My dear brothers and sisters, the Lord be with you in this Monday after Epiphany. The Church, especially in the United States, celebrates the beautiful memorial of Saint John Neumann, who was born on March 28, 1811, in Bohemia, modern-day Czech Republic. He was raised in a devout Catholic family and showed an early intellectual and spiritual maturity and seriousness. He studied philosophy and theology, and he excelled academically, but he was unable to be ordained at first because Bohemia already had more priests than dioceses could support. This rejection became providential. In 1836, at the age of 25, Neumann decided to emigrate alone to the United States to serve as a missionary. He was eventually ordained a priest in New York by Bishop John Dubois.