as children of God, we have
to have a certain love of silence, a certain love

(01:08:42):
of hiddenness, a desire to serve without recognition, without noise,
without blowing your trumpet. Many works of service of charity
have failed. As I mentioned before, frequently the serious lack
is a fear of the cross, fleeting fleeing from the cross.
People want to serve without any suffering, without pain or

(01:09:05):
difficulty or discomfort. This is not christ Like service. This
type of service is not of value. In order to
serve the poor in a christ Like manner, in the
name of Christ, we have to courageously renounce the praise,
the glory, the recognition and thanks of men. This requires
courage sacrifice. This goes against our human nature. Our role,

(01:09:31):
in a sense is to cast the devil out of
the children entrusted to us, the sick and the poor,
to fill them with the grace and the life of God.
This is to be done only by prayer accompanied by tears,
the tears of prayer and sacrifice. The two go together,
prayer and sacrifice, flesh and blood. If you have flesh

(01:09:54):
but no blood, you are pale, anemic, lifeless, weak and
without vitality. Prayer without sacrifices like flesh without blood, it
is weak, anemic, and ineffective. We come to serve the
poor with the mind, the heart, the spirit of Christ,
to serve the poor as He served the poor. We

(01:10:16):
just realize that Christ served the poor, especially spiritually. This
was his focus, his thrust. His thirst was the soul
rather than the body. It was eternity rather than time.
It was the next world rather than this world. He says,
I have come that my lambs might have life, and

(01:10:36):
might have it in abundance. These lambs, the sheep of Jesus,
are especially the poor, the lowly, the weak, the suffering.

Speaker 3 (01:10:45):
And He comes to give them abundant life.

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
Father el said Christ became as Lazarus. He not only
left the banquet table, and not only left his father's house,
but he became Lazarus. He became the leper, the one
who is hungry, despised, sick, suffering, dying. In this way,
he helped Lazarus. He restored him to help health. He

(01:11:26):
gave him life and riches. This is Christ's approach to
the service of the poor. It is very astounding, dramatic.
This is the overwhelming love of Christ. Saint Damien of
Malachi was the first who came and lived with the lepers.
He shared their life and eventually shared their disease. He

(01:11:46):
became a leper himself. He took their suffering into his
own body and flesh. It's a very difficult apostolate. One
thing that repelled him was a stench. Sometimes in the
confessional you would go out and vomit and come back
in and continue hearing confessions. Father Damien was very controversial

(01:12:07):
because his character is very tough. He used to fight
people and get in trouble with his bishop, but many
of the saints were like this. He was also very heroic.
What type of pain, suffering, or sacrifice should we look
for in our service to the poor. Basically, it's simply
accepting with joy the inherent pain in the life of service,

(01:12:31):
the suffering and discomfort that God sends us each day
each day. If we really serve the poor, we will
experience fatigue, We get tired and discomfort with all these
little children. You're in a room with fifty children, and
it's hot, and it stinks and unpleasant. We lack rest leisure,

(01:12:52):
free time. We're devoured by the poor. They eat us
up like mosquitoes. See this with Christ. In the Gospel,
Father l was inspired by the Holy Spirit to do
things that no one else would and to go places

(01:13:14):
that no one else could. Father El said love comes
from God, and so that's why he continuously begged the
Lord in prayer and the Mass to fill him with love,
so to be able to give that love to others.

(01:13:49):
Father went out to purchase a hospice. It was the
least desirable place of real estate in the city. He
wanted ownership and control of the city run Beggar's hospice.

(01:14:10):
It was forlorn facility that served as a home for
societal outcast, drifters and the tubacular. It offered a place
off the streets, but little more. Father al had absorbed
its deplorable conditions while visiting with members of his religious
community after Mass each Sunday. Together they bathed, cut the hair,

(01:14:32):
and clipped the nails of Bussan's unwanted. They brought little gifts,
read scripture, prayed and same to each resident in their
own unassuming way. They tried to coax life back into
dry bones. But because city employees had taken such poor
care of them for so long, Father Al and the
sisters could do nothing to slow the alarming death rate.

(01:14:55):
There were no funerals. Perched high on a hill the
Beggar's Hospice. It seemed one of the loneliest places on earth,
which is why Father Al hungered for it. He knew
the potential it had for an Easter resurrection. He purchased
the hospice, explaining in his journals the reason for the
takeover and the subsequent transformation. He said, I read somewhere

(01:15:20):
that one of the signs of diabolical possession was the
overwhelming stench of human excrement emanating from the individual in question.
If this is so, then the devil was very much
present at the Beggar's Hospice. The place was overrun by lice, bugs, insects,
and in summer was infested with swarms of flies and mosquitoes.

