October Allocutio 2024

Good Example

Fr. Paul Churchill, Concilium Spiritual Director

You can get discussions about leadership and about what is the right way to go. Today I’d like to focus a bit on what may well be the best form of leadership, its most basic natural form, namely good example.

Any words we say will have limited or no effect if not backed up by good example. Good example just doesn’t go to the head, it goes to the heart and stays. The good examples of Louis and Zelie Martin were the reasons why their daughter Therese and their other children turned out as they did. On the other hand I note that many of those who end up doing awful evil come from backgrounds where they had the worst of example.

But our task is not to focus on the bad examples but to become good examples. And to become the best of example requires us to do something that Our Lord strongly admonished us to do: “Every branch that bears much fruit, must with the Vine be one.” We must come closer to Our Lord so that his divine goodness can change us and make us lights in the world. There is no other way.

To give good example is the fruit that arises from coming close to God, the source of all goodness. It does follow naturally from that. But it can be useful to examine our conscience on the example we give. If I look back on the last day or the last week, how much good example did I give? Did I say or do anything that would have made it more difficult for someone to practice virtue or follow Christ? Or do I plod along and give no example at all? Maybe then we need to remember Our Lord’s words, “He who is not with me is against me” (Mt 12:30).

Here is a consideration. There will be many great saints in heaven but only a few get canonized. And one main criteria for canonizing a person as a saint is because their life is such good example. They edify and inspire. The light of Christ shines through them. When I was studying for the priesthood I was idle one summer. I took out Butler’s Lives of the Saints and read through them all. You cannot but be inspired by so many of them. Is that not what happened to one Ignatius of Loyola, the wounded soldier, who in convalescence had no other book to read other than one about some saints. They converted him.

St Paul says, “Use only helpful words, the kind that build up … that will do good to those that hear them” (Eph 4:29). St Patrick can say, “Christ in all eyes that see me, in all ears that hear me, in all hearts that think about me”. Or take these words from the Handbook, “Personal apostleship, which is friendship carried to its logical conclusion, implies mortification because it means taking trouble to put friends right with kindness and delicacy” (page 205). “The flower that would have opened under the gentle warmth of softness and compassion closes tightly in the cold air. On the other hand the air of sympathy which the good legionary carries with him, the willingness to listen … are sweetly irresistible and the most hardened person … yields in five minutes (the) ground which a year of exhortation and abuse would have failed to gain” (page 281).

Be careful. If you were to set out just to consciously choose actions and words that give good example, and nothing else, you might be like those Pharisees Our Lord criticized. Our words and actions should come from that soul in us that has taken Christ to heart. That is why our Legion formation requires daily prayer, devotion of the Mass and Sacraments, saying the Rosary as we reflect on the merits of Our Lord’s life and Passion. Frank Duff insisted on perseverance in prayer and reading the saints. We should be mirrors that reflect our Lord, just as the saints did. If we have in us the mind that was in Christ Jesus, we will naturally give good example. “The good tree cannot bear bad fruit” (Lk 6:43).

So let me end with an example of a recently canonized saint that is not out of place in this month of the Holy Rosary. Titus Brandsma, a Carmelite priest, ended up in Dachau concentration camp because he would not cooperate with the Nazis. Witnesses from the prison mentioned his kindness, patience and spiritual support despite his poor health. He was placed under the “care” of a nurse who executed many of the prisoners in the infirmary. She was very disturbed by Fr Titus because unlike the other prisoners who despised her, he was always kind to her. Near his end he left her his wooden rosary beads as a gift which, not knowing what to do with them, she just put into her pocket. She had no faith, even despised priests. The morning came for her to give Fr. Titus the lethal injection, which she did, but she noted an irritation and nervousness in herself. Some time later she found the rosary beads in her pocket and remembered the kind priest and from that moment her conversion began.

St John Paul II would later remark that Titus Brandsma, as a disciple of Christ, had the moral strength not to answer hatred with hatred but with love.

May Our Lady, whose life included giving, in a human way, the best motherly example to her son, and saw in turn his example of perfect love on the Cross, help us all by her intercession to know her son more deeply so that our own lives can be the best of example to all around us. Amen.