“Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them,
“Peace be with you.” (John 20:19)
It is difficult to find holiness around us. It is difficult to find someone who by their
very presence transmits the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. This past Wednesday we lost a pillar of our
faith community. I lost a spiritual
mentor, a hero, a friend. Bishop Agustin
Román died as he lived: working for the good of his people. He took the peace of Christ wherever he went
and truly lived out the command of Jesus to the disciples in today’s gospel,
“As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Bishop Román was sent to a foreign land to accomplish the task of
spreading the gospel. He would have
preferred to do it in his native Cuba, but as he once told me, “The only thing
the priest needs is an altar.” Wherever
he was, he spread the gospel and touched the hearts of many through his example
of holiness. When you have been in the presence of a “friend of God” (which is
the Haitian word for saint, zanmi Bondye),
as I have been all my life, I cannot help but to share the story of this holy
man to prove that saints really do live among us and that holiness is very much
within our grasp.
When I was born, my father was working as a carpenter
helping to build the convent of the Sisters of Charity on the grounds of the
Shrine of Our Lady of Charity. Every
morning, he would have breakfast with then Father Román and every morning he
would ask my father about his children.
Father Román would be ordained a bishop in 1979 and every time my
parents would take me to see him, his voice would always bring me peace. It was a soothing voice, the voice of a
shepherd who attracted so many. In time
as I grew older, I would begin working with him, serving Mass with him, and
yes, even wanting to be a priest like him.
When I made the decision of deciding to be a priest, the first priest
that I told was Bishop Román. I was 17
years old, and I had the audacity to call his office and ask for an
appointment. He immediately returned my
call and asked me to come see him on a Tuesday afternoon after school. I met with him in the same convent that my
father had helped build, and I asked him, “Bishop, I feel that God is calling
me to be a priest, but I am young.
Should I go to college and experience life a little bit more or go to
the seminary?” The bishop shook his head
and told me as only he could, “No, no, no, when God calls, you have to answer
him immediately.” He reached for the
phone on his desk and promptly dialed up the Vocations Director and three
months later I was in the seminary and never looked back. That fateful meeting with Bishop Roman
occurred on May 11, 1993: exactly nine
years to the day before I was ordained a priest.
Nine years and three days after that meeting, I went to the
Shrine of Our Lady of Charity as a newly ordained priest to fulfill a great
dream and celebrate Mass at that altar below our Blessed Mother where Bishop
Román had celebrated Mass countless times.
He humbly put on his episcopal choir robes, took a seat behind a kneeler
to the right of the altar, and knelt as I celebrated Mass. He didn’t say a word. He simply prayed. What a model of humility
for a man who was a successor of the apostles!
When I was Vocations Director, I was concelebrating a Mass
for young people with him. At the end of
the Mass, he talked to the young people about vocations to the priesthood and
religious life and told them how important it was to pray for vocations. He called me toward his chair and told me in front
of everyone that I needed to pray the rosary for vocations. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his
rosary and put it in my hands. That
rosary has never left my pocket since that day.
A couple of months after that he asked that I bring a monstrance
blessed by John Paul II to pray for vocations to the Youth Center so that it
could visit the kids and then the next day to the students at LaSalle High
School next door. Even though it wasn’t
on the itinerary I released as it toured the Archdiocese, I could not say no to
him. He even offered to allow me to spend
the night in his small residence in the Youth Center. As I was praying with the young people that
night before the Blessed Sacrament, Bishop Roman very quietly came in and knelt
in the back. It was common for the young
people to see him at their meetings. I
was sitting in the presider’s chair and asked him to come up and sit in the
chair. Even though he would have
preferred humbly staying in the back, he never refused a request from a priest,
so he came and sat in the presiders chair and I sat next to him and we prayed
with the young people. One of the kids
who is now a seminarian took a picture of the two of us praying before the
Lord. It is my favorite picture of me
with the bishop.
Later that night, Bishop Román showed me to my room that was
right next to his. His room was very
small. It had a twin bed, a rocking
chair, some books and his desk. That’s
it. I could fit two of his rooms into my
living quarters upstairs and I’m not even going to get into all the stuff I
have. Across the hall there was a
chapel. He went to bed around Midnight
and he was up before 6:00 a.m. to do his daily reflection for the radio. The next morning I was supposed to go visit
the high school, but first I sat with him for breakfast. We talked about everything under the sun that
morning. I was so enthralled by this
time I was spending with the bishop that 10 minutes after school began the
Bishop looked at his watch and said, “Father, you’re late for the school.” Can you blame me? I was taking in everything he was telling
me.
Every time he spoke to me, I felt peace. I felt holiness. I felt that I had so much more to go to reach
his level of holiness. He was for me the
model of priesthood. During the last few
years, his health began to deteriorate and I would only see him three or four
times a year. Even in declining health,
he continued to work. His passion was
evangelization. He was always very
interested in how I was doing in Broward and how the good people of Broward
were doing. He was so happy to hear how
full our churches are up here and how fast the Hispanic population was
growing. He would always tell me, “You
have to go to them.” My heart sank when
I learned that he had passed on Wednesday night. I tried as much as I could to be part of
every aspect of his funeral from receiving his body at the Shrine to saying the
second Mass for his repose near his casket to his glorious funeral Mass and
then the long procession to his burial where we heard the people acclaim,
“Santo Subito! (Sainthood now!)” I’ve
gotten choked up many times since Wednesday, my mind and my heart have been in
a fog, but as I drove back up to the parish last night, I could hear his voice,
that voice of peace, speaking to me as he did so many times: “Father, the
gospel needs to preached. Someone needs
to share the Good News of the Resurrection.
It’s time to get back to work.” He
worked until the day he died. I pray I
do as well. May the soul of Bishop Román
and all the faithful departed rest in the peace of Christ. Goodbye, Monseñor.