(01:15:45):
Adequate funds were allocated for food and medical treatment, but
there was no supervision. The staff was poorly paid, the
food was filthy, the medicine was sold, money pocketed, and
in general the people were left in their own display.
The death rate was atrocious at that time. Out of

(01:16:06):
one hundred and twenty inmates, there were between twenty and
thirty deaths a month. The bodies were disposed of as garbage.
They were wrapped in a straw mat that was placed
in a handcart. One of the men working pushed the
cart four or five miles to a pauper cemetery, where
the body was dumped in a shallow grave on the

(01:16:27):
side of a mountain, with a small wooden marker to
indicate its presence. A number of bodies were sold for science,
but the sisters. Initially we operated the Beggar's hospice at
our own expense. Eventually the city helped, but the sisters

(01:16:48):
were courageous lot and the work progressed nicely. I took
away a souvenir from that first day. I contracted a
skin infection from bathing the inmates, which left me with
inflamed fingers for six to eight months. Apparently, the fury
of Satan was aroused by our trespassing into this private hell,

(01:17:10):
and it was his way of getting back at me.
But eventually he hired doctors, he hired psychologists, he hired
nutritionists that he built, and places to exercise and to
do rehab, and they said it was transformed from hell

(01:17:32):
into a little piece of heaven for those who they served.
Father Out often quoted Saint Ambrose who said, if you
meet a beggar dying of hunger in the street and
you refuse in food, you in effect have killed him.

(01:17:54):
We had similar moral feelings towards the children that were
detained oh at this horrible institution that was run by
the mafia, and they just tortured these children, but nobody
would interfere because they were afraid of the mafia. Well,
Father L went after them, and he got beat up
and he had struggles, but eventually he got the mafia

(01:18:18):
official imprisoned and he got control of those thousands of
children and were able to save them.

Speaker 3 (01:18:29):
Even the people in the church were afraid of him.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
And the bishop himself took the side of the mafia
because he was too afraid to defend Father L. But
Father L was faithful and he saved them. He wasn't
afraid of these people because he believed that God understood everything.
He had saved more than one thousand children and adults

(01:18:56):
detained in a concentration camp like institution run by a game.
He continually faced physical violence and legal suits. This is
written by one of the sisters. He saved more than
a thousand orphaned children and one thousand homeless men maltreated
in the sole city institutions. At the beginning of our foundation,

(01:19:19):
the diocese, through their weekly bulletin, told the parish not
to send candidates to the congregation he formed the Sisters
of Mary. The persecution was shocking to us, who needed
more hens to take care of the daily increasing numbers
of people who needed help. But in general Father Al

(01:19:39):
was silent. He knew and understood he would never be
accepted by the Church. He was an American priest and
a foreign land helping to rebuild a nation that was
in his own. But because he was a priest who
strove to emulate Christ and his voluntary poverty and concerned
for the poor, he simply did not care or what

(01:20:00):
others thought of him. He also knew it was due
to the donations he was given and his and the
sister's work that many thousands of the poor orphaned and
marginalized were coming to the fullness of the faith in Korea. Still,

(01:20:21):
the Korean bishop's wholesale rejection of his mission for the
poor was painful for Father L. Only a spiritual mother,
sister Gertrude, knew the impact his mental burdens and sorrow
had on him. For more than three decades, the pair
traded handwritten letters, sharing prayer requests day to day mignutia

(01:20:43):
and the depths of spiritual thought. Father L wrote to her.
It seems also that the more this work grows, and
the more recognition we get, the more hostility the local
Korean hierarchy intensifies. For almost twenty years now, the Korean
hierarchy has given us absolutely no support, morale, material or otherwise.

(01:21:07):
On the contrary, they've opposed this work every inch of
the way. If this is the work of God, and
to date everything indicates it is, it will continue with
or without the help of the Korean hierarchy. I am
always under extraordinary inner pressure, with so many decisions, problems, responsibilities,
and worries. I seem to wear an invisible crown of thorns,

(01:21:32):
which causes constant tension and mental pain. It is also
the source of a deep, spiritual, unfelt and constant peace
and joy. In other words, this crown of thorns is
a grace and a privilege for which I never cease
to give praise and gratitude. But at times one's courage

(01:21:53):
waivers and falters. Thus is the need of constant prayer.
Father Al was often completely alone, but that's what helped
him to become like the poor who he served. He
became alone just like them. When he formed these started

(01:22:21):
to take on these institutions of the boys towns and
the girls' towns. He would have three four five thousand
children living there, and he would just pick them from
the streets and they would get food, and they would
get exercise, and they would get education, and they.

