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Description
Blessed Solanus Casey icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
June 6th, 2019
11 x 14 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf
About 10.5 hours

“In the crosses of life that come to us,
Jesus offers us opportunities to help Him redeem the world.
Let us profit by His generosity.”
~ Bl. Solanus Casey

“We should be grateful for and love the vocation to which God had called us. This applies to every vocation, because after all, what a privilege it is to serve God—even in the least capacity.”
~ Bl. Solanus Casey

“Were we only to correspond to God’s graces, continually being showered down on every one of us, we would be able to pass from being great sinners one day to great saints the next. We are continually immersed in God’s merciful grace like air that permeates us.”
~ Bl. Solanus Casey

“What is Religion? Ah! Th science of Heaven come down to Earth: the science of our happy dependence on God and one another, the science whereby Almighty God makes men like to Himself, viz., men co-operating with the grace of God.”
~ Bl. Solanus Casey, in a letter dated March 17, 1957

I was commissioned by a client to make an icon of Blessed Solanus Casey. I have here depicted him in the Capuchin habit of his Order, holding his breviary and Rosary (symbolizing his life of prayer and devotion to Our Lady) and a ladle in the other hand, symbolizing his love for the poor and his work in founding the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit. I used a number of pictures as references for his face (most of which are not online) but mostly I used photos of him when he was younger .

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE BLESSED :+:

Blessed Francis Solanus Casey (November 25th 1870 – July 31st 1957 A.D.), born Bernard Francis Casey was born in a little American farming town called Oak Grove on the far western border of Wisconsin. His parents—Bernard James Casey and Ellen Elizabeth Murphy—were both first-generation immigrants from Ireland who fled the terrible Potato Famine. His parents were married in 1863 in the United States, and during the American Civil War his father made shoes for the Union Army. After his shoe store failed in Pennsylvania, Bernard Casey Sr. took his little family to Prescott, Wisconsin and took up farming. It was in their little log cabin in Wisconsin that Bernard Jr. (known to his friends and family as “Barney”) was born on November 25th, 1870. He was baptized on December 18th, 1870. He was the sixth of sixteen children. His siblings were: Ellen Bridget (1864), James Michael (1865), Mary Ann (1866), Fr. Maurice Emmett (1867), John Terrance (1869), Patrick Henry (1872), Thomas Joseph (1874), Martha Elizabeth (1875), Augustine Peter (1876), Leo McHale (1878), Fr. Edward Francis (1879), Owen Bonaventure (1881), Margaret Theresa Cecilia (1882), Grace Agatha (1885), and Mary Genevieve (1888). In a letter written to his sister Margaret Theresa in 1930, Fr. Solanus described their childhood in Wisconsin, writing:
“Surely we were fortunate children that the Good God gave us such sturdy, honest, virtuous parents. How can we ever be grateful enough? Thanks be to God! May their dear souls rest in the peace of the blessed! I often think of the wonderful designs of Divine Providence as revealed in the plans and strivings of these and similar “children of St. Patrick”—so often pioneers indeed…

Here it was, smiling down on the “Father of Waters” [translation of the Native American name “Mississippi” River] that five of us were privileged to breathe our first morning air and “sing our first baby music.” No doubt little Bernard [himself] must have been proficient in that music. It was during his [own] term of baby-hood that Papa went blind with the ague, when for two weeks he had to be led by the hand, and his little namesake [himself] got a rupture from which he never completely recovered. As in all other trials, however, the Good God had His designs herein also, and we can say with fullest conviction and in all gratitude today: “The Lord knows best.” May He be in all His plans eternally praised! How we must have thrived there in real unworldliness and innocence! Dangers of course were not wanting, to keep dear Father and Mother “on edge” and often, no doubt, in anxiety. Wild beasts and rattle-snakes seem to have been the most common cause of such anxiety, though two of our little cousins were drowned together just below our little retreat, in the river…

…Trimbelle too! How removed! How primitive! How picturesque!...to the south were valleys and rolling prairies down to Diamond Bluff five miles below on the Mississippi—a fair pasture field for cattle as well as deer and other wild animals. But it was also a fair race-track for our most dreaded enemy, the prairie fire, that nearly every year would darken the sky in its crackling rush toward us through abundance of wild grass…on such occasions “Lamb’s Road”…nearly always proved a great protection. If the gale were not too strong our dear neighbors would have time to come to our rescue, as they often did by lining up along that road and preventing the fire from crossing…The public road, such as it was, ran just past our little log cabin—a one-story mansion about 12x30 feet. You many smile at this title I honor it with, especially when you learn that the bedroom below had only a single partition, for Father and Mother on the one side and the little girls, Ellie, and Mary Ann, and little Mattie [Martha] on the other. In the loft above, little boys slept and in the morning sometimes played till they quarreled as little boys are wont to do. The only door led in from the sunny end while a single window on each side let in the light. Winters were often severe and snow-banks sometimes mounted as high as the top of the gable roof. But poor, dear Father took care before the cold weather set in to bank well wherever he might, so that we were fairly comfortable no matter how the wind howled or the mercury sank.

