The Case for Sainthood
The Catholic Church has a process by which She determines whether or not a man or woman should be named a saint. The process can be long and tedious and involves loads and loads of paperwork, proof, documentation, etc.etc. The “case” is reviewed and then a determination is made. (For more on this process, click HERE.) One such man, Fr. Emil Kapaun, has a case being sent to the Vatican as we speak. The story of Fr. Kapaun is close to my heart, as he was from Wichita, Kansas and a military man. I grew up just 6 miles south of Wichita and as many of you know, have a long and extensive family (and even a personal) history with the military. My Father, Tony, just told me about the opportunity that he and my mother had of attending this special Mass that was held at the Cathedral in Wichita on July 1. We’ll pick up with an Al Kresta story…
“Fr. John Hotze, episcopal delegate for the office of Fr. Kapaun’s beatification and canonization, said the event marks the culmination of years of work and also celebrates the “gift” of Fr. Kapaun.
“The fact that we, unlike any other diocese in the United States, in the world, have been blessed by the example of this saintly man, Father Emil Kapaun, boggles my mind,” he said in a June 30 statement. “How can we do anything less than give praise to God for this gift and strive to follow the example of Father Kapaun’s selfless giving.” Fr. Kapaun, a native of Pilsen, Kansas, served in the Korean War. He courageously rescued wounded soldiers from the battlefield, risking his own life to prevent their execution at the hands of the Chinese. He was captured by North Korean and Communist Chinese forces after he volunteered to stay behind on a battlefield with the injured. The priest’s service to his fellow prisoners has become legendary among those who knew of him. Scores of men attributed their survival to his work tending the starving and the sick.
Fr. Kapaun died in a prison camp hospital on May 23, 1951. The Diocese of Wichita has investigated his life since 2001 and officially opened the cause for his beatification on June 29, 2008.
Andrea Ambrosi, a lawyer investigating the case for the Vatican, told the Wichita Eagle he thinks Fr. Kapaun has a good chance to
be raised to the altars. “He showed that there was not just a devil working on the battlefields of the war, but something else.” The investigator said Kapaun’s candidacy is unique compared with the hundreds of other cases he has investigated because it is so full of action and detailed. While most cases involve “very holy” priests and nuns who have miracles attributed to them, Fr. Kapaun’s story involves far more deeds of heroism, sacrifice and action.
Ambrosi has investigated two alleged miracles involving prayers for Fr. Kapaun’s intercession. In 2006 Avery Gerleman, then 12 years-old, was near death for 87 days. She recovered after her parents prayed to Kapaun. In October 2008 Chase Kear, a college track athlete, inexplicably survived a severe pole vaulting accident. His skull was fractured from ear to ear and caused some bleeding on his brain. Doctors said he would likely either die in surgery or from a post-surgery infection. However, family and friends joined in petitions to Fr. Kapaun. Kear survived the surgery and left the hospital only a few days after the incident. Doctors said both recoveries were medically inexplicable. Ambrosi said the intensity of the priest’s devotees is “incredible.” Several Catholic parishes and many parishioners pray for Fr. Kapaun’s intercession every week at Masses and many call upon him when loved ones become ill.
Fr. Hotze said that the diocese has finished collecting information that will “hopefully, with the grace of God, prove Father Kapaun worthy of beatification and then canonization as a saint of the Catholic Church.” Ambrosi and other investigators must now closely study 8,268 documents about the chaplain’s deeds and sacrifices in the Korean War. Those documents are being sent to Rome. If canonized, the priest would become the third American-born saint.”
Clearly, Fr. Kapaun was an incredible man! What a TrueMan! Living virtue at every turn. I wrote another story about him previously, which also includes some video trailers of a film that was made about his life. Click HERE for that story. We hope he is elevated to the distinction of “blessed”!
Fr. Emil Kapaun – Pray for us!
TrueMan up!
“Winner at Home”
I saw this on the Father’s For Good website and thought it would be good to post here as well. Great job, Trever Miller!
“Cardinals’ lefthander, a Knight of Columbus, has challenges on and off the field”
By Brian Caulfield
“As he begins his 12th season as a major league pitcher, Trever Miller is familiar with baseball’s performance measurements: earned run average, strikeout-walk ratio, winning percentage, saves and a dozen other metrics. A lanky lefty reliever with the St. Louis Cardinals, who specializes in retiring left-handed batters in late innings, he even holds a major league record for consecutive mound appearances without a win or loss decision. Having pitched for five teams, the 37-year-old hurler’s lifetime record is a respectable 18-16.