Speaker 3 (01:22:36):
Would get love.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
They would get daily mass. As he did this, he
wanted to give them a quality of life that was
much better than they could ever even conceive of. He said,
the poor and the orphans should feel the warmth and
the safety of a sturdy dwelling. To the children he
took under his and the sister's care what seemed inexhaustible generosity.

(01:23:03):
He spared nothing. He said, the poorest of the poor deserve.

Speaker 3 (01:23:07):
Only the best.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
I obviously can't take in large numbers, but the children
I take in one at a time, the refugees that
I've helped, I also want to give them that. Sometimes
it seems like I could help more people if I
gave less. But I want these children to see their dignity.
Just because they're a drug addicted infant taken into the
cruel system doesn't mean they shouldn't have beautiful clothes and

(01:23:33):
a comfortable bed, and pretty little toys and a gentle
voice singing them to sleep. Father Al didn't share. Oh
so then he was given a great award in the Philippines.
And when he went to the Philippines, it was like
the Noble Peace Prize. But in Asia he was met

(01:23:55):
by Cardinal Sin who begged him to come and to
form Girls and Boystown's there. And he was intimidated by
the need, worried about the lack of provision, and yet
he agreed to do it. But he knew that he
was looking at the future students of the Philippines Boys
and Girls Town's programs as he went through the streets

(01:24:19):
and saw these children in the gutters. He went through
Smoky Mountain. I served in Smoky mountains. Smoking Mountain is
a huge garbage dump in Manila, and like twenty thousand
people live in this garbage dump. I met children there
who didn't own clothes because they were naked. They've never
owned clothes, and they walk bare foot through the trash

(01:24:43):
with needles and broken glass, digging out whatever they the
food that they have. Right. It was so beautiful, though,
what he did. These souls who had never felt the
flow of running water, flushed a toilet or turned on
a light switch, perhaps never slept in a bed or
turned a page of a book through Father Al's boys

(01:25:06):
towns and good girls towns would be the future electricians, plumbers, architects, teachers,
and orchestral musicians of the Philippines. He also perhaps knew that,
in God's incomprehensible way, there were likely a few future
priests and sisters hidden among the trash that he gazed upon.

(01:25:34):
Those who had once never bathed now had a large
in ground swimming pool. Those who had pulled their meals
from rotting debris, now with three nutritious meals every day. Calloused,
punctured fingers were now thumbing rosaries and flipping through the
pages of textbooks and then our lady started to come

(01:25:59):
and ask him to come to Mexico.

Speaker 3 (01:26:02):
He saw the Virgin of the poor in the image of.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):
Our Lady of Guadalupe. But his als was advancing greatly
and he didn't know if he should do it or not.
He said, what am I thinking of these days? This
may be crazy, and it probably is, but I'm trying
to get our Boystown and Girlstown programs started in Latin America,
maybe Mexico, maybe Venezuela, maybe both.

Speaker 3 (01:26:27):
But I only have a little time. Maybe I will
give it a try.

Speaker 2 (01:26:32):
Saint Teresa of Avila was dying when she founded her
last convent, and he decided to go forward. He said,
in this world we work, and in the next world
we rest. For me, said Sister Elena, seeing Father al
very sick and still always awakening on time, preparing every

(01:26:56):
day for the sister's meditation and mass teaching classes, observing
the rest of his regular schedule with the poor, hearing
hundreds of confessions every day, I could only say that
it was heroic and holy. He forgot himself, he gave
himself to God to save souls. In mind then in

(01:27:16):
my mind then I was thinking, this is not Father
al who's doing it. This is God in him. Eventually,
when he had to have his mass interrupted, he couldn't
finish that mass that was in Mexico. He was shaken

(01:27:41):
and he thought that it was God's confirmation. Maybe he
shouldn't go on to found this last home in Mexico.
But he said that. At that time he received an
invitation from Archbishop Dias, the Apostolic nuncio and a good
friend of his, the nunchuture I spoke to him of

(01:28:02):
the Mexican project and sought his advice. Being of clear
mind and sound judgment, I felt he would certainly advise
me against it. But once again I was totally mistaken.
The Archbishop urged me very strongly and enthusiastically to go
ahead with the project.