You’ll be wondering how it might be called a mansion. Well, every decent mansion has a chapel of some dimensions. Ours was at times all chapel, and at times something of a church. As long as we lived in that little abode—a “hovel” possibly outside, but clean and neat as a palace within—we were wont to say our morning and night prayers together; and on Sundays at 10 a.m., Father would read Mass Prayers. Of course when the weather permitted and the roads were any way decent he would trudge away to church about six miles, taking short cuts. Then Ellie or James or one of the others would lead the prayers. Sometimes they seemed pretty long…

…Two slight valleys joined at the foot of the northeast corner of the garden and formed quite a ravine running northward between the old and the new fields. This was joined by one or two others in its course down to the “Big Ravine,” a beautiful valley that curved northward and then eastward among some of the most picturesque hills that I have ever seen—off to lose itself in the bottoms of the Trimbelle. These hills and lowlands formed a great part of our pasture—lands where we boys, especially Maurice and I, till he left for Stillwater [Minnesota] to study, used to watch the cattle and study our catechism. Sometimes we’d roll rocks down the hillside—great amusement for boys!—or pick berries or fish and swim till the cattle would stray away and get into mischief and then we would have our own anxieties finding them. Sometimes we got our medicine for carelessness; more frequently, perhaps, we escaped. We were supposed to have 160 acres, but it seems to me that if those hills were spread out in a plain the acreage would have been doubled.”
In 1878, he along with his sisters Mary Ann (aged 12) and Martha Elizabeth (aged 3) contracted diphtheria. His two sisters died during the epidemic that year, but Bernard survived with a permanently damaged voice. His family then moved that same year to Hudson, Wisconsin, where the young boy began school at Saint Mary’s. His education there was interrupted when his family moved a few years later in 1882 to Burkhardt. After a crop failure on the family farm, Bernard left home at the age of sixteen to earn money to help support his family. He worked as a lumberjack and logger on the Mississippi River, spent some time as a hospital orderly, and at the age of twenty worked as a prison guard at Stillwater Prison in Minnesota. While working there he befriended some outlaws that had worked with Jesse James. Bernard was a gentle and sensitive young man and felt sorry for the prisoners. He bonded with one notorious prisoner named Cole Younger who was serving a life sentence for murder and bank robbery. The two bonded over their love of baseball, and Cole later made Bernard a wooden trunk that became one of his prized possessions.

Initially, Bernard wanted to get married, and had even made a proposal. The girl’s mother did not approve, however, and sent her daughter to a boarding school. He put off the question of his vocation and continued trying to support himself. At the age of twenty-one, Bernard went to Superior, Wisconsin and found a job there as a trolley conductor. He was going on the trolley towards the docks when he saw a commotion on the tracks. He jumped from the car and made his way through the crowd and witnessed a drunk sailor brutally stabbing a woman to death. He arrived on the scene just as the police came and wrested the knife away from the attacker and led him away. The woman soon died from her wounds. Bernard was deeply shaken by the blatant and brutal evil he had just witnessed, and this fueled in him a greater urgency to discern his vocation. A few days after the incident, he went to his pastor and told him that he wanted to study for the priesthood as a diocesan priest.

Funds were tight, but the Casey family supported their son in his decision and helped him with the necessary money to pay for school though the money for his tuition, room and board were difficult to come by. Since his education had been interrupted so frequently and he hadn’t attended high school, he had to enroll at the minor seminary (St. Francis High School Seminary in Milwaukee) where he studied alongside of teenagers. The classes were all taught in German and Latin (languages Bernard did not know), and despite his best efforts, he did very poorly in school and was urged to leave the seminary. But Bernard was firm in his desire to be a priest. His teachers recognized that he had an authentic vocation and encouraged him to join a religious order so that he could be a priest, though the most be could hope for was to be ordained as a “simplex” priest (a priest who can say Mass but cannot preach publicly or hear confessions) as he did not have the proper academic qualifications due to his lack of knowledge in German and Latin.

Bernard had been invited to join the Capuchins, but as they spoke German and wore long beards (neither of which he relished) he put off the decision. During December of 1896 he made a novena to Our Lady asking for guidance in his vocation. On the final day of the novena (the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), he was praying before a statue of Our Lady when he heard Mary clearly say, “Go to Detroit.” He took this as the sign he needed, packed his bags left his family and Wisconsin behind, and travelled to the Capuchin monastery of St. Bonaventure’s in Detroit and asked to be admitted. He was received into the Order on January 14th 1897 and took the name “Solanus” after the Capuchin saint Francisco Solano y Jiménez. He struggled through Capuchin seminary just as he had done back in Wisconsin because of his unfamiliarity with German and Latin. His Capuchin superiors knew how he wanted to be a priest, and worried that if he failed in the academic qualifications for priesthood that he would leave the Order. They asked him to write a statement stating that he intended on becoming a Capuchin whether he was ordained to the priesthood or not. Solanus at once complied and wrote, “I do not wish to become a priest if my superiors consider me unqualified. I have offered myself to God without reservations; for that reason, I leave it without anxiety to the superiors to decide about me as they may judge best before God.”

During his time in the Capuchin seminary, Solanus wrote out his “Four Step Plan for Holiness” which he called “his means for acquiring the love of God” which consisted of these four steps:
1.) Detachment of oneself from earthly affections; singleness of purpose!
2.) Meditation on the Passion o Jesus Christ
3.) Uniformity of will with the Divine Will
4.) Mental Prayer, meditation and contemplation
5.) Prayer: “Ask, and it shall be given to you.”

