A Never Failing Love
The
Sacred Heart stirred one young man’s vocation to the priesthood more than
80 years ago. Though he died before ordination, Frank Parater’s life and
devotion is a model for seminarians today
by
Joseph Pronechen
Altar boy, Scout, seminarian, and now saint-in-the-making, Frank Parater is a shining example for Knights of what the Order’s Sacred Heart Program for the Sanctification of Priests can accomplish.
Parater was born in Richmond, Va., in 1897 and died in Rome Feb. 7, 1920. Immediately, the Act of Oblation to the Sacred Heart that he composed began to move hearts. Even Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI asked for a copy.
“The same type of values Father McGivney lived were also to be found in the Servant of God Frank Parater,” said Father J. Scott Duarte, postulator for the cause for Parater’s canonization, who is a Fourth Degree Knight and member of Our Lady of Lourdes Council 9953 in Richmond. “Both men sought to shape their lives by a deep and intimate union with the heart of Christ which caused them to give themselves in service to others.”
Before Parater was ordained, he died of rheumatic fever as a seminarian for the Richmond Diocese at the Pontifical North American College. Only then was his last will, the Act of Oblation to the Sacred Heart, discovered.
“I opened it and read the most astounding document I yet read or even hope to read,” fellow seminarian Francis Byrne wrote to Parater’s sister at the time.
Parater began his Act of Oblation: “I have nothing to leave or to give but my life, and this I have consecrated to the Sacred Heart to be used as He wills. I have offered my all for the conversion of the non-Catholics in Virginia… Since I was a child I desired to die for the love of God and for my fellow man.”
A KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS CONNECTION
Parater was an avid reader and active Boy Scout. Before he was 20, he became a Scout camp director in Richmond and in New Jersey, introducing a half hour of evening prayer for the boys.
From his first Communion until going to Belmont Abbey Seminary College in North Carolina in 1916, he served morning Mass at the Visitation nuns’ monastery near his home.
According to Father Duarte, while Parater was at the abbey, he was associated with the Knights of Columbus and its programs for the troops during World War I. One piece of evidence is that Parater used the Knights’ stationery in correspondence. Most likely Parater was connected with the Order’s four recreation centers for servicemen at Camp Greene in Charlotte, N.C., close to Belmont Abbey.
Daily, Parater went to Mass and holy Communion, prayed the rosary and Memorare, and read Scripture. Weekly, he went to confession. Always he lived with the abiding conviction that “the Sacred Heart never fails those that love Him.”
He learned this early, especially while serving Mass for the Visitation nuns, who are known for their strong devotion to the Sacred Heart. Timothy O’Donnell, president of Christendom College in Front Royal, Va., and a theological consultant for Parater’s cause, said that “he would have been surrounded from his childhood by images of the Sacred Heart, and he breathed in that Catholic atmosphere and the devotion to be found everywhere.”
He explained that Parater also had a strong attachment to Virginia, a love of Richmond and his local church, love for the people and the Holy Father, and an intense love for Jesus, the priesthood and the Mass.
“This,” O’Donnell concluded, “makes him an ideal role model for seminarians today.”
A SEMINARIAN’S SAINT
That’s exactly the belief of seminarians from Richmond. “In particular, his writings from the seminary of his own experience and faith in the Sacred Heart of Jesus drew me to go back and reconsider my own devotion to the Sacred Heart,” explained Daniel Beeman, who is in his fourth year of studies for the Richmond Diocese at the Theological College at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
“The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the exact model of purity a priest hopes to model,” Beeman added. “It’s the perfect match for the priest because the priest is trying to be the face and the love of Jesus in the world, and the Sacred Heart is really the totality of Christ’s love for us.”
Fellow seminarian Tony Marques, a third-year student at Theological College, agreed. “What strikes me most about the Sacred Heart is the infinite mercy and generosity of Christ,” he said. “That’s how Frank Parater lived. He was extraordinarily kind and he was generous to everybody.”
Marques found something else noteworthy: “He made holiness attractive and accessible,” he said. “To me that’s the hallmark of a saint. People wanted to be around him.”
THE SACRED HEART IN THE YEAR OF THE EUCHARIST
Father Matthew Buening, associate pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Towson, Md., and member of St. Louis the King Council 11898 in Clarksville, began his devotion to the Sacred Heart as a seminarian at the North American College, thanks to Parater’s Act. After reading the first line, he concluded, “If we want to have hearts that care for the people of God, we need to be devoted to that Sacred Heart of Jesus, especially as priests. That kind of obedience and consecration to the Sacred Heart was formative for me in the seminary.”
Devotion to the Sacred Heart is intimately related to eucharistic adoration. O’Donnell points out that all of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, in the 17th century, took place in a eucharistic setting.
“The Sacred Heart is a devotion of love, and the Blessed Sacrament is the sacrament of love,” he said. “Jesus gives himself in the Eucharist, and gives the love of his heart. There’s always a profound link between the two. This is something that would have been a big part of Frank’s childhood.”
So great was Parater’s love for the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, O’Donnell said, that even in his horrible sickness he struggled to his knees on his bed to receive Communion.
“Every Knight and seminarian, religious and priest, by fostering a love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and approaching him in eucharistic adoration, will find himself attracted to an intimate conversation of the heart with Christ,” Father Duarte said. “Enriched by divine love, they’ll give themselves to their families, communities and parishioners in service animated with love.”
On Feb. 27, the Richmond Diocese is scheduled to close its phase of the cause for the beatification of the Servant of God Frank Parater, seminarian, at a Mass in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. The cause is then expected to be taken up by the Vatican.
One day the entire Church may recite Parater’s words: “Remember the Sacred Heart never fails those that love him.”
Joseph Pronechen writes regularly for the Catholic press from his home in Trumbull, Conn.