(OSV News) — The history of the Church in the United States is a chronicle of evangelization.
Most of the Americans in the eternal hall of fame are distinguished as great missionaries: Jogues, Goupil, Lalande, Serra, Cabrini, Duchesne, Neumann, Guerin, De Veuster, Cope, Drexel, Seelos, Rother, James Miller, and the soon to be beatified martyrs of Georgia.
Some heroically left home to evangelize the indigenous and immigrants, Protestants and poorly catechized Catholics, slaves and ex-slaves, lepers and yellow fever victims. Some risked and gave their lives as missionary martyrs abroad.
This morning we joyfully received news that there will soon be another American added to this great elenchus of disciple makers, arguably the most effective evangelist of them all: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who will be beatified on a date still awaiting confirmation.
The most celebrated American Catholic of the middle of the 20th century, Sheen’s pioneering radio program “The Catholic Hour” and Emmy-award winning television program “Life is Worth Living” reached millions of Catholics and non-Catholics alike each week. His 66 books and three newspaper columns a week likewise informed the minds, hearts and lives of millions.
Sheen is not just a figure of the past. He is immensely popular among young Catholics today, who watch his videos on YouTube and EWTN, listen to podcasts and clips of his preaching, pray his eloquent Way of the Cross, read his classic “Life of Christ” and his autobiography “Treasure in Clay.”
Seminarians and young priests nourish their vocations by reading his books on the priesthood, listening to recordings of his famous retreats, and pondering his meditations on the seven last words of Christ on the cross, perhaps the best ever given.
Sheen’s popularity stems not just from the eloquence that gives him an evergreen impact like his contemporaries Lewis, Chesterton and Knox. It’s because he symbolizes the type of shepherd so many young Catholics desire their bishops and priests to be: courageous and compelling heralds of the faith, unafraid to use modern means of communication — in addition to traditional ones — to propose and defend the faith in any and all audiences.
He’s popular today for the same reasons that Bishop Robert Barron and Father Mike Schmitz are — and the young eventually discover that Barron and Schmitz are intentionally following in Sheen’s trailblazing footsteps.
To understand Sheen, and why the Church is beatifying him, we need to get beneath his fame to his motivations.
He was, first and foremost, a devout disciple of Jesus. He not only knew about Jesus — something one can’t miss in his many books and preaching — but he likewise knew Jesus personally, nourished by his more than 60 years’ worth of consecutive daily Eucharistic holy hours. Sheen is the greatest apostle of the Eucharistic Holy Hour in Church history; without a doubt his writings and example have helped spawn the revival of Eucharistic adoration and the explosion of perpetual adoration chapels in the U.S.
That leads to the second point: Sheen wanted everyone to come to know that same Jesus.
That’s what drove his studies in philosophy and theology, so that he could pass on effectively the truth Christ proclaimed, something that overflowed in his work in his packed classrooms at the Catholic University of America, over the radio and television, in his prodigious writings and from the pulpit and dais.
That’s what accounts for the priority and time he gave to helping people become Catholic, running huge classes in New York and Washington, D.C., making time for individual instruction for those in special circumstances, allowing others to listen to the recordings of his classes with his secretaries and then meet with him to ask questions.
It’s what explains his famous work, for 16 years, as the national director of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, one of the four Pontifical Mission Societies, during which he sought to form American Catholics in missionary spirituality and identity and help raise funds to spread the faith and build the Church across the globe.
In his lifetime, Sheen donated over $10 million of his media earnings to the missions, raised $200 million for the missions (the equivalent of nearly $2.1 billion today), and left 40% of his estate and the royalties of his books and all his audio for the ongoing work of spreading the faith.
It would be almost impossible to enumerate the Churches, schools, seminaries, convents and monasteries that exist today because of his work, not to mention the amount of dioceses sustained and programs underwritten because of his efforts. With the possible exception of Pope Pius XI, no Catholic in the 20th century did more for the missions than Sheen.
The Church raises people to the altars not only to invoke them as intercessors but to propose them as models. While few will emulate Sheen’s erudition and eloquence, everyone can strive to imitate his love for the Lord Jesus and his zeal to help others come to know, love and serve him in return.
Therefore, the best way for us to prepare for Sheen’s upcoming beatification is to follow his example of prayer before the Eucharistic Jesus and his zeal to use whatever opportunities we have to help others come to know Jesus, both here in the U.S. and in the missions across the globe that were his great love.
Msgr. Roger J. Landry is the successor of Archbishop Sheen as the National Director of The Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA.