Solanus made his vows as a Capuchin on July 21st 1898, and after struggling through his classes, was finally ordained on July 24th 1904 as a simplex priest in Milwaukee at the age of thirty-four. He celebrated his first Mass on July 31st 1904 at Appleton with his family present. His first assignment was a porter at Sacred Heart Friary in Yonkers, a suburb of New York City. He quickly became popular among the poor who came to the Friary because of his gentleness, charity, and his practice of quietly sitting and listening as people poured out their troubles to him. His gentle words of love, encouragement, and counsel quickly won the hearts of his visitors. His prayers were avidly sought by the guests of the Friary and he gained the reputation of a miracle-worker. His kindness to the poor and homeless was evident to all, and he was always quick to serve the needs of the destitute with coffee and food from the pantry. As word of his holiness spread, people would line up for hours to talk to the “holy priest.” He never rushed his visitors and always listened to their stories with love and compassion and constantly recommended gratitude to God, especially “thanking God ahead of time.” A favorite expression of his was “gratitude for favors received is one of the first and surest indications of intelligence.” His popularity exploded as rumors spread that his prayers cured illnesses, reconciled families, solved seemingly insoluble difficulties. Fr. Solanus himself attributed these miraculous occurrences to the Seraphic Mass Association, in which people would enroll and have Masses said for their intentions as well as support the Capuchin fathers and the foreign missions In 1918, Fr. Solanus worked at the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Manhattan for three years and then served Our Lady of the Angels in Harlem. In Harlem, he added to his usual works of mercy by ministering to the inmates in the local prison.

After spending twenty years serving in New York City, he was transferred back to St. Bonaventure’s in Detroit in 1924. He kept up his ministry of prayer, counsel, listening, encouragement and voluminous letter-writing (he often gently complained of being “snowed under” with all the letters he received and apologized to his correspondents for his tardiness in replying to their letters). During the Great Depression, Fr. Solanus helped found the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in 1929 in Detroit to meet the growing numbers of poor who were left without food. Sometimes the lines grew to over 2,000 people waiting for a meal so the Capuchins had to expand their soup kitchen with the help of donors. The number of miraculous cures attributed to his prayers and intercession proliferated. Incidents abound, but one in particular was described by Fr. Solanus himself in a letter to a Mr. Charles Bracken from 1943:
“You tell me that Mrs. Bracken is not Catholic. I hope she as well as yourself—both of you—are earnest about saving your own souls. However, I am convinced more and more every day that such afflictions—in fact, that the trials and crosses of life in general—are sent us or at least permitted, primarily to wake us up and make us do better…Now what can each of us do to help induce the Good God to lift this cross from the boy? If you send me his name, I shall inscribe him in our missionary work whereby he will have the benefits of prayers and holy Masses continually, and in a way indirectly a foreign missionary. The enclosed booklet will give you necessary details. Then you go more frequently to Holy Communion if possible and have the others of the family do the same. This is one thing that I have been advising Catholics to do for years and I assure you, in many cases, with quite astonishing results. Of course, Mrs. Bracken cannot join in this for the present at least. Let her do something in her own honest way, whatever she may deem most pleasing to the dear Lord—only that she be earnest about it and as confident as possible.

The following might be a practical example with just a few details. It happened a few years ago when on a certain morning there was a crowd waiting here in the Monastery office. An old-looking couple slowly rose from their seats and, approaching the desk, asking in German if they could speak to me personally. As we started into another room, I smelled a cancer, though I was not certain what it was till the old lady told me that her husband had cancer and could not work any more…After a little I asked if they went to the Holy Sacraments regularly. “My husband is not a Catholic,” she answered. “Then, Mr. N.,” I said, “You do something in your own honest way to please the Good God.” [Mr N.:] “What could I do to please Him? I was raised a Luthern, but for twenty years I have practiced no religion.”

“It’s a poor way to be, man, “ I answered, “and especially if you take it as I define Religion: the science of our relationship with God and our neighbor—I might say of our dependence on God and our neighbor. To practice no religion is making a secondary matter of the primary purpose of our creation as rational beings, viz., to know God, that we may love Him and serve Him and be happy with Him. Now I’ll tell you what you can do to please God. Just start and be earnest about saving your soul. After all, if you are a Lutheran, you believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in Him as a Catholic; so we are both Christians, and one way or other we must be brothers.”

This last especially seemed to please him and he answered, decidedly brightening up; “Yes, yes, that is right.” I would have taken the man to be eighty, whereas he was only forty-nine. But from the constant pain and stench of his malady he could neither eat nor sleep and it seemed to me he was wishing that he was already In the grave. Honestly, he did not look as though he would live another week and I feared he might go off in despair. To inspire him with as much hope as I could I proposed to him about as follows: “Now, Mr. N., I am going to tell you something else that you can do to please God. I am inscribing your name now in our missionary work, the Seraphic Mass Association, for prayers and holy Masses always being offered for the members. You, on your part could promise the Good God in your own honest way, that if it helps, you will be earnest in finding out for yourself the difference—rather, the relationship—between your denomination and the “Mother Church,” which latter is, of course, none other than the Catholic.”

