Excerpt from Cardinal Meyer’s sermon on the occasion of the silver jubilee of Cardinal Muench’s episcopal ordination, on October 15, 1960 in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Fargo. Originally printed in Catholic Action News, volume 23, number 11 (November 1960), page 6.
Twenty-five years ago, on October 15, 1935, His Eminence, Cardinal Aloisius Muench, then Monsignor Muench, Rector of St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee, was consecrated a Bishop, in the Church of the Gesu, Milwaukee. The consecrating prelate was the former Apostolic Delegate, now Cardinal Amieto Cicognani. The sermon was preached by the then Archbishop of Milwaukee, later Cardinal Samuel Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago.
Those of us who were privileged witnesses or participants in this solemn ceremony feel doubly privileged today to come to Fargo, and to join with the clergy, religious and laity of tins Diocese in commemorating the twenty-five years of truly outstanding service in the episcopate by His Eminence, Cardinal Muench.
Relying on a friendship of over thirty years, when I first “met” the Cardinal through correspondence—I as a student in Rome, and he as Rector of St. Francis Seminary—I would like to say at the outset that it is not my purpose to embarrass him through such words of fulsome praise which I know would be most distasteful to him. Nevertheless, with him we wish to give glory to God, today, through Christ, that Christ may be glorified in all things.
During the twenty-five years of his episcopal ministry, Cardinal Muench has been called by Divine Providence to exercise the teaching, ruling, and sanctifying office of the Bishop in extraordinary and exceptional ways. Eleven of those years were spent directly in the active shepherding of the Church of Fargo, a stewardship, however, which he retained until shortly before his elevation to the cardinalate. Thirteen more years found him as the personal representative of the Holy Father in Germany, the country of his forefathers; while the past year, he has served as a Cardinal of the Roman Curia. The mere recital of these well-known facts suggest many and long chapters in a book of his life which is not within my competence or my time limit to attempt even to summarize. Throughout it all, I believe that his episcopal motto has guided Cardinal Muench: “In all things Christ.”
Conscious that the Christian life is in reality nothing other than the life of Christ in us, he saw in his episcopal duties here in Fargo the constant stirring challenge of St. Paul’s words, “My dear children, with whom I am in labor again, until Christ is formed in you!” (Gal. 4, 19). When the will of the Holy Father brought him into the larger arena of world-affairs, into the very center of history-in-the-making, it was again the consciousness of being in reality a representative of Christ’s Vicar which guided him in his arduous tasks. To intimate friend as well as to the casual observer, the testimony of his accomplishments during these years reflects a complete dedication to the cause of Christ, which he had made the goal of his episcopal life on the day of his consecration.
The striking fact is that grace perfected nature at all stages to prepare him for the role assigned to him by Divine Providence. Always he was ready to take his place in the world of action and history, and in his turn do the work that was given him as his responsibility. The part he was called on to take, whether in the little world of his daily life, or in the bigger stages of his episcopal ministry here at Fargo and his representation of the Holy Father in Germany, was always accepted as a mission and an engagement to do his best for Christ, ready to fulfill the concrete demands of his office with a sense of responsibility and leadership that impresses all who know him.
We who have known Cardinal Muench as professor and rector, as fellow-professor and brother bishop, have always esteemed him for the vigor and depth of his priestly personality. He has always given wholeheartedly of himself and his talents that Christ may be glorified in all things. Particularly in the eminent position to which he was called by the Holy Father in 1946, and which he relinquished only a year ago to become a Cardinal of the Church, he has shown outstanding qualities of mind and heart and soul to exercise and exemplify the double mission of eternal redemption and temporal salvation. On all sides, his work in this difficult, and for him at that time uncharted field, has been unstintingly praised, as is known not only from carefully written articles appearing in the German Press, but also in the more intimate expressions that come from Bishops and Priests for whom he was the official representative of the Holy Father.
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Copyright by the Diocese of Fargo. Reprinted with permission.