Hi Friends! We continue this week with a multi-part evangelical biography on the life of Fr. Solanus Casey, God bless you! Fr. Solanus, pray for us!
Fr. Solanus Casey: An Icon of the Gospel Unleashed
(Part 2)
Eyes Fixed on Jesus
Raised in an atmosphere ripe for encountering God, his heart and mind was prepared for a life changing encounter with Jesus that occurred when a twelve year old Solanus was staying at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Hudson, Wisconsin. There, he experienced the stirring of the Holy Spirit and a growing love for the Catholic faith and the scriptures. Solanus was learning to encounter Jesus on a daily basis. Within a few years, he began to think about becoming a priest. As a young man with a real relationship with Jesus (the best gift anyone can ever receive), Solanus was blessed to be in a position where he was turned towards God and seeking to hear what God would say about the direction of his life. We see in Fr. Solanus that to be able to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit– being turned towards God, open to God and seeking God — is the first step. It is then that we are positioned to hear God.
At the age of 17, after several crop failures on the family farm, Solanus set out to help supplement the family income by working as a hand on a log boom, helping collect logs timbered from nearby forests in Stillwater, Minnesota. He also worked as a part-time prison guard and eventually a streetcar conductor in the burgeoning city of Superior, Wisconsin. Solanus loved the streetcar industry and even considered making a career of it until the day he encountered a tragedy while conducting his streetcar. Driving the streetcar through a rowdy section of Superior, he witnessed a drunken man stab a woman, who died as a result of the attack. Witnessing sin and its terrible effects in a most shocking way, Solanus experienced moving within him the profound love of God that conquers sin. Driving a streetcar was good and Solanus enjoyed it, but the poignant clash with darkness led him to desire whole-heartedly to devote his life to bringing the light of God’s merciful love into a world so desperate for this love. It was then he decided to act on the desires he had experienced to become a priest.
God Bless You- Fr Patrick