The Power of Forgiveness
William D. Buckley, OSFS († June 27, 1970)
Twenty-three-year-old Fr. William Buckley, OSFS, felt an urgent and vital call to serve Jesus at the altar. In early 1931, he was finishing his theology studies at the Vatican’s prestigious College for the Propagation of the Faith so that he could do that. He was in the home stretch, anticipating his July ordination and returning to the US.
His diary, covering the final year of his preparation for ordination, shows a focus on spiritual readiness for mission. Excitement, hopefulness, self-awareness, and a turning over of his will to Jesus are evident in his notes. He wrote: “Blessed Savior, help me to be a good priest and make me do great things for your glory, the salvation of souls, and my own advancement in la voie [the way] of being an Oblate.”
Striking too is his keen desire to pray the Mass with such holy enthusiasm that many souls would know the forgiving Christ:
“It must be my life! All that I do, all that I think, all that I am interested in must be at least an indirect preparation for it. Like St. Francis de Sales, at any hour of the day, I must be able to say: ‘I am making my preparation for Mass.’ … The salvation of many souls is in my hands. (July 10, 1931, Morning Medication)
Oh, my soul
You are not alone*
Fr. Buckley would eventually return to Rome as the Oblates’ first American superior general. He died on the job, aged 62, June 27, 1970. Father played a profound role in urging the Oblates to creatively implement Vatican Council II. But his concern for the spiritual health and condition of souls was a life theme and a replication of Francis de Sales’ own mystical concentration on heart-to-heart discourse.
As a US Army chaplain during the arduous fighting in Burma and India during World War II, he reflected on his happiness in being able to celebrate a Christmas midnight “high” Mass for over 300 troops (December 1943). He was delighted that a sergeant he had only just baptized a week previously trained and led a soldiers’ choir for the Mass. But he also noted: “The most consoling part of my Christmas was, of course, the number of souls that I could reach for the first time.”
The Salesian virtues are abundantly manifest when we emulate Jesus’ reverence and care for the souls of others, even folks whose self-absorption incapacitates their spiritual awareness. Typically, Jesus gently esteemed wounded souls, dousing wounds with the Father’s mercy. Our Salesian Spirituality is a nonabrasive but not passive way – la voie – by which we gently and humbly incarnate the Father’s forgiving mercy as did His Son.
In a letter to Jane de Chantal, Francis revealed he had asked in prayer what we are in the world to do. He concluded that it is our job to bring Jesus and his abiding forgiveness to souls injured by sin. He wrote that we were:
To receive and carry the sweet Jesus, on our tongue by announcing Him, in our arms by doing good works, on our shoulders, by bearing His yoke, His drynesses and sterilities, and thus in our interior and exterior senses. (DeSales, 1605, Nov 16. Letters)
The adept disciple is thus poised to be “poured out… for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Fr. Buckley intuited this equation of mercy at a most intimate level and at a very young age… knowing that… “Mercy has the power to confer on justice a new content, which is expressed most simply and fully in forgiveness” (John Paul II, 1980. Dives in Misericordia [Rich in Mercy] 14.11).
Fr. Mark Plaushin, OSFS
Love. Learn. Serve. Charlie Mike
There is a word I learned
In the language of saved souls,
Wherein to my delight, I found…
To suffer translates as life,
And to die means to love…
To live for the good of others,
To accept them as they are.
A word that offers others a future,
And means God is here:
Embracing, completing, perduring.
To what end? For which purpose?
In one warm word, to say God’s love heals.
A word for me that was once hard pronounced!
But now I, at last content, despite ferocious faults,
Now know the love of me.
A word spoken in a fellowship for all the world’s sick souls.
Which is to say… for everyone.
Where showing up matters.
A word meaning intentionally present, kind, to…
See the word change lives.
Conscious of the needs, the fears, the pain, and possibilities.
Why else the disciple’s devotion?
Why else the lucent Liturgy of Gratitude?
But to hear Him say the word that ends our isolation:
“Forgiven”
Forgiveness
Atleistas
原諒
Barkatullah
|يغفر
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