Without the least hesitation he answered at once, “Ich tu es” (“I’ll do it.”) Then, seeing his readiness and his growing interest, I added, “I can assure you beforehand that inasmuch as you are earnest and honest in this matter—and prayerful at the same time—in just so much will it become clear to you twice two are four, that you have your Christianity not directly from Jesus. Indirectly, yes; but directly and historically you have it from the “Mother Church.” Like a drowning man who grasped my hand when I was only a youth, so now this poor patient seemed to hang on every word of hope. Next morning, about two hours earlier than the day before, he walked in seemingly quite a different person. There was color in his face and a smile on his countenance. He was twenty years younger looking as he walked over to my desk without stop or hesitation to greet me: “I came to see if I could start taking instructions today.”

That he was feeling better was manifest. No one could doubt that who had seen him the day before. I gave him over for instruction to Fr. Charles [Strahberger], a born Bavarian, who could naturally speak better German than one like myself and had more time at his disposal than I could possibly give him. Eight weeks later, Sunday morning, I gave him First Holy Communion myself, and a week from the next day he rushed in through the door, beaming all over to announce: “I just dropped in to tell you I am going back to work next Wednesday.”

The above is a single case from many similar—I think I’d be safe to say one out of thousands. I very seldom go into such details, and while I’ve tried to encourage quite a few cancer patients by telling them about this one, I have never written about it before. I hope it may not be a bore to anyone. On the contrary, may it be an inspiration and an example for many, not only for cases of eczema and cancer, but for whatever trouble may be met with. Our sad weakness today is our lack of faith, and consequently, want of confidence in God.”
In addition to his charitable works, Fr. Solanus enjoyed singing and playing the violin before the Blessed Sacrament in the Monastery chapel (privately, because he had a terrible singing voice and was not very musically talented). In 1945, at the age of seventy-five, he was sent by his superiors to Brooklyn, New York. Mobs of people flocked to him there and Fr. Solanus’ health quickly began to deteriorate. He had a nasty case of eczema all over his body, so his superiors transferred him to Saint Felix Friary in Huntington, Indiana where they hoped he could get some rest and recuperate his failing health. In 1956, he was again assigned to St. Bonaventure’s in Detroit and hospitalized for food poisoning. After his release from the hospital, his skin became infested again and he was again admitted to the hospital in Detroit, where he was diagnosed with a horrible skin rash that was so bad that the doctors advised amputating his legs. After his ulcers began healing, he was readmitted to the hospital again with erysipelas (a severe skin rash) on July 2nd 1957 and was put on oxygen. Fr. Solanus died in Detroit on July 31st, 1957, at the age of eighty-six at St. John Providence Hospital. His last words were, “I give my soul to Jesus Christ.” Tens of thousands attended his funeral and filed past his coffin. His body was exhumed on July 8th 1987 and found to be mostly incorrupt and was reinterred inside the newly opened Solanus Casey Center Saint Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit. Fr. Solanus Casey was beatified on November 18th 2017 at Ford Feld in Detroit.

“My Dear Confrater Brother Leo: God bless you and yours—including the poor sinner Solanus, who more than anyone else gave me trouble as long as I was in St. Bonaventure’s. Isn’t it a mercy that we really need examine only “one pair of conscience”! Well I received your card a few days ago and thank you for the same as well as for the personal letters therewith.

We had quite a celebration yesterday of Br. Gabriel [Wargel]’s name day. Father Provincial gave him a nice little “sendoff,” praising his work as “becoming quite proficient as a linotypist” and thanking him for his work in the name of the entire Province, etc. I thought of you right away and of your message to him, which he seemed to quite appreciate.

At the same time something came to mind of our privilege in doing the little things we are able to do for the general welfare—most especially in a religious community—each one in his place without thought or distinction as to what the work may be. To whatever office or service one may turn it is not easy to say just which is the most privileged, possibly excepting that of sacristan. At all events that of porter, even though fraught with dangers, has many advantages, if only we be of good will and cooperate with the graces never failing on God’s part and that of our Blessed Mother.

Sometimes of course it becomes monotonous and extremely boring, till one is nearly collapsing. But in such cases it helps to remember that even when Jesus was about to fall the third time He patiently consoled the women-folks and children of His persecutors, making no exceptions. How can we ever be grateful as we ought to be for such a vocation—to such privileged positions—even in the Seraphic Order of the Poverello of Assisi [i.e. St. Francis of Assisi]. Thanks be to God that He has such divine patience with us. One of the secrets no doubt, as you have surely seen from The Mystical City of God is the fact that out Blessed Mother Mary is always coaching poor sinners, on the one hand, to confidence and penance; and on the other, Jesus our Lord to have mercy and spare us.

Thanks be to God! Praised be Jesus eternally, and Mary, our Blessed Mother!”

~ from a letter by Bl. Solanus Casey, to Br. Leo Wollenweber, O.F.M. Cap., February 28th 1943

The Feast of Blessed Solanus Casey is celebrated on July 30th.

