Bicentennial Mass Homily given by the Most Reverend Kevin C. Rhoades:  August 24, 2007

On Aug. 24, 2007, the Feast of St. Bartholomew and the birthday of Mount founder Father John DuBois, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Diocese of Harrisburg presided at the Mount’s Bicentennial Mass. Bishop Rhoades served as rector of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary before being called to serve in Harrisburg. His homily is reprinted below.

“Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom,” we sang in our responsorial psalm today, the feast of the apostle Bartholomew. The apostles, faithful friends of the Lord, went out to all the world to make known the Kingdom of God and to spread His Kingdom through their preaching and courageous witness to the Lord Jesus.

Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel, was brought to Jesus by the apostle Philip, as we heard in today’s Gospel. Nathaniel, through his personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, moved by God’s grace, made an amazing confession of faith: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” He would later bring that faith to Armenia and elsewhere and ultimately bear witness to it with his blood.

In today’s first reading from the book of Revelation, we read of St. John’s vision of the heavenly Jerusalem with twelve stones as its foundation, on which were inscribed the twelve names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb. The apostles Bartholomew, Philip and the other ten, were the foundation upon which the Church was and remains built. Our apostolic Church keeps and hands on the teaching of the apostles and continues to be sanctified and guided by their successors, the bishops of the Church. One of those successors was the man we remember today, the third bishop of New York, John DuBois. We remember him on this, his birthday, Aug. 24. Born on this day in 1764 in Paris, France, Father John DuBois, many years before becoming a bishop, came to this country and labored as a priest in the service of the Church’s apostolic mission. The crowning achievement of his priestly labors was the founding of Mount St. Mary’s.

I’d like to reflect in this homily on the background of our holy founder on this his birthday, on this day when the Plaza dedicated to his blessed memory will be dedicated and blessed, in these beginning days of our bicentennial celebration.

John DuBois grew up in Paris during the latter years of the French monarchy. He studied humanities for twelve years at the College of Louis le Grand, a famous and prestigious school whose spirit and rules would influence him later when he established Mount St. Mary’s. He had an interesting number of friends and classmates who would later have divided loyalties during the French Revolution. After Father DuBois emigrated from France to Virginia in 1791, to escape the persecution against the Church which accompanied the revolution, he continued to follow the news of the turmoil in his native land. He learned of the massacre in September 1792 in which nearly 200 priests were killed, shot to death or hacked to pieces, several of whom he lived and served with in Paris. They, like he, in steadfast fidelity to Christ and His Church, had refused to take the oath of loyalty to the law enacted in 1790 that denied the Pope’s authority over the
Church in France, an oath required of all bishops and priests. Though Father DuBois did not receive the crown of martyrdom like his priest friends who had remained in Paris, he came to America not out of cowardice, but by providence, to exercise a heroic priestly ministry in a new land. Father DuBois was undoubtedly deeply affected by the news of the clergy massacre and the later Reign of Terror in France. I imagine he was deeply inspired by the faith and courage of his martyred friends and brother priests when he undertook with great zeal his mission to bring the apostolic faith to the people of Virginia and Maryland and eventually established our noble institution with its strong Catholic mission.

Among John DuBois’ contemporaries at the College of Louis le Grand in Paris were two famous leaders of the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins. Though having received the same education, these alumni and others took a decidedly different direction in their lives than Father John DuBois and other alumni. In this formerly Jesuit school, the students were exposed to a mixture of philosophical extremes. Desmoulins, who had bullied DuBois in school, became a French journalist and politician who played an important role in the French Revolution. He is credited with sparking the revolt that led to the fall of the Bastille in 1789. He belittled Christianity and at one point stated that other religions were as good for him as that of Jesus Christ. Robespierre, a Deist in his religious beliefs, embraced the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and became an instrumental figure in the Reign of Terror. Though Robespierre surely opposed the outlawed priests who had refused to take the required oath, he falsified papers for his former friend, the gentle Latin scholar, John DuBois, enabling him to escape France and come to the United States. In school, both had shared a talent for classical languages. But they were very different personalities and would follow very different beliefs. Father DuBois’ first priestly assignment was at St. Sulpice parish in Paris. It was a parish with 90,000 parishioners and Father DuBois served there for four years. The massive parish church had an inscription above the door dedicating it to St. Sulpice. Later, Robespierre changed the inscription and dedicated the building to the goddess of Reason.

Father DuBois, in founding Mount St. Mary’s, did so with a different philosophy than that which inspired Robespierre and Desmoulins. He established a Catholic institution which rejected the rationalistic philosophies that had inspired his former schoolmates. At the same time, his school would not embrace the other extreme of fideism. In his educational enterprise, Father DuBois created an institution committed to the study of the humanities, within a vision of the human person and the world that is enlightened by the Gospel. Truly Catholic in rejecting the extremes of both rationalism and fideism, from the beginning Mount St. Mary’s has embraced both faith and reason, described by Pope John Paul II as “the two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” They do not stand in opposition to each other. The Holy Father wrote in Ex corde ecclesiae about the task of a Catholic university “to promote dialogue between faith and reason, so that it can be seen more profoundly how faith and reason bear harmonious witness to the unity of all truth.” He also wrote that “a vital interaction of two distinct levels of coming to know the one truth leads to a greater love for truth itself, and contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the meaning of human life and of
the purpose of God’s creation.” Mount St. Mary’s University, ever striving to be faithful to the vision of Father DuBois, to its Catholic identity, continues to promote this integration of knowledge from faith and reason, each autonomous with regard to its own methods, yet converging in the ultimate source of all truth, the mystery of God.

Father DuBois was truly a missionary, like St. Bartholomew and the other apostles, when he came to America. His evangelizing mission did not cease when he founded Mount St. Mary’s. In fact, this institution, as a Catholic university, indeed is called to contribute to the Church’s work of evangelization. Pope John Paul II spoke of a Catholic university as “a living institutional witness to Christ and his message, so vitally important in cultures marked by secularism, or where Christ and his message are still virtually unknown” (Ex corde ecclesiae #49). Father DuBois saw that all the activities of the Mount at its infancy were connected with and in harmony with the evangelizing mission of the Church. Today, may this continue to be a hallmark of our beloved university! During this bicentennial, may we continue to be inspired by the vision, the example, the faith, the sacrifices and the courage of Father John DuBois. Like the apostle Bartholomew, he was one of the true friends of the Lord described in psalm 145 as those who make known the glorious splendor of God’s Kingdom. May we and all who are part of the community of Mount St. Mary’s always live and grow in this friendship with the Lord and make known the glorious splendor of His Kingdom!