Contents

 

FRANCIS OF ASSISI
FRANCISCANS

TERESA OF AVILA
DISCALCED CARMELITES

IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA
JESUITS

JOHN BAPTIST DE LA SALLE
CHRISTIAN BROTHERS

ALPHONSUS LIGUORI
REDEMPTORISTS

EDMUND RICE
IRISH CHRISTIAN BROTHERS

THERESE COUDERC
SISTERS OF THE CENACLE

ANTHONY MARY CLARET
CLARETIANS

JEANNE JUGAN
LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR

DON BOSCO
SALESIANS

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Cross and Resurrection in the Life of Some Founders

 

Patrick Langan LC

 

Key Insights

Holy Week 1997 provided me the time to do something I had been wanting to do for some time: read the lives of founders of religious families and try to see some constants of God’s purifying action in their lives.

It was soon obvious that what I had in mind could not be done in a short time, but there was one factor that was immediately clear and unmistakable: the presence of the Cross, and concretely, the Cross of misinterpretation and defamation with certain recurring characteristics:

  • The accusations are always those best calculated in the culture of the day to damage the reputation of the founder.

  • To any fair-minded observer at the time, the founder would at least seem suspect.
  • The greater the impact the institute has on society, the more severe the attacks.
  • In stormy times, the founder is the beacon that leads the ship to safe harbor.
  • "The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians," and the persecution of founders is the seed of their order.

This book is the result.

"Let us lie in wait for the virtuous man,

since he annoys us and opposes our way of life,

reproaches us for our breaches of the law,

and accuses us of playing false to our upbringing.

"Before us he stands, a reproof to our way of thinking,

the very sight of him weighs our spirits down.

"Let us test him with cruelty and with torture,

and thus explore this gentleness of his

and put his endurance to the proof."

 

Wisdom 2: 12, 14, 19

 

Fr. Patrick Langan LC

Father Patrick Langan LC, was born on May 26, 1958 in Dublin, Ireland, and entered the Legionaries of Christ in the year 1975. He was ordained a priest on January 3, 1991, in St. Peter’s Basilica by Pope John Paul II along with 59 other Legionaries of Christ. On that day, the Legion was celebrating the 50th anniversary of its foundation. He currently is working in the United States.

The Legion of Christ is a Roman Catholic Congregation of priests, founded in 1941 by Fr. Marcial Maciel, L.C. For more information about them, see their website at: www.legionofchrist.org

 

Bibliography

Library of Congress Catalog card number: 97-67254

ISBN 0-9651601-1-4

 Copyright © 1997 Patrick Langan LC

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, May 1997

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Circle Press

Hamden CT