O God, who in your providence
conformed Blessed Francis Solanus Casey
to the image of your Son
making him tireless in service to the poor,
by his intercession and example,
grant also to us the same generosity and joy
in giving of ourselves in service to our neighbor.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Description
Blessed Solanus Casey icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
June 6th, 2019
11 x 14 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf
About 10.5 hours

“In the crosses of life that come to us,
Jesus offers us opportunities to help Him redeem the world.
Let us profit by His generosity.”
~ Bl. Solanus Casey

“We should be grateful for and love the vocation to which God had called us. This applies to every vocation, because after all, what a privilege it is to serve God—even in the least capacity.”
~ Bl. Solanus Casey

“Were we only to correspond to God’s graces, continually being showered down on every one of us, we would be able to pass from being great sinners one day to great saints the next. We are continually immersed in God’s merciful grace like air that permeates us.”
~ Bl. Solanus Casey

“What is Religion? Ah! Th science of Heaven come down to Earth: the science of our happy dependence on God and one another, the science whereby Almighty God makes men like to Himself, viz., men co-operating with the grace of God.”
~ Bl. Solanus Casey, in a letter dated March 17, 1957

I was commissioned by a client to make an icon of Blessed Solanus Casey. I have here depicted him in the Capuchin habit of his Order, holding his breviary and Rosary (symbolizing his life of prayer and devotion to Our Lady) and a ladle in the other hand, symbolizing his love for the poor and his work in founding the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit. I used a number of pictures as references for his face (most of which are not online) but mostly I used photos of him when he was younger .

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE BLESSED :+:

Blessed Francis Solanus Casey (November 25th 1870 – July 31st 1957 A.D.), born Bernard Francis Casey was born in a little American farming town called Oak Grove on the far western border of Wisconsin. His parents—Bernard James Casey and Ellen Elizabeth Murphy—were both first-generation immigrants from Ireland who fled the terrible Potato Famine. His parents were married in 1863 in the United States, and during the American Civil War his father made shoes for the Union Army. After his shoe store failed in Pennsylvania, Bernard Casey Sr. took his little family to Prescott, Wisconsin and took up farming. It was in their little log cabin in Wisconsin that Bernard Jr. (known to his friends and family as “Barney”) was born on November 25th, 1870. He was baptized on December 18th, 1870. He was the sixth of sixteen children. His siblings were: Ellen Bridget (1864), James Michael (1865), Mary Ann (1866), Fr. Maurice Emmett (1867), John Terrance (1869), Patrick Henry (1872), Thomas Joseph (1874), Martha Elizabeth (1875), Augustine Peter (1876), Leo McHale (1878), Fr. Edward Francis (1879), Owen Bonaventure (1881), Margaret Theresa Cecilia (1882), Grace Agatha (1885), and Mary Genevieve (1888). In a letter written to his sister Margaret Theresa in 1930, Fr. Solanus described their childhood in Wisconsin, writing:
“Surely we were fortunate children that the Good God gave us such sturdy, honest, virtuous parents. How can we ever be grateful enough? Thanks be to God! May their dear souls rest in the peace of the blessed! I often think of the wonderful designs of Divine Providence as revealed in the plans and strivings of these and similar “children of St. Patrick”—so often pioneers indeed…

Here it was, smiling down on the “Father of Waters” [translation of the Native American name “Mississippi” River] that five of us were privileged to breathe our first morning air and “sing our first baby music.” No doubt little Bernard [himself] must have been proficient in that music. It was during his [own] term of baby-hood that Papa went blind with the ague, when for two weeks he had to be led by the hand, and his little namesake [himself] got a rupture from which he never completely recovered. As in all other trials, however, the Good God had His designs herein also, and we can say with fullest conviction and in all gratitude today: “The Lord knows best.” May He be in all His plans eternally praised! How we must have thrived there in real unworldliness and innocence! Dangers of course were not wanting, to keep dear Father and Mother “on edge” and often, no doubt, in anxiety. Wild beasts and rattle-snakes seem to have been the most common cause of such anxiety, though two of our little cousins were drowned together just below our little retreat, in the river…

…Trimbelle too! How removed! How primitive! How picturesque!...to the south were valleys and rolling prairies down to Diamond Bluff five miles below on the Mississippi—a fair pasture field for cattle as well as deer and other wild animals. But it was also a fair race-track for our most dreaded enemy, the prairie fire, that nearly every year would darken the sky in its crackling rush toward us through abundance of wild grass…on such occasions “Lamb’s Road”…nearly always proved a great protection. If the gale were not too strong our dear neighbors would have time to come to our rescue, as they often did by lining up along that road and preventing the fire from crossing…The public road, such as it was, ran just past our little log cabin—a one-story mansion about 12x30 feet. You many smile at this title I honor it with, especially when you learn that the bedroom below had only a single partition, for Father and Mother on the one side and the little girls, Ellie, and Mary Ann, and little Mattie [Martha] on the other. In the loft above, little boys slept and in the morning sometimes played till they quarreled as little boys are wont to do. The only door led in from the sunny end while a single window on each side let in the light. Winters were often severe and snow-banks sometimes mounted as high as the top of the gable roof. But poor, dear Father took care before the cold weather set in to bank well wherever he might, so that we were fairly comfortable no matter how the wind howled or the mercury sank.

