On April 9, 2000, thousands of the faithful witnessed the beatification of an American Redemptorist in Saint Peter's Square in Rome. His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, declared Father Francis Xavier Seelos blessed and a worthy example of holiness for the universal Church. The life of this self-effacing, hard-working priest has not made many headlines in our modern world, but it gives much encouragement to those striving to follow the Lord.

Francis Xavier Seelos was born of devout Catholic parents in Fuessen, Germany, on January 11, 1819, and was baptized on the same day in the parish church of Saint Mang. He was a sickly child, and his mother, fearing that he would not survive to adulthood, often spoke to him of the joys of heaven. This early familiarity with eternal life must have made a deep impression on Francis because in later years he constantly spoke and wrote of the joys that await the blessed in heaven.

After attending primary school in his hometown, Francis attended the Institute of Saint Stephan in Augsburg for seven years. It was there under the influence of the Benedictine Fathers that his love of the liturgy developed which was so manifest in his later priestly ministry. Subsequently, he studied philosophy for two years at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.

During his first year in theology, Francis was deeply moved when he read about the lack of priests for the thousands of German-speaking immigrants in the United States. From childhood, Francis had wanted to become a priest--a Benedictine at one time, a Jesuit at another. Then, in a most unusual way, Francis suddenly discovered how he could satisfy both his desire for religious life and his compassion for the priest-poor immigrants. His younger brother had come to visit him, and Francis told him that he was convinced that the Blessed Mother wanted him to become a missionary in the United States. Consequently, in 1842 Francis joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in America, where Redemptorists, in the spirit of their founder, Saint Alphonsus, had been working with the most abandoned for ten years.

This step cost him dearly. Francis was very much attached to his family. He wrote that if the decision were up to him alone, he would never leave home; but at the same time, he could not "resist the inner call that comes from the other side." Knowing that a last farewell would be too painful for everyone, Francis said good-bye in a letter and left for France.

On March 17, 1843, he embarked on the packet ship St. Nicholas at Le Havre, and after a passage of thirty-five days he arrived in New York on April 20. He immediately entered the Redemptorist novitiate in Baltimore, Maryland, and on May 16 of the following year, he professed his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, together with a vow and oath of perseverance customary among Redemptorists. Francis was ordained to the priesthood on December 22, 1844, by Archbishop Samuel Eccleston of Baltimore.

Father Seelos was immediately assigned to parish work and spent his first several months at Saint James in Baltimore, where, as he wrote in a letter to his family, "I hear confessions in German, English, and French, of whites and blacks." After that Father Seelos spent nine years at Saint Philomena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he had the good fortune of serving as assistant pastor to his Redemptorist confrere John Neumann (who was canonized in 1977). Father Seelos later wrote that John Neumann was "my unforgettable father, "introduced me into the active life," and "loved me as his own son." Father Seelos himself served as pastor of St. Philomena's for three years.

During these years in Pittsburgh, Father Seelos manifested those traits that would characterize his priesthood for the remainder of his life. He demonstrated an outstanding gift as confessor and spiritual director, and penitents flocked from all over to hear his consoling words. One parishioner said that Father Seelos made going to confession not a difficult but a joyful experience. His simple homilies and conferences, filled with citations from Sacred Scripture and directed to the daily needs of the people, made a deep and lasting impression on all of them. No matter how burdened with work, he always insisted on teaching catechism to the children--a task in which he and they delighted. Father Seelos became known as the priest who always smiled, who always had time for everyone. It was in Pittsburgh, too, that people began to attribute unusual cures and favors to his intercession.

Father Seelos continued his parish ministry at Saint Alphonsus in Baltimore, at Saints Peter and Paul in Cumberland, and at Saint Mary in Annapolis. In Cumberland and in Annapolis, he also served as prefect of Redemptorist seminarians. He distinguished himself in this position by his constant availability to the students in their needs, by his unfailing joyfulness even in very difficult circumstances, and by his careful concern that the students learn solid Catholic doctrine. Above all, he sought to instill in the students a great enthusiasm for untiring self-sacrifice in promoting the spiritual and temporal well-being of the people they would be called upon to serve.

In 1860 Bishop Michael O'Connor of Pittsburgh asked to be relieved of his duties for reasons of health and recommended Father Seelos as his most qualified successor. Father Seelos, frightened by this, wrote to Pope Pius IX, explaining how unsuited he was for this great responsibility and "begging most humbly" that he "be snatched from such a calamity." He was, therefore, delighted when another was selected.

Some years later during the American Civil War, when new draft laws enacted in 1863 made all clerics liable for military duty, Father Seelos went to Washington to meet with President Abraham Lincoln. Father Seelos wrote that the President "was very friendly and promised to do everything in his power" and invited Father Seelos back for a private audience. None of the seminarians had to enter military service.

Father Seelos bore cheerfully and without comment or resentment his removal from the office of prefect of students because some of his confreres considered him too kind and not strict enough with the students. He was then appointed superior of the Redemptorist parish missionaries. For the next three years (1863-1866) Father Seelos traveled from parish to parish, preaching missions in English and in German to people in Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. A fellow missionary said of Father Seelos that "everybody flocked to him for confession, instruction, and consolation" and that "he was revered by priests and people everywhere as the saint of the mission band."

After a brief parish ministry in Detroit, Michigan (1866), where Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere considered him a saint, Father Seelos was assigned to the Redemptorist community in New Orleans, Louisiana. Here, as acting pastor of Saint Mary of the Assumption Parish, he became known as the priest who was always cheerfully available to everyone in need, especially to the disadvantaged and the poor. As elsewhere, his prayers were considered powerful enough to obtain unusual favors from God.

In God's plan, however, Father Seelos' ministry in New Orleans was to be brief. In September 1867, exhausted from visiting the sick in a fierce outbreak of yellow fever, Father Seelos fell victim himself. For two weeks he suffered patiently and cheerfully. Then, singing his favorite hymn to Mary and with his Redemptorist brothers gathered around his bed, Father Seelos passed into eternal life on October 4, 1867. He was only forty-eight years old. At his burial the next day, the people who filled the church, realizing that Father Seelos was an unusually saintly man, thronged the casket to touch various articles of devotion to his remains. He was buried in a sanctuary crypt in Saint Mary of the Assumption Church, New Orleans, where devoted followers still come to ask for his help.

In the eyes of the secular world, Father Seelos' life was of little consequence. In the ecclesiastical world he held no place of eminence in the American Church, nor did he leave a mark on the theological community. His legacy was more important than these. Father Seelos worked directly with individual people--men and women, young and old, sinners and saints--who were making their way to eternal life via the troubles, difficulties, and temptations of this world. His fame, known fully to God alone, lies in the manner in which he brought Jesus to the people and the people to Jesus--on the ordinary, everyday level of life.

God calls each of us, in every walk of life, to holiness. Father Seelos responded to this call to holiness by faithfully serving his Redemptorist confreres and the Catholic community as a priest of God. He performed his duties and accepted his daily crosses with humility and joy. His example clearly shows that holiness is attained not in doing what the world considers heroic but in being true to the responsibilities of one's state in life as God ordains them. The life of this remarkable man proves beyond doubt that joy and holiness come to those who serve God and neighbor with a full and devoted heart.