Star pitcher Trever Miller with his daughter Grace.
But as a father of a child who was born with two holes in her heart and a genetic disorder so rare that it doesn’t have a name, Miller measures success in life in more basic ways these days – the next breath, a winning smile, a new movement from his daughter Grace. She was not supposed to leave the hospital after birth yet turns a miraculous 7 years old in June.
“Faith goes with the territory,” Miller said last month during the Cardinals’ spring training in Florida. “Grace is my hero and my inspiration. She has overcome more physical tests than I ever have in a lifetime of baseball.”
Miller is a member of the Knights of Columbus’ Our Lady of the Rosary Council 8104 in Land o’ Lakes, Florida. He was brought into the fraternal Order by his father, Terry Miller, who serves as financial secretary for the same council. Father and son are both Fourth Degree Knights in Fr. Malachy Hugh Maguire Assembly 2741.
“I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school” in Louisville, Kentucky, said the younger Miller. He attends Mass each Sunday and when Mass is offered in the Cardinals’ clubhouse through an arrangement with the group Catholic Athletes for Christ.
One of Kentucky’s all-time great baseball stars at Trinity High School, Miller was drafted by the Detroit Tigers after graduating. He spent a few years in the minors before breaking into the big leagues in 1996.
Trever and Pari Miller (left) with their three children and extended family.
A year earlier, he married Pari, his wife of 16 years, and they have three children: Tyler, 14, who is a member of the Columbian Squires; McKenzie, 13, and Grace. After his youngest child was born, he and his wife had a choice to make about her treatment. The couple opted for life and hope by approving surgery to close the holes in her tiny heart.
Today, she cannot walk or talk, and a simple cold can mean a trip to the emergency room to prevent fluid from filling her lungs. Still, Grace attends school as often as she can and receives regular therapy.
“She’s a battler, she’s tough,” said Terry Miller, her grandfather. “She’s the only child with her condition who has lived beyond one year, so nothing would surprise me, even if she started talking one day. I’m sure she’d have a lot to tell us.”
Trever Miller tells of dark days a few years ago when he was angry with everyone, including God, over his daughter’s condition.
“We were stunned, we didn’t understand,” he recalled. “We had to stress acceptance, and as a father I wanted to fix her situation and I couldn’t. It was a helpless feeling.”
As a man who makes his living by his physical abilities, acceptance has been difficult. “Dads are looked to as Mr. Fix It, but no matter what I couldn’t fix this. It was tough that I couldn’t control this.”
He now pours his frustration into running, completing two 26.2-mile marathons and wearing a t-shirt that reads: “26 for Grace, .2 for me.”
“I think our faith in God and his running was his saving,” his wife said.
Miller agrees. “One thing all this has done is to keep our family praying,” he said. “Because of this, Grace has so many other people praying for her too.”
Trever Miller is hoping for a stellar year with the Cardinals, but he knows that his biggest wins will be at home with his family.”
An Act of Heroism
This clip isn’t easy to watch, and my heart goes out to this mother and child. What a great example of virtue and TrueManhood from this husband and father. The man’s father puts it well by saying that love will fix the situation. It may seem ridiculous to some, but love heals. Afterall, do you think God liked seeing His Son dying on the cross? Not a chance. But, the love which Christ poured out for us, by giving up His life, was love at its core. This man, Brian Wood, knew what it meant to love.
This piece shows me several things:
- Our society has a drastically obvious double-standard about pro-life issues. Notice how this pregnancy happens to be a baby – in this setting – but in most others, it’s simply a blob, a tissue-mass or an embryo.
- Our society drastically misunderstands virtue. If you notice, several times the gentleman’s actions were misinterpreted, saying that he made a choice and acted. Although he did make a choice to sacrifice himself, he acted out of virtue. The virtue of courage was obviously a part of this man’s life.
- Our society will likely see a video clip like this and continue to abuse alcohol and drugs. Selfishness runs rampant in our culture. Fight it by not being selfish. Be a selfless servant.
My condolences to the family.
TrueMan u!
What We Should Be Most Thankful For
Happy Thanksgiving 2009 everyone! It’s quite easy for us to forget about things in our life that we are (or that we should be) thankful for. It’s easy to go through life taking for granted the wonderful blessings we have. Sometimes, especially when it seems like the entire world is falling apart around us, we can’t see the blessings. I tend to think that we can’t see those things because we can’t get past our own wants and desires and our attitude gets in our own way.