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
He said, you begin it, but you do not have
to finish it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
Others will finish it. This will be your unfinished symphony.
And then Cardinal Sin named him a monsignor, and he

(01:28:45):
requested that his investiusture be celebrated with a votive mass
of the precious blood. As he wore his shoulder to
shoe top red sat investment, his thoughts turned poetically to
the blood stained Christ as well. As to the many
attacks he himself had sustained over the years, spiritual and physical.

(01:29:07):
Dozens of his brethren despised him, his body a thorn
in his side. Since Louvain was now finally collapsing as
he spoke, he understood he was fading away. He said.
I mentioned that the priest, not just the monsignor, was
another Christ. The color red was a reminder that Christ

(01:29:28):
he was also a priest and a victim. The priest
was called to mingle his blood with that of Christ
to redeem the world, and to borrow a phrase from
Saint Paul, to make up in his own flesh the
sufferings lacking to the body of Christ. As I stood
on the platform during Mass with my red robes and
later the red vestments, I felt very much like Jesus,

(01:29:52):
and I thought of the Ecco Homo pictures that where
Jesus is covered with blood and he wore his red
robe of blood and humiliation. Deep inside, I had a
foreboding that this was the future that awaited me. During Mass,
I prayed for patience, courage, and the determination to be
faithful to Jesus till the end. When he finished with that,

(01:30:17):
he ended up going back to Mexico, and then he
went to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe,
where he laid all of his uncertainties, all of his
problems at the feet of our lady, the way that
he had originally laid his priesthood at the feet of
our Lady of the poor. He told her that he

(01:30:38):
was terrified of going against her son's will, and he wrote,
I have little money, few people to assist me, no
one on my team who has any knowledge of Spanish.
To get started in Mexico City, I will need to
find a large piece of land, get permission from the
government and church authority, set up a nonprofit corporation, open

(01:31:00):
bank account, contact builders we can trust, recruit Mexican candidates
willing to join and work with the sisters, and perhaps
most importantly, the total concept of our Boystown and girls
town is very new, original and unorthodox. Would the parents
of the poor children we want to help trust us?

(01:31:22):
Deep inside, I felt that the Apostolic nuncio who had
proposed the Mexican Unfinished Symphony did not have a full
understanding of what was at risk here, and yet countless
poor Mexican children. Father El knew were being raised each
day as orthans of the Catholic Church. Families were leaving

(01:31:43):
the church in droves, Numberless homes were not praying the
rosaries at night, and he said the church in Mexico
was being decimated, especially the church was losing many of
the poor, uneducated, and lowly, the very ones who have
a priority in the work of salvation. These children are

(01:32:04):
a marvelous, up to date, untapped and undiscovered spiritual resource.
Our goal is to turn them into lay apostles, to
make them witnesses of the new rejuvenated Church. These children
will be the future elite of Christ and the Church
and will help to stop the terrible hemorrhaging which is

(01:32:24):
taking place in the church in Mexico. Father l was
haunted by the thousands of the poor who needed him,
while at the same time his own body continued to
be crippled. He wanted to give up again, and yet finally,

(01:32:50):
one bold Mexican priest of the Guadalupe Fathers challenged him
in his tentativeness to go forward with his projects for Mexico.
He said, Father, remember, still waters become stagnant and polluted.
Waters that are running always remain fresh. Clear and vibrant.

(01:33:11):
Father al vowed to make a decision on Mexico before
returning home. He said, you must do violence to your instincts.
Most people give up and turn back because they lack courage.
This life of sacrifice, this life of self discipline, self violence,
is very difficult. It is very painful. It frightens us.

(01:33:34):
You are called to be mountain climbers, spiritual mountain climbers.
It requires great courage, sacrifice, and self discipline. It was
a matter of honor to have taken the plunge. I
knew the one way to do it was to climb
right up to the edge and dive in without hesitating.

(01:33:56):
If I hesitated, look down, look back, look around, I
would never have made a dive. I felt, if I
ever hoped to get something started in Mexico City, I
could not leave without making a decision and planning the seed.
So before I left, I effectively punched, pushed the button
and turned the green light on. I told a local

(01:34:18):
priest to look for land suitable contractors. Because it had begun,
one hand was on the plow, the other had written
a big check. There could be no looking back, and
it would be in Mexico, where Father L would disappear.
Later that day, he went to the shrine of Our

(01:34:40):
Lady of Guadalupe, and there he fell to his knees
and promised Mary, like he always did, that he would
simply try his best for her. Father AL always said,
I can't do much, but I can try my best.
That's what he would tell his sisters. Just try your best.

