Dear Parishioners,
In the late 1800s, a university student in France was riding a train and sitting across the car from an elderly gentleman who was holding a rosary. When the man began to doze off, he dropped the rosary. The young man picked it up and handed it back to him. But he couldn’t help asking the gentleman if he still believed such things as praying the rosary. When the gentleman said that he still did, the young student said that his university professors thought it to be an old-fashioned superstition and went on to talk about the more modern and enlightened view of the world. He said that intelligent people thought the rosary was nonsense.
As the older gentleman got up to leave the train, the young man offered to send him materials to bring him up to date. The older man kindly accepted and gave the student his business card. As the train pulled away, the young man read the card aloud, “Louis Pasteur, Director of the French Institute of Scientific Research, Paris.” This was the scientist who developed the process of pasteurization to increase the shelf life of milk, wine, cheese, etc; the man who discovered a vaccine for rabies, anthrax, and cholera of chickens; and the man who was known as a devout Catholic from Brittany (a province on the northwest coast of France known for its faith). On one occasion, he was told admiringly, “You have great faith like a Breton peasant man.” Pasteur replied, “If I had great faith, it would be like that of a Breton peasant woman!” It would seem that this great scientist also had the greatest of all virtues—humility, which led him to prayer and worship. As we pray the rosary for the discovery of a vaccine to combat the Covid-19 virus, it might be wise to say some prayers to Louis Pasteur, who developed not just one but three lifesaving vaccines.
Fr. Carl
