St. Arnold Janssen
Patron of Missionaries, Educators, Scientists, and Print Media
Patron of Missionaries, Educators, Scientists, and Print Media
Fr. Arnold Janssen was a German diocesan priest, born at Goch, on November 5, 1837, who had made it his one great concern to pray for the worldwide vineyard of the Lord and to train missionaries who would work in it. As a young student at the University of Bonn, he distinguished himself by winning an essay on a botanical subject. His brilliance qualified him for a professorship at the age of 22. The University of Berlin offered him a teaching position in the natural sciences. He rejected the prestigious offer. The glory and salary of a university position did not succeed in baiting him into the secure and serene existence of European intellectuals. He chose to be a priest, risking the restlessness of a life spent for the redemption of the many. He was ordained as a priest on August 15, 1861. At 24, the scientist became a priest, somehow reconciling the secular and the sacred.
He knew his Christianity better - a creative tension between the human and the divine. As a priest, he was unassuming, frail, and pious. His first assignment was to teach mathematics and the sciences in the high school in Bocholt, Westphalia. While handling these secular tasks, he managed to act as the director of the apostleship of prayer in the diocese of Muenster, finding no incompatibility between the two tasks.
As he immersed himself deeply in the life of prayer, his missionary zeal grew. The contemplative and the active in him interacted vigorously and shaped him into the dynamo that he was. Two desires grew ardently and urgently in his heart: he wanted to work for the reunification of the divided Christians in Germany and the propagation of the kingdom of Christ in the mission lands. These aspirations finally moved Fr. Janssen to give up his teaching position.
At this time, Germany was torn by political storm and strife, a period of dictatorial leadership historians call the Kulturkampf. It was a time of cold rationalization, of autocratic compulsion, of deification of the state. In May 1873, the Prussian state passed laws affecting the whole religious structure. It became a criminal offense for any priest to exercise his priestly functions without authorization from civil power. Seminarians were declared subject to military service. Subsequently, fines and taxes were collected. Prison sentences were meted out. Bishops and priests were thrown into prison. Those were times that tried the church and in many ways cleansed her soul in the fires of struggle. Those times had a strong impact on Fr. Janssen and like many churchmen at that period he came out purified and burning with new fire. The power that he saw rise into the heights of evil led him to seek the good in the depths of total service for God and man. He recognized the power of authority in the humble service to broken man.
He saw the true empire in the rule of the meek man of Nazareth, who came not to lord it over men but to lay down His life so that others may have life abundantly. He did not see the good in the desire of his country for worldwide conquest but in the desire of Christ to build a Kingdom worthy of His Father and man. He saw the vision of the Kingdom of the gospel and made it his mission to help in building it up in the world. His time devoted to the publication of the magazine, Messenger of the Sacred Heart, Fr. Janssen kept all these thoughts in his heart and at an opportune time, he started to take proper steps. He called on all the priests, exiled by the German regime, to work for the missions. In his magazine, he put out the challenge:
"Is there no one who feels the call to devote himself to the cause of the missions? Would it not be possible for German priests to band together and found a German Mission Seminary in some safe region outside the homeland?" But how could one entertain the idea of missions during a Kulturkampf? It was all so seemingly ill-timed that a bishop newly released from prison answered: "We live in a time when everything is threatening to collapse and you want to build up something new?" Another bishop exclaimed: "Janssen is either a fool or a saint." And events showed that the humble and modest Arnold Janssen was not a fool. He opened his first mission seminary in 1875 in an old dilapidated inn across the border in Steyl, Holland. This was done under the most modest circumstances. Fr. Arnold made strict demands on those he admitted: first of all a spirit of prayer and humility, then hard work and a simple style of life in evangelical poverty; missionaries would have to be prepared for great sacrifices. Yet numbers steadily increased. In 1889, after a prolonged period of preparation, he founded a congregation of missionary sisters in the service of love - the Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit (S.Sp.S.).
In 1896 he formed the branch of the cloistered sisters for contemplative work - the Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration - since 1917 an independent congregation. The founder never left Europe, but his priests and brothers soon set out to make the world their parish: in 1879 he sent the first two to China; in 1892 the first was sent to Togo; in 1896 to New Guinea; in 1905 to the colored in North America; in 1906 to Japan; in 1908 to the Indians in Paraguay. From 1889 onwards he sent men to several of the priest-impoverished countries in South America: Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, and Chile. Shortly before his death, he made arrangements to send priests to the Philippines. When he died on January 15, 1909, his initial community of four had expanded to the big Arnoldus Family of three congregations working all over the world, building God's Kingdom.
Portrait of St. Arnold Janssen at the Buttenbruch Building Lobby
He was beatified in Rome by Pope Paul VI in October 19, 1975 was canonized on October 5, 2003 by Pope John Paul II. Janssen was canonized after the healing of a Filipino teenager living in Baguio who fell from a bike and was not expected to recover from a head wound. According to her relatives and the Church, she was healed miraculously following prayers to Janssen.