What we should be most thankful for is the perfect blessing, the greatest gift… the Eucharist. Did you know that the world eucharist means thanksgiving? When you’re down and out, struggling and allowing your poor attitude to get in your own way, do you run to the Eucharist? When you’ve got everything going for you, and you are striving for holiness, do you run to the Eucharist? No matter where you are in life, or how good or bad your day has been, the Eucharist should be your stronghold. I think that men sometimes struggle with the teachings of the Eucharist because men are called to submit fully to Christ and this gift. Typically, men don’t like to submit; submission is a sign of weakness and loss of control. In this case, submission to Christ in the Eucharist is key! If you want to grow in TrueManhood and you want to live the virtue of love (the GREATEST VIRTUE!), run to the Eucharist!!!
Christ instituted this gift, a pure gift of Himself, to sustain us and to guide us. The Eucharist is the one part of our faith that unites us most intimately with Christ. We give thanks for this “bread from Heaven”, what the Church refers to as “the source and summit”. We tend to think of movie characters like William Wallace or Maximus Decimus Meridius when we think of leadership, sacrifice and real manliness. Christ outshines them; this gift was an incredibly hard sacrifice to make… the hardest ever. Christ lead the Church towards His Father through this miraculous gift. I invite you to learn about the Eucharist and then, as I stated above, run to the Eucharist!
For those who either aren’t Catholic or who aren’t educated Catholics, I want to encourage you to read what the Catholic Church teaches about the Eucharist. This is the MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF OUR FAITH and many believers don’t know about it nor could they explain it. To start learning, please click this link for more info.
Man up!
How Does a Man Live Love?
Recently, I was having a conversation with some friends about various topics. As we got into the conversation, somehow we got onto the topic of love. I said something to the effect of “… a husband needs to love his wife. He needs to live love.” One of my friends asked me, “How does a man live love?” He said, “We hear that all the time, but how does a guy actually do that? What does he have to do to live love?” It’s a valid question. Actually, it’s more than valid, it’s essential.
We’ve talked previously about love being the greatest of all the virtues. We’ve talked about love being a verb. Let’s put these together. If we possess the virtue of love (also referred to as charity), that means that we perform love 1. with ease 2. with joy 3. at every opportunity and 4. promptly. Once we possess the virtue of love, it’s second nature for us to perform. Notice that there is an action taking place – love is performed. Okay, so we’ve said that love is a virtue and that it requires an action. What is that action?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains it very clearly in paragraph 1822: “Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.” Love isn’t something intangible that happens to come along every once and awhile, love is for God and others.
As a husband, I can live out love by first loving God and then by loving my wife (for love of God). That means that I strive to do as God has done. This isn’t a sentence full of meaningless words. This means that all I do, everything I think and say, is geared towards and focused on God. The greatest example of how a man can live love is by looking to Christ on the cross. Self-sacrifice, service, humility, obedience. Do these things for your wife and you’ll be loving her.
Practical application: how can I sacrifice for my wife as a sign of love? The greatest gift, of laying your life down for a friend, isn’t necessarily what I’m hoping will happen here, but that’s the ultimate. Sacrifice can be as simple as letting her choose the restaurant you eat at, or what TV show to watch or which song to listen to on the radio. Putting your preferences last.
It’s possible, that for each guy, love means something just a little bit different. In the end, it comes down to loving God and loving others.
Man up!
Memorial Day – Not Just Another Day
This weekend is Memorial Day weekend… a weekend that typically includes barbecues, picnics, trips, hangouts and lots of other “holiday weekend” events. Memorial Day, however, is not just another day. So often we are consumed by our busyness, our schedule, our “to do’s” and we don’t stop and think about others and their sacrifices. Memorial Day is a day where we should stop and give thanks to those who have and do serve in our military and those who have died for us, our country and our freedom. We must remember them, for if we forget the fallen, their death is in vain. POW/MIA/KIA Never Forgotten.
Memorial Day brings to mind many of the sacrifices that I’ve heard about from battle-stories and it reminds me of the many military funerals that I’ve attended as a volunteer member of the Patriot Guard Riders. Many men and women of our great nation have fought and died for us. Can you imagine dying? Can you imagine dying for someone else? Your death means that someone, or many others, may have life. Can you grasp the scope of your sacrifice? It’s difficult, but important to think about.
Compare the sacrifice of a soldier to our greatest model and example of a TrueMan, Jesus. Jesus was a servant of the people. He gave willingly of Himself and His efforts. He was a servant-leader, leading by example of how to treat others. He took time to prepare for the tough times (prayer/fasting), and was always prepared to give an account of His reasonings. Our military men and women do this on a daily basis. Thank a soldier today.
