Page 77 - March On! God will Provide by Brother Aubert

Chapter 9
LIFE AT HET WALLETJE

fo Mn. RvxrN THE ACquIStnoN of "Het Walletje"
I was routine procedure. The optimist in him en-
visioned the permanent headquarters and the room for
expansion, but the realist may have sufiered occasional
twinges when he remembered the debt: 34,000 francs
plus interest to be paid ofi in ten years.
He had signed the bill of sale on July 31, the feast
of St. Ignatius Loyola, one of his favorite saints and
one with whom he had many points in common. He
made the anniversary a day of rejoicing in the com-
munity, second only to August 30, his birthday and the
feast of St. Rose of Lima. To Ryken, his having been
born and baptized on the feast of the first canonized
saint of the Americas was an unmistakable omen of his
predestination to serve on the American "mission."
During their two years on Ezelstraat, Ryken and his
disciples had frequently discussed a choice of name for
their Brotherhood, and eventually all had agreed that
their patron would be St. Francis Xavier, but the first
official use of the name, "Xaverian Brothers," occurred
in the provisional Rule-thirteen short articles-sub-
mitted to Bishop Boussen. When His Excellency had
examined the document, he retlrrned it with a brief but
wholly sufficient notation: "Seen and approved, Sep-
tember 4, 1841, Francis, Bishop of Bruges."
Beginning with this episcopal recognition of Ryken
as the superior of a group of laymen authorized to live
as a religious community in the diocese of Bruges, the
biography of Theodore James Ryken becomes a sttb-