You’ll be wondering how it might be called a mansion. Well, every decent mansion has a chapel of some dimensions. Ours was at times all chapel, and at times something of a church. As long as we lived in that little abode—a “hovel” possibly outside, but clean and neat as a palace within—we were wont to say our morning and night prayers together; and on Sundays at 10 a.m., Father would read Mass Prayers. Of course when the weather permitted and the roads were any way decent he would trudge away to church about six miles, taking short cuts. Then Ellie or James or one of the others would lead the prayers. Sometimes they seemed pretty long…

…Two slight valleys joined at the foot of the northeast corner of the garden and formed quite a ravine running northward between the old and the new fields. This was joined by one or two others in its course down to the “Big Ravine,” a beautiful valley that curved northward and then eastward among some of the most picturesque hills that I have ever seen—off to lose itself in the bottoms of the Trimbelle. These hills and lowlands formed a great part of our pasture—lands where we boys, especially Maurice and I, till he left for Stillwater [Minnesota] to study, used to watch the cattle and study our catechism. Sometimes we’d roll rocks down the hillside—great amusement for boys!—or pick berries or fish and swim till the cattle would stray away and get into mischief and then we would have our own anxieties finding them. Sometimes we got our medicine for carelessness; more frequently, perhaps, we escaped. We were supposed to have 160 acres, but it seems to me that if those hills were spread out in a plain the acreage would have been doubled.”
In 1878, he along with his sisters Mary Ann (aged 12) and Martha Elizabeth (aged 3) contracted diphtheria. His two sisters died during the epidemic that year, but Bernard survived with a permanently damaged voice. His family then moved that same year to Hudson, Wisconsin, where the young boy began school at Saint Mary’s. His education there was interrupted when his family moved a few years later in 1882 to Burkhardt. After a crop failure on the family farm, Bernard left home at the age of sixteen to earn money to help support his family. He worked as a lumberjack and logger on the Mississippi River, spent some time as a hospital orderly, and at the age of twenty worked as a prison guard at Stillwater Prison in Minnesota. While working there he befriended some outlaws that had worked with Jesse James. Bernard was a gentle and sensitive young man and felt sorry for the prisoners. He bonded with one notorious prisoner named Cole Younger who was serving a life sentence for murder and bank robbery. The two bonded over their love of baseball, and Cole later made Bernard a wooden trunk that became one of his prized possessions.

Initially, Bernard wanted to get married, and had even made a proposal. The girl’s mother did not approve, however, and sent her daughter to a boarding school. He put off the question of his vocation and continued trying to support himself. At the age of twenty-one, Bernard went to Superior, Wisconsin and found a job there as a trolley conductor. He was going on the trolley towards the docks when he saw a commotion on the tracks. He jumped from the car and made his way through the crowd and witnessed a drunk sailor brutally stabbing a woman to death. He arrived on the scene just as the police came and wrested the knife away from the attacker and led him away. The woman soon died from her wounds. Bernard was deeply shaken by the blatant and brutal evil he had just witnessed, and this fueled in him a greater urgency to discern his vocation. A few days after the incident, he went to his pastor and told him that he wanted to study for the priesthood as a diocesan priest.

Funds were tight, but the Casey family supported their son in his decision and helped him with the necessary money to pay for school though the money for his tuition, room and board were difficult to come by. Since his education had been interrupted so frequently and he hadn’t attended high school, he had to enroll at the minor seminary (St. Francis High School Seminary in Milwaukee) where he studied alongside of teenagers. The classes were all taught in German and Latin (languages Bernard did not know), and despite his best efforts, he did very poorly in school and was urged to leave the seminary. But Bernard was firm in his desire to be a priest. His teachers recognized that he had an authentic vocation and encouraged him to join a religious order so that he could be a priest, though the most be could hope for was to be ordained as a “simplex” priest (a priest who can say Mass but cannot preach publicly or hear confessions) as he did not have the proper academic qualifications due to his lack of knowledge in German and Latin.

Bernard had been invited to join the Capuchins, but as they spoke German and wore long beards (neither of which he relished) he put off the decision. During December of 1896 he made a novena to Our Lady asking for guidance in his vocation. On the final day of the novena (the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), he was praying before a statue of Our Lady when he heard Mary clearly say, “Go to Detroit.” He took this as the sign he needed, packed his bags left his family and Wisconsin behind, and travelled to the Capuchin monastery of St. Bonaventure’s in Detroit and asked to be admitted. He was received into the Order on January 14th 1897 and took the name “Solanus” after the Capuchin saint Francisco Solano y Jiménez. He struggled through Capuchin seminary just as he had done back in Wisconsin because of his unfamiliarity with German and Latin. His Capuchin superiors knew how he wanted to be a priest, and worried that if he failed in the academic qualifications for priesthood that he would leave the Order. They asked him to write a statement stating that he intended on becoming a Capuchin whether he was ordained to the priesthood or not. Solanus at once complied and wrote, “I do not wish to become a priest if my superiors consider me unqualified. I have offered myself to God without reservations; for that reason, I leave it without anxiety to the superiors to decide about me as they may judge best before God.”

During his time in the Capuchin seminary, Solanus wrote out his “Four Step Plan for Holiness” which he called “his means for acquiring the love of God” which consisted of these four steps:
1.) Detachment of oneself from earthly affections; singleness of purpose!
2.) Meditation on the Passion o Jesus Christ
3.) Uniformity of will with the Divine Will
4.) Mental Prayer, meditation and contemplation
5.) Prayer: “Ask, and it shall be given to you.”

