Father Solanus Casey, Revised and Updated. Catherine Odell
renewed vision that his future here could be happy and fulfilling. Capuchins were invested with the habit very soon after entrance, and he dreaded the finality of that.
His investiture into the novitiate was set for January 14, 1897. The closer the date came, the more anxious he felt about his decision. Penning his thoughts into his small book on the Rule of St. Francis and the Constitution of the Capuchins, he referred to this day of investiture as a “day of anxiety,” and its coming looked to him as “dark indeed.”
On January 14, however, Barney finally slipped the heavy brown cassock over his head and pulled on the Franciscan’s heavy sandals over his socks. Perhaps he pulled some new vision or a feeling of peace over his psyche at the same moment. Whatever the reason, the actual investiture seemed to settle his spirit. Those painful anxieties and second thoughts seemed to dissolve into the wide, high hallways of the friary that he would come to know very well.
From that day, Barney Casey was known among the Capuchins as “Frater” (or “Brother”) Francis Solanus Casey. St. Francis Solano, a Spaniard, was a violin-playing Franciscan missionary in South America during the seventeenth century. Francis Solano had had a powerful gift of preaching and had taken the pains to learn so many of the local dialects that he was thought to have the gift of tongues! In July 1897, seven new men entered the novitiate program to join Frater Solanus and two other novices, Leo Steinberg and Salesius Schneweis. Life in the novitiate was rigorous but not a novelty to the young man from Superior. For four years, he had lived a very ordered life at St. Francis de Sales Minor Seminary. Because the new Frater Solanus had entered the Capuchin novitiate in January instead of in the summer as men usually did, he was between regular groups. Fraters Leo and Salesius were six months ahead of him in the novitiate, and the seven new men were six months behind. Frater Solanus’s novitiate was to be longer because the vows ending the novitiate were made only in July.
Day by day, Solanus merged his life with the schedule of the friary. It was certainly different from the life he had come to know as a conductor on a streetcar line. In that life, he had kept his pocket watch handy to double-check the time. Being at the right intersection, at precisely the right minute, was important. By contrast, inside the monastery, men walked, talked, ate, and slept in a pattern hundreds of years old. The proximity of the twentieth century changed life here very little.
Solanus and the other friars were wrenched from sleep each day at 4:45 a.m. The youngest brother would walk up and down the halls where the friars were sleeping in their rooms — called cells — and clap two two-by-four boards together to awaken the rest of his brothers. After this harsh awakening, the friars then had fifteen minutes to wash a bit and don their brown habits and sandals before they went to the chapel.
Each friar’s cell was simple and spare. That of Frater Solanus, like those of other Capuchins, was a room of about nine by twelve feet. In every cell was an iron bed with a cornhusk mattress and a pillow. The pillowcases and sheets were made from mattress ticking. There was a window, but it had no curtain. A small table, a small armless chair, and two clothes pegs on the wall rounded out the “furnishings.” There was no closet. Capuchin brothers could hang all the clothes they owned on those two hooks.
At 5:10 a.m., the day of prayer began with Lauds. The Litany of the Saints, private meditation, and the Angelus, said just before 6:00 a.m., prepared the friars for Mass, which began at six o’clock. At seven, breakfast was served in the refectory. It was simple — cereal or bread and coffee. It was eaten in silence. Any time remaining before 8:00 a.m. was used for spiritual reading. At eight o’clock sharp, the workday began. For the priests in Detroit, the workday might mean confessions, preaching missions at parishes, or officiating at funerals at Mt. Elliott Cemetery, which was across the street from the friary. The Capuchin priests also officiated, when needed, at parishes around the city of Detroit on weekends.
Capuchin brothers, also in residence at the monastery, shouldered the jobs of food preparation. They were also responsible for making, repairing, and cleaning clothes, maintaining the building and grounds, running the printing press, and performing office jobs, such as serving as doorkeepers and the like.
The novices — both the clerical novices and those headed for the brotherhood — had classes to attend during the day. The novices who hoped to be priests also had other readings to do. They had to learn to say and participate in the reading of the Liturgy of the Hours and helped a great deal with liturgical services throughout the year. The novices, including Frater Solanus, could receive letters from home, but they were not allowed either to have visitors or to visit home during this novitiate period.
In the refectory, benches and narrow tables lined the walls of the large room. Friars therefore sat on the benches with no one seated across the table from them. At noon, while dinner was served and eaten, one of the fathers read aloud from one of the Gospels. Other readings were also taken from the lives of the saints, a devotional work, or one of the papal encyclicals. One priest would read for a while and then hand the reading on to another priest. This reading during both dinner and supper emphasized that no time was to be given to aimless socializing. The rule of silence was therefore observed during the meal but was lifted for Thursday meals, Sunday meals, and feast days.
After the noonday meal, the friars spent a half-hour in recreation while the novices spent some time individually in their rooms. Still later in the afternoon — from three to five o’clock — the novices engaged in manual labor. Generally, this was outdoor work which gave the young men some needed fresh air and an outlet for stored-up physical energy. Whether in the garden or inside the monastery in the kitchen or chapel, the novices worked under careful supervision.
Back in the chapel, the whole community gathered to read the Liturgy of the Hours before supper. Then there was recreation time, followed by some private time and the Hours again. The day was ended at 9:30 p.m. At that point, all the friars were in bed following a full day of prayer, physical exercise, and — for the novices — classroom work and study.
If Frater Solanus was not always asleep just as his head hit the pillow during these long novitiate days, his thoughts turned to his novitiate experience and what he was learning about himself. Like the other Capuchins, he kept a private notebook and recorded his thoughts about his life at St. Bonaventure. This practice of keeping a journal, with the guidance of his novice director, enabled Solanus to experience a growing understanding of his own personality and spirit.
In his journal, it is clear that Frater Solanus was struggling to purify his motives and his heart. He began to see that he operated out of a single-minded intensity in accomplishing tasks. There was certainly no moral or spiritual fault to this tendency. But it was accompanied, he came to see, by a leaning toward perfectionism that was too rigid — a spiritual scrupulosity. Gradually, he loosened up, learning to lean more on God and less on himself.
Solanus also discovered, through his journal and almost-daily conversations with his superiors, how very emotional and impetuous he was by nature. Perhaps, in the context of a large, well-disciplined Irish Catholic family, such personality traits are invariably submerged or played down, especially in boys. Few of his fellow novices recognized these traits. From what they could see, Solanus was an understanding, considerate, friendly fellow very intent on growing in holiness as a Capuchin.
As hard as he worked at his studies, he worked even harder on himself. He understood that the purpose of the novitiate was not to remake him but to take the personality and gifts already there and to develop them further for service to God and others. That was the idea behind the disciplines of the monastery. Capuchin spirituality, or Franciscan spirituality, means attempting to clear away some of the clutter of self-interest and self-indulgence that almost naturally attach to men and women who live life as though it were a right and not a gift.
During this novitiate year, the young man penned in his notebook a sort of plan of action for learning to love God. It reflected the analytical, precise side of his nature. But the five-part plan showed great spiritual maturity as well. The twenty-six-year-old counseled himself to adopt:
1. Detachment of oneself from earthly affections: singleness of purpose.
2. Meditation on the Passion of Jesus Christ.
3. Uniformity of will within the divine