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April 2011

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Marcus Slavenas: A Lost Vet Finds the Church

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By Dan Petrella

ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2003, Marcus Slavenas got the phone call that changed everything. He had just finished work and saw that he had a voice mail from his dad: “Please call me back, Marcus.”

From the sound of his father’s voice, he knew someone in the family was dead.

When Marcus called back, his dad gave him the bad news: His younger brother, Brian, had been piloting a CH-47 Chinook helicopter that was shot down near Fallujah, Iraq. Brian was dead, along with 15 others.

Marcus went home and threw a fit, throwing chairs, making so much noise that his downstairs neighbors called the landlord.

Dan Petrella is a freelance journalist from Champaign, Illinois, who writes and fact-checks for various publications, including Chicago, Illinois Alumni and The News Gazette of Champaign. He reports for www.cu-citizenaccess.org of Urbana on social and economic issues and is a research consultant on a business book for Third Angle, Inc., of Wilmette, Illinois. During the 2009-2010 school year he was a teaching assistant for the Department of Journalism at the University of Illinois.

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Romuald: After a wasted youth, Romuald saw his father kill a relative in a duel over property. In horror he fled to a monastery near Ravenna in Italy. After three years some of the monks found him to be uncomfortably holy and eased him out.
<p>He spent the next 30 years going about Italy, founding monasteries and hermitages. He longed to give his life to Christ in martyrdom, and got the pope’s permission to preach the gospel in Hungary. But he was struck with illness as soon as he arrived, and the illness recurred as often as he tried to proceed. </p><p>During another period of his life, he suffered great spiritual dryness. One day as he was praying Psalm 31 (“I will give you understanding and I will instruct you”), he was given an extraordinary light and spirit which never left him. </p><p>At the next monastery where he stayed, he was accused of a scandalous crime by a young nobleman he had rebuked for a dissolute life. Amazingly, his fellow monks believed the accusation. He was given a severe penance, forbidden to offer Mass and excommunicated, an unjust sentence he endured in silence for six months. </p><p>The most famous of the monasteries he founded was that of the Camaldoli (Campus Maldoli, name of the owner) in Tuscany. Here he founded the Order of the Camaldolese Benedictines, uniting a monastic and hermit life. </p><p>His father later became a monk, wavered and was kept faithful by the encouragement of his son.</p>

Jesus has suffered for all of us, and he suffers in all of us. He is the reason why redemption and glory are destined to rise up out of our own suffering. We simply need to adhere to him in faith, hope, and love.

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