It’s now Friday morning Oct 11th, and on the way back from breakfast I ended up unexpectedly learning a good deal about the history and life of the Resurrectionist community where we’re staying.  I had never heard of the Resurrectionists before our trip to Rome last year.  Their history is documented in a video and a three-room museum on the ground floor.

 

It’s a Polish community founded, not in Poland but in exile in Paris, after the 1831 invasion of Poland by Austrian and Prussian forces.  The name was chosen because in 1842, the seven founding members made their first vows on Easter Sunday in Rome — so they took the name “to proclaim the mystery of the Resurrection.”  Oh, and they were meeting in the Catacombs of Saint Sebastian.  The address of the house today is Via San Sebastianello 11.  The order purchased the two-story house in 1885, then added another story (and the rooftop terrace!) plus three stories on the adjacent seminary residence.

 

Canada was the site of their first foray into mission territory, in 1857.  They founded parishes in Kitchener, Waterloo and Hamilton, not Polish-speaking but German- and English-speaking.  They also founded hospitals, an orphanage, a Catholic Farmers’ Association and St. Jerome’s College.  But what I found interesting was that they’ve consistently encouraged small groups of members to come together in the context of, but in addition to, the parishes.  Today, small intentional communities seem to be flourishing everywhere, and one theme that the various reform groups have repeated during our time in Rome is the importance of house-churches and small gatherings.

 

At one time the Resurrectionists founded and cared for more than fifty Polish-speaking parishes in Chicago, a centre for North American Polish immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.   There’s a small women’s Resurrectionist community with its motherhouse in Rome, and an association of third-order members.

 

On our first full day in Rome when Pat Brown and I went to the office, Fr. Christopher admitted that this year there were no new Resurrectionist priests ordained, not only in Canada or the U.S., but not even in Poland.  Not even in Poland.  A sign of the times, I think.   …and so it goes…