Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we celebrate the memorial of St. André Bessette, who was born in 1845 in the village of Saint-Grégoire-des-Bévilles, 30 miles east of Montreal. He was baptized with the name Alfred. His father was uneducated but industrious. He worked as a carpenter and a cart driver, and he was killed while felling a tree when Alfred was nine. When the boy was 12, his mother died of tuberculosis, and he went to live with one of his mother's sisters. She was married and lived in Saint-Césaire, a dozen miles northeast of Alfred's birthplace.
She and her husband decided that it would be best to have Alfred learn a trade rather than send him to school. So he was apprenticed to a cobbler, and then to a baker, and then to other tradesmen. But despite Alfred's goodwill, his poor health proved to be an obstacle to success in all these trades. Though he could barely read or write, he learned his catechism well, and this laid a good foundation for becoming a saint. The parish priest was Father André Provençal, from whose teaching our saint acquired his lifelong devotion to Saint Joseph.
He also had a love of Our Lady. He would pray the Rosary in his hours of rest or recreation. While working as a hired hand on a farm, he received the gift of a crucifix. He loved the crucifix, and would look at it and meditate on it, thinking about Our Lord's Passion, and this motivated him to undertake corporal penances. For the crucifix, the meditation of the Passion had taught him how precious it is to suffer. When he was 18, he went to New England to find work. It was 1863, in the middle of the Civil War. You can imagine that many men were away fighting. And he found work alongside some of his relatives in textile mills in Connecticut, and perhaps in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. One day, he paused during his work and asked Saint Joseph where he would die. Then he saw, as if in a dream, the College of Notre Dame in Montreal, in which he would later become a religious, and near which he would eventually begin the Oratory of Saint Joseph.
In 1867, he returned to what was now the Dominion of Canada, formed earlier that year by the confederation of three British provinces. When he had time, he would go to visit Fr. André Provençal. The priest recommended that he enter the Congregation of the Holy Cross, who had begun teaching in the area. He introduced the candidate to the congregation by telling the director of the novitiate, "I'm sending a saint to your community." Alfred entered the congregation in November 1870, and the following December 27th, he began the novitiate, receiving the religious name André, in honor of the priest who had taught him. The novitiate director found that he may well have been a saint, but his poor health would make it very difficult for him to carry out the work expected of a religious brother. So he sent him home. At this point, the bishop intervened, convincing the congregation that while the young man might not be of much value for his work, he would be of great value to them for his prayer. St. André returned and completed his formation.
He was assigned to be the porter, the doorkeeper of the College of Notre Dame in Montreal. Because there were few religious there, he had many other responsibilities, including infirmarian, barber for the students, and running errands in town. He made flowerbeds in front of the college, and when he didn't finish his work during the day, he continued it at night. He did an amazing amount of work, especially because stomach pains constrained him to a diet of milk diluted with water and a few crusts of bread. As he worked, he spoke with St. Joseph and meditated on the Passion. During the night, he would go to pray on the hill in front of the college, where he had hidden a medal of St. Joseph in the hope that that would make it easier for the congregation to buy that land. On his daily trips into town for the meal, he would sometimes visit the sick. He brought oil from the lamp that burned in front of the statue of St. Joseph in the college, and he urged the persons to use it with devotion. Many were indeed healed, and St. André began to get a reputation for working miracles, but he said that it was all St. Joseph.
Another sign of his holiness was that he never defended himself when he was reprimanded. Misunderstandings are inevitable, but he never said a word, even when anyone else would have. Between 1881 and 1890, the college underwent the physical transformation that made it just as he had seen it in his vision. In 1896, the congregation bought the hill in front of the college to keep a hotel from being built there. St. André widened the path that led up to it and made some steps to make it easier to go up the hill. He also put a statue of St. Joseph in a crack in the rock, with a bowl in front of it to collect offerings. St. André's reputation for healing, which he had always credited to St. Joseph, caused the offerings to grow.
But some of the parents of the students began to complain about the sorts of people who were coming to the college seeking healing. They didn't want their children to be running into such people. So to satisfy them, the superiors had St. André meet his visitors in another building outside the college from then on. Not everyone thought that André was a saint. The village doctor considered him a charlatan, and some of his confreres reported him to the health department. An inspector came to see if he was violating any laws, but was impressed by the good brother's common sense. All St. André really did was to rub the sick with a medal and a little oil.
In 1904, a small chapel to St. Joseph was built halfway up the hillside. This was now the place that especially attracted the sick. In 1908, it was enlarged and made accessible also in winter. Before the bishop granted permission for this, he asked St. André if God had made it known to him in some supernatural way that He wanted a shrine on that hill. But the answer was no. It was just the brother's devotion. He was walking by faith like the rest of us. In 1909, St. André's nearly 40 years as a porter at the college came to an end, so that he could work, so that he could spend all his time as caretaker of St. Joseph's Oratory. Work to expand the oratory took place at intervals between 1912 and 1937 as money became available. But St. André didn't live to see it completed. In 1936, during the Great Depression, when the oratory council was discouraged and thought that perhaps it would never be finished, he told them, "Do you want a roof on the basilica? Put a statue of St. Joseph on the open walls, and he will find a way to cover himself." It worked.
St. André continued his home visits, bringing not only healing but also reconciliation with God. He spoke movingly to sinners of God's mercy and of Christ's Passion without forgetting to mention God's justice. God had given him the gift of reading hearts. He told many sick people to confess and have a right intention if they wanted to receive healing. And not everyone was healed. St. André explained, "Many do not obtain the healing they seek because of their lack of faith and lack of submission to God's will. Often they don't do what I tell them to do, such as applying a medal and anointing themselves with oil." Healing, however, was for those who could not appreciate what a gift it was to suffer. To his closest friends, he said, "You shouldn't pray to get rid of suffering but to bear it better." He also said, "When a soul has done something for the good Lord, He repays it with suffering. Suffering is such a great and valuable thing that it cannot receive its reward except in heaven." He spent long hours of the night meditating on the Gospel, The Imitation of Christ, and the lives of the saints. Until he was very old, he only needed a few hours of sleep each night. Once Our Lady appeared to him with the child Jesus. Three or four times, a fire in the form of stars was seen on his head. This fire followed him during the Way of the Cross. One evening when he was praying behind the altar, he was surrounded by intense light. Despite these graces and all the miracles, he never lost his humility. A few days before he died, he asked his superior, "Please pray for my conversion."
At 90 years of age, he had to slow down, receiving visitors only two days a week in what became for him a day-long purgatory. Though he never enjoyed good health, he lived to 91. He died on January 6th, 1937, after suffering terrible gastric pains and being hospitalized. He offered his pains for the Pope, for peace in Spain, then troubled by a civil war, and for the completion of the oratory. Between January 6th and 12th, a million people filed past his coffin. A hundred thousand took part in his funeral rites. He was beatified in 1982 and canonized in 2010.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.