I posted this over a year ago on my family blog to my family members and friends… a Thanks.
Most of all, Grandpa Tony. You are my hero Dad. I love you. Thank you for my freedom. You are a wonderful Grandpa to Lily. 30 years in the Air Force is amazing. To me, two tours in Viet Nam is even more amazing. We’re proud of you SMSgt.
Grandpa Gary… thank you for your 20 years in the Air Force. We will always tell Lily about the sacrifices you made for our country. Now, as you ride for the Patriot Guard, I am so proud to call you Dad. I can’t wait until I am able to join up and ride with you to honor our fallen service men and women. Thanks SMSgt.
Major (Select) Uncle Andy… You are a great man. I am proud to call you my brother and my friend. So far, 9 years in Active Duty, 4 years at the Academy. Two tours in Operation Iraqi Freedom and one coming soon. Thank you so much.
Major Aunt Laura… I am honored to be your brother, and for you to be my brother’s wife. Thanks for your sacrifices. You are setting a great example for your daughters.
Captain Tracy… 20+ yrs of saving lives and property, along with protecting our Marines at Quantico. What an amazing sacrifice you make. Thank you for protecting the American people. You are an inspiration to me.
Uncles Richard, Frank, Bob U., Ray, Randy D. and Roy D.… thank you all for your time of service. My daughters will know about what you did for us.
Shawn O’D… your sacrifice doesn’t go unnoticed. Thank you so much.
Jobe M… I didn’t forget about you. Rick W… You either. Our sailors.
To our friends: Lt Kuetemeyer, Lt. Col. Waller, Chief Laura, Sgt. Ric, Officers Griffiths, Lts. Alberico, Hale, Patino, Valle, Hunt and the others that we know… you are all so amazing. If I forgot anyone, I am truly sorry.
Man up!
An Explanation on Ephesians Chapter 5
On semi-regular occasions, I come across stories of men and women who look at Ephesians Chapter 5 in a different way than the Church does. It often appears that they take the writings out of context and make them something that they are not. I want to take a few minutes to explain portions of this sometimes mistaken portion of Scripture. Note: I am not a Biblical scholar – I recommend that you cross-check my words here with other sources for full understanding.
Starting at verse 21 in chapter 5, St. Paul tells Wives and Husbands “Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the Church, He Himself the savior of the body. As the Church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.” A few hard-hitting verses. If we stop at this verse, we see the writer (St. Paul) asking women to be subordinate to their man in everything. It almost appears that a woman should blindly follow her husband simply because he is 1. her husband and 2. the head of his wife. We might look at this and say that a wife needs to be “below” her husband and always do as he tells her. The image of a slave and a master comes to mind here. After all, it’s right there in Scripture – right?
Not quite. We need to continue reading to finish out this section. 25: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and handed Himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the Church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the Church, because we are members of His body.” We see a much different story when we continue reading. St. Paul isn’t writing this to women alone. Most importantly, he is writing this to husbands; husbands are the readers who especially need to heed these words.
Look at this with me: scripture tells us that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the Church. Christ didn’t love the Church out of dictatorial power… He loved the Church out of service, out of self-sacrifice and out of pure virtue. If we leave this part out of our understanding, our understanding lacks truth and our relationship with our spouse suffers. Again, St. Paul is speaking to the men, saying “Men, serve your wife! LOVE you wife! Give up what you want for the sanctity and holiness of your wife! Love her as you love yourself! Want what’s best for her, never thinking about yourself first!” I can imagine him being incredibly frustrated with men who were lacking as husbands, trying to get them to see that Christ set the example of being a real husband (a TrueMan) for them and that they simply need to emulate Him in order to succeed.
This means, for us men who are or who will be husbands, that we MUST act as Christ acted. We must be perfected so that our actions, thoughts, words and deeds line up with how Christ would have done them. We must be sacrificial in the way that we treat our wife. Christ was a servant leader, He said “I come to serve, not to be served.” Do that… don’t live to be served.
On a practical note: as you look at your marriage and begin to digest what you are reading, realize that countless blessings will come from being a servant leader for your wife. Being a servant leader means that you are serving while leading. Service comes first. Want respect from your wife? Respect her first. Want your wife to honor you? Honor her first. Want your wife to trust you? Trust her first. It’s a simple formula and this formula will change your life. Christ calls us to act in the manner He acted, so guess what… if you are trying to act as Christ acted, you can’t be selfish, ever. Serve your wife, serve your kids, serve your co-workers, serve everyone, and do it ahead of yourself and your needs. It will change your life.
Man up!