Solanus made his vows as a Capuchin on July 21st 1898, and after struggling through his classes, was finally ordained on July 24th 1904 as a simplex priest in Milwaukee at the age of thirty-four. He celebrated his first Mass on July 31st 1904 at Appleton with his family present. His first assignment was a porter at Sacred Heart Friary in Yonkers, a suburb of New York City. He quickly became popular among the poor who came to the Friary because of his gentleness, charity, and his practice of quietly sitting and listening as people poured out their troubles to him. His gentle words of love, encouragement, and counsel quickly won the hearts of his visitors. His prayers were avidly sought by the guests of the Friary and he gained the reputation of a miracle-worker. His kindness to the poor and homeless was evident to all, and he was always quick to serve the needs of the destitute with coffee and food from the pantry. As word of his holiness spread, people would line up for hours to talk to the “holy priest.” He never rushed his visitors and always listened to their stories with love and compassion and constantly recommended gratitude to God, especially “thanking God ahead of time.” A favorite expression of his was “gratitude for favors received is one of the first and surest indications of intelligence.” His popularity exploded as rumors spread that his prayers cured illnesses, reconciled families, solved seemingly insoluble difficulties. Fr. Solanus himself attributed these miraculous occurrences to the Seraphic Mass Association, in which people would enroll and have Masses said for their intentions as well as support the Capuchin fathers and the foreign missions In 1918, Fr. Solanus worked at the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Manhattan for three years and then served Our Lady of the Angels in Harlem. In Harlem, he added to his usual works of mercy by ministering to the inmates in the local prison.

After spending twenty years serving in New York City, he was transferred back to St. Bonaventure’s in Detroit in 1924. He kept up his ministry of prayer, counsel, listening, encouragement and voluminous letter-writing (he often gently complained of being “snowed under” with all the letters he received and apologized to his correspondents for his tardiness in replying to their letters). During the Great Depression, Fr. Solanus helped found the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in 1929 in Detroit to meet the growing numbers of poor who were left without food. Sometimes the lines grew to over 2,000 people waiting for a meal so the Capuchins had to expand their soup kitchen with the help of donors. The number of miraculous cures attributed to his prayers and intercession proliferated. Incidents abound, but one in particular was described by Fr. Solanus himself in a letter to a Mr. Charles Bracken from 1943:
“You tell me that Mrs. Bracken is not Catholic. I hope she as well as yourself—both of you—are earnest about saving your own souls. However, I am convinced more and more every day that such afflictions—in fact, that the trials and crosses of life in general—are sent us or at least permitted, primarily to wake us up and make us do better…Now what can each of us do to help induce the Good God to lift this cross from the boy? If you send me his name, I shall inscribe him in our missionary work whereby he will have the benefits of prayers and holy Masses continually, and in a way indirectly a foreign missionary. The enclosed booklet will give you necessary details. Then you go more frequently to Holy Communion if possible and have the others of the family do the same. This is one thing that I have been advising Catholics to do for years and I assure you, in many cases, with quite astonishing results. Of course, Mrs. Bracken cannot join in this for the present at least. Let her do something in her own honest way, whatever she may deem most pleasing to the dear Lord—only that she be earnest about it and as confident as possible.

The following might be a practical example with just a few details. It happened a few years ago when on a certain morning there was a crowd waiting here in the Monastery office. An old-looking couple slowly rose from their seats and, approaching the desk, asking in German if they could speak to me personally. As we started into another room, I smelled a cancer, though I was not certain what it was till the old lady told me that her husband had cancer and could not work any more…After a little I asked if they went to the Holy Sacraments regularly. “My husband is not a Catholic,” she answered. “Then, Mr. N.,” I said, “You do something in your own honest way to please the Good God.” [Mr N.:] “What could I do to please Him? I was raised a Luthern, but for twenty years I have practiced no religion.”

“It’s a poor way to be, man, “ I answered, “and especially if you take it as I define Religion: the science of our relationship with God and our neighbor—I might say of our dependence on God and our neighbor. To practice no religion is making a secondary matter of the primary purpose of our creation as rational beings, viz., to know God, that we may love Him and serve Him and be happy with Him. Now I’ll tell you what you can do to please God. Just start and be earnest about saving your soul. After all, if you are a Lutheran, you believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in Him as a Catholic; so we are both Christians, and one way or other we must be brothers.”

This last especially seemed to please him and he answered, decidedly brightening up; “Yes, yes, that is right.” I would have taken the man to be eighty, whereas he was only forty-nine. But from the constant pain and stench of his malady he could neither eat nor sleep and it seemed to me he was wishing that he was already In the grave. Honestly, he did not look as though he would live another week and I feared he might go off in despair. To inspire him with as much hope as I could I proposed to him about as follows: “Now, Mr. N., I am going to tell you something else that you can do to please God. I am inscribing your name now in our missionary work, the Seraphic Mass Association, for prayers and holy Masses always being offered for the members. You, on your part could promise the Good God in your own honest way, that if it helps, you will be earnest in finding out for yourself the difference—rather, the relationship—between your denomination and the “Mother Church,” which latter is, of course, none other than the Catholic.”