(01:35:05):
We ask the intercession of Father L in our own lives.
Each one of us knows souls that are dying in squalor.
Souls might be the squalor of sin, of apathy. It
might be an elderly person you know who is rotting

(01:35:28):
away in loneliness, in the memory care facilities of the
United States, the children being threatened by abortion, those in
the foster care system. There are the poor, the St.
Vincent de Paul serves. And then there are still the
foreign missions, the thousands and thousands of souls that we

(01:35:51):
breathe life back into, giving hope and healing and courage
to our persecuted Christians. Through the THEA Foundation, we go
where everybody is afraid to go, and so we ask
Father L to give us courage in our own lives
to intercede, so that we have the grace to know

(01:36:13):
the will of God, that we have the provision, the money,
the time, the help to be able to do it,
and the strength to be faithful until the end. Here
at the end, I want to share with you a

(01:36:34):
song that we used to sing during Lent in Russia,
and I should have translated these words as well, but
I'm not going to sing it accompanied because it's hard
for me to ever get on guitar. It's called sleashish
le moyn Rode and the words are Listen to me,

(01:36:57):
my people, what have I done to you? It's the
the lamentations of Christ right here. I've, you know, come
to give you heaven, and you've nailed me to a cross.
I've come to heal your wounds, and you've you know,
pierced my side. So often Christ has come to give

(01:37:21):
us healing and grace through opportunities of following him in
his sacrifice to help others, and we spurn his invitation,
sometimes through rejection, but more often through apathy. So we
pray for all of the missionaries all over the world.

(01:37:44):
We pray for those in Russia, and we pray for
each one of the hearts of you who are listening
to this, and I ask your prayers for me, for
the Fiat Foundation for the Children of the Cross, and
this Bethany House that has so many needs financial and spiritual,
so that we may continue to serve those who are

(01:38:06):
most uncared for in this world. Sleeciously monod stowty bia
yati gordimbiedoi lead ya tibia pregnant yaasy geept of you

(01:38:36):
spoyadsa slovoi needia.

Speaker 5 (01:38:44):
My only so potpod creo crowve cock fea gradniques fory
yacht pebialio dali yes yashki crest menya yeu da borias potieti.

Speaker 3 (01:39:20):
Voi potvo.

Speaker 5 (01:39:26):
Meet fio copio rebramnia pronzilio old niani stomped foy poot
as your shaff poost ye t niashally crest pregatofil meye

(01:40:00):
dat b f poost dost yez napiasnoimaani tzalubov.

Speaker 2 (01:40:14):
My u nahasilmnierani.

Speaker 5 (01:40:22):
Scaironique fdi dula tibia art CreI uxu sumnia usta na
chrestius mochii v foliasphinaod ziemluhanaana.

Speaker 2 (01:40:55):
Do shunieranilt.

Speaker 3 (01:41:00):
Blue Koynesscasaye.

Speaker 5 (01:41:07):
Bleila Ti Biabronnie boorb sufi.

Speaker 6 (01:41:18):
Te Naglovu, moy you spillvianoxternov.

Speaker 5 (01:41:29):
Praia Ouni, Sila chongtoe.

Speaker 12 (01:41:37):
Day stove crest press, Laughlin, moy mestudluslay.

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):
Glory be to the Father, into the Sun, into the
Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now
it ever shall world without endymen, Saint Venerable Father Alioshius Schwartz,
pray for us the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 8 (01:42:16):
Naman.

Speaker 1 (01:42:19):
Hello, God's beloved.

Speaker 2 (01:42:21):
I'm Annabel Moseley, author.

Speaker 1 (01:42:22):
Professor of theology and host of then Sings My Soul
and Destination Sainthood on WCAT Radio. I invite you to
listen in and find inspiration along this sacred journey. We're
traveling together to make our lives a masterpiece and with
God's grace, become saints. Join me Annabel Moseley for Then

(01:42:45):
Sings My Soul and Destination Sainthood on WCAT Radio.

Speaker 3 (01:42:50):
God bless you. Remember you are never alone.

Speaker 1 (01:42:54):
God is always with him.

Speaker 4 (01:43:01):
Thank you for listening to a production of w c
AT Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:43:05):
Please join us in our mission of evangelization, and don't
forget Love lifts up where knowledge takes flight.