Glenmary was founded
in 1939 by Father William Howard Bishop, a priest of the Archdiocese
of Baltimore. By most standards, Father Bishop was an ordinary
man. For more than 20 years, he labored in a small Catholic
parish in rural Maryland.
Yet this ordinary man was given an extraordinary gift: the ability
to see. He saw the thousands of poor, neglected and forgotten
people who inhabited rural America. He saw what the Church had
failed to see—that there were vast areas in the United
States that were starving for the Bread of Life.
Armed with this
gift of sight, Father Bishop worked relentlessly. He built a
school. He published and edited several newsletters in order
to bring rural America's plight to the awareness of "city dwellers."
He organized a cooperative. He was a founding member and later
president of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference. He
started a 4-H Club for the children of his parish. His efforts
to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to rural America ultimately
culminated in 1939 when he founded the Glenmary Home Missioners.
What exactly
was it that made this common man so exceptional? William Howard
Bishop, first of all, possessed a hope: "that the backwoodsmen, the mountaineers, the
farm tenants, sharecroppers and day workers might one day
eat the Bread of Truth."
He also had a
vision: "A flower is small, like the small, isolated groups
that we minister to, like the little children. So small a
flower is easily overlooked on the roadside. You hardly see
it as you pass by. But pick it up and examine it; it becomes
a thing of beauty; so, too, the country parish and the country
child."
Finally, William Howard Bishop had a dream: "We have
Christ with us every day. We have drunk of the Water of Life.
Should we hesitate to show the world where He is to be found?
Should we hesitate to pray that prayer which was so dear to
Christ's heart, and pray it aloud so that all who have ears
may hear, "That they all may be one, as Thou, Father
are in me, and I in Thee; that they may be one in Us."
William Howard Bishop, the man of faith, was indeed extraordinary.
For
more about Father Bishop
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