Without the least hesitation he answered at once, “Ich tu es” (“I’ll do it.”) Then, seeing his readiness and his growing interest, I added, “I can assure you beforehand that inasmuch as you are earnest and honest in this matter—and prayerful at the same time—in just so much will it become clear to you twice two are four, that you have your Christianity not directly from Jesus. Indirectly, yes; but directly and historically you have it from the “Mother Church.” Like a drowning man who grasped my hand when I was only a youth, so now this poor patient seemed to hang on every word of hope. Next morning, about two hours earlier than the day before, he walked in seemingly quite a different person. There was color in his face and a smile on his countenance. He was twenty years younger looking as he walked over to my desk without stop or hesitation to greet me: “I came to see if I could start taking instructions today.”

That he was feeling better was manifest. No one could doubt that who had seen him the day before. I gave him over for instruction to Fr. Charles [Strahberger], a born Bavarian, who could naturally speak better German than one like myself and had more time at his disposal than I could possibly give him. Eight weeks later, Sunday morning, I gave him First Holy Communion myself, and a week from the next day he rushed in through the door, beaming all over to announce: “I just dropped in to tell you I am going back to work next Wednesday.”

The above is a single case from many similar—I think I’d be safe to say one out of thousands. I very seldom go into such details, and while I’ve tried to encourage quite a few cancer patients by telling them about this one, I have never written about it before. I hope it may not be a bore to anyone. On the contrary, may it be an inspiration and an example for many, not only for cases of eczema and cancer, but for whatever trouble may be met with. Our sad weakness today is our lack of faith, and consequently, want of confidence in God.”
In addition to his charitable works, Fr. Solanus enjoyed singing and playing the violin before the Blessed Sacrament in the Monastery chapel (privately, because he had a terrible singing voice and was not very musically talented). In 1945, at the age of seventy-five, he was sent by his superiors to Brooklyn, New York. Mobs of people flocked to him there and Fr. Solanus’ health quickly began to deteriorate. He had a nasty case of eczema all over his body, so his superiors transferred him to Saint Felix Friary in Huntington, Indiana where they hoped he could get some rest and recuperate his failing health. In 1956, he was again assigned to St. Bonaventure’s in Detroit and hospitalized for food poisoning. After his release from the hospital, his skin became infested again and he was again admitted to the hospital in Detroit, where he was diagnosed with a horrible skin rash that was so bad that the doctors advised amputating his legs. After his ulcers began healing, he was readmitted to the hospital again with erysipelas (a severe skin rash) on July 2nd 1957 and was put on oxygen. Fr. Solanus died in Detroit on July 31st, 1957, at the age of eighty-six at St. John Providence Hospital. His last words were, “I give my soul to Jesus Christ.” Tens of thousands attended his funeral and filed past his coffin. His body was exhumed on July 8th 1987 and found to be mostly incorrupt and was reinterred inside the newly opened Solanus Casey Center Saint Bonaventure Monastery in Detroit. Fr. Solanus Casey was beatified on November 18th 2017 at Ford Feld in Detroit.

“My Dear Confrater Brother Leo: God bless you and yours—including the poor sinner Solanus, who more than anyone else gave me trouble as long as I was in St. Bonaventure’s. Isn’t it a mercy that we really need examine only “one pair of conscience”! Well I received your card a few days ago and thank you for the same as well as for the personal letters therewith.

We had quite a celebration yesterday of Br. Gabriel [Wargel]’s name day. Father Provincial gave him a nice little “sendoff,” praising his work as “becoming quite proficient as a linotypist” and thanking him for his work in the name of the entire Province, etc. I thought of you right away and of your message to him, which he seemed to quite appreciate.

At the same time something came to mind of our privilege in doing the little things we are able to do for the general welfare—most especially in a religious community—each one in his place without thought or distinction as to what the work may be. To whatever office or service one may turn it is not easy to say just which is the most privileged, possibly excepting that of sacristan. At all events that of porter, even though fraught with dangers, has many advantages, if only we be of good will and cooperate with the graces never failing on God’s part and that of our Blessed Mother.

Sometimes of course it becomes monotonous and extremely boring, till one is nearly collapsing. But in such cases it helps to remember that even when Jesus was about to fall the third time He patiently consoled the women-folks and children of His persecutors, making no exceptions. How can we ever be grateful as we ought to be for such a vocation—to such privileged positions—even in the Seraphic Order of the Poverello of Assisi [i.e. St. Francis of Assisi]. Thanks be to God that He has such divine patience with us. One of the secrets no doubt, as you have surely seen from The Mystical City of God is the fact that out Blessed Mother Mary is always coaching poor sinners, on the one hand, to confidence and penance; and on the other, Jesus our Lord to have mercy and spare us.

Thanks be to God! Praised be Jesus eternally, and Mary, our Blessed Mother!”

~ from a letter by Bl. Solanus Casey, to Br. Leo Wollenweber, O.F.M. Cap., February 28th 1943

The Feast of Blessed Solanus Casey is celebrated on July 30th.

O God, who in your providence
conformed Blessed Francis Solanus Casey
to the image of your Son
making him tireless in service to the poor,
by his intercession and example,
grant also to us the same generosity and joy
in giving of ourselves in service to our neighbor.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.