A NATIVE SAINT

Robert Lentz

Our past few Blogs have dealt with people of color in the United States. The following traces his heritage back to the beginning of our country, and a  man whom we all treasure..  

BLACK ELK (Heȟáka Sápa)  was born  along the Little Powder River (at a site thought to be in the present-day state of Wyoming) in 1863. According to the Lakota way of measuring time (referred to as Winter counts), Black Elk was born "the Winter When the Four Crows Were Killed on Tongue River".

Curious about Christianity, he began to watch and study. In 1885, he learned about Kateri Tekakwitha and signed the petition supporting the cause for her canonization. In 1904, he met a Jesuit priest who invited him to study Christianity at Holy Rosary Mission, near Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

 On the feast of St. Nicholas, December 6, he was baptized Nicholas William. St. Nicholas, appealed to him because he exhibited a model of Christian charity that resonated with his role as a traditional spiritual leader and his own generosity in service to the Native People.

Wife & daughter

Believing that Wakantanka, the Great Spirit, called him to greater service, he became a Christian and practiced his Lakota ways as well as the Catholic religion. He was comfortable praying with his pipe and his rosary and participated in Mass and Lakota ceremonies on a regular basis.

In 1907 the Jesuits appointed him a catechist because of his love of Christ, his enthusiasm and excellent memory for learning scripture and Church teachings. Like St. Paul, he traveled widely to various reservations; preaching, sharing stories and teaching the Catholic faith with his “Two Roads Model” of catechism. He is attributed to having over 400 native people baptized, and since then his books and model lifestyle have inspired countless others in their spiritual journeys.

He died in 1950 having lived an exemplary life of being faithful to Tunkasila (The Creator) and always wanting to serve the native people.

There are many Natives who are waiting to share the joy of the day when Nicholas Black Elk, Sr. will be counted among the company of saints by Holy Mother Church.

FLORIDA MARTYRS

With hurricanes descending upon Florida, I am reminded to pray to these new saints.  Also interesting to note, when a group is placed before us for sainthood, the leader of the band is not necessarily  the one whose name is chosen. The Church chooses the one who will represent a particular segment of society. Such is the case for the following. 

ANTONIO CUIPO was an Apalachee Indian from San Luis Mission, in present-day Tallahassee, who was converted by Franciscan missionaries. His martyred companions include Dominican, Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries. Their killers were typically non-Christian Indians sometimes working in conjunction with English Protestants and French Huguenots (Protestants) making incursions into Spanish territory from the north. There were 67 laypersons (of whom 59 are Native Americans), eleven Franciscans, three Dominicans, and one Jesuit. 

Franciscan friars Juan de Parga Araujo and Tiburcio de Osorio were killed by Indians working with the English along with Antonio and other Indian converts.

Antonio Cuipa was a leader among the Apalachee people, a carpenter and a catechist for the Franciscan friars. He was slain in 1704 at the mission of La Concepcion de Ayubale by the English and Creek forces of English Col. James Moore.

While not a missionary, Antonio is significant because he and his fellow converts are the fruit of a 150-year effort to preach the Gospel to the natives in this part of the New World.

A second generation Catholic, Antonio was responsible for the upkeep of the common buildings of San Luis de Talimali, the largest and most important of the Apalachee Spanish Missions. He  was a husband and father, and played guitar. Having accompanied the Franciscans on visits to non-Christian villages, he began to imitate and adapt their practices of evangelism. Bringing maize cakes mixed with honey and reed pipes as gifts, he would then proclaim the faith in the very language of those he encountered.

An English governor in the Carolinas recruited a large number of Creek Indians and began a series of raids into La Florida, wiping out Catholic communities throughout what today is northern Florida.

On January 25th, 1704, Antonio participated in an attempt to defend the Catholic Mission of La Concepcion de Ayubale from a force of Carolina Colony soldiers and Creek warriors seeking to collect slaves and eradicate the faith from the land. He was tortured and killed, tied to a cross alongside two other Apalachee.

While encouraging his companions and admonishing their assailants, it was reported by eyewitnesses of the events that the Virgin Mary appeared to him, consoling him in his last moments. His last words were that his body was falling to the earth, but that his soul was going to God.

The killing was partly political to push the Spanish out of Florida, but also due to the hatred of the Catholic Faith.

The American martyrs quickly came to the attention of Rome. In 1704, Pope Clement XI directed that sworn testimony be taken regarding the Tallahassee martyrs. In 1743, King Philip V of Spain established Oct. 3 as a day to commemorate the Florida martyrs. Franciscan, Dominican and Jesuit communities each instituted their own days of remembrance for the martyrs of their orders. In 1939, Bishop John Mark Gannon of Erie, Pennsylvania, initiated a cause for canonization of 106 North American martyrs, including some in Florida, but the effort was stalled by World War II.

It is only now that the cause of these early martyrs is being reconsidered.

"It is significant that the passage of time has allowed us to discover that it was not only foreign missionaries who laid down their lives for Christ in La Florida. Rather, we now know the incredible stories of so many Native Americans who chose martyrdom rather than renounce the faith they had accepted. It is a meaningful sign that the faith was not simply imposed upon them, but rather they freely accepted the Catholic faith to the point that they understood that it was worth dying for." Bishop Felipe Estevez of St. Augustine

GAUCHO SAINT & CONTEMPLATIVE NUN- NEW SAINTS

Karl Rahner wrote in 1955:

Herein lies the special task which the canonized Saints have to fulfill for the Church. They are the initiators and the creative models of the holiness which happens to be right for, and is the task of, their particular age. They create a new style; they prove that a certain form of life and activity is a really genuine possibility; they show experimentally that one can be a Christian even in ‘this’ way; they make such a type of person believable as a Christian type.

Such is the Argentinian “gaucho priest,” JOSE GABRIEL del ROSARIO  BROCHERO, (See Blog Oct. 2013) known for his ministry to the sick and the dying. He will be canonized October 16 , making him Argentina's first saint. 

Also being canonized is ELIZABETH of the TRINITY (see Blog  5/24/16) a French Carmelite nun.  Both saints lived at the same time, one dying young, the other old.

NEVER TOO POOR- MOTHER WRIGHT

We present our third African-American woman who made a difference for their people, as well as others in their area.

An interesting woman who is being considered for sainthood, but not yet a Servant of God is MARY ANN WRIGHT (1921-2009), known as MOTHER WRIGHT.  She was a humanitarian activist who lived and worked in Oakland, California and fed East Bay residents for almost 3 decades. She fed more than 450 people a day on a budget of $137,000 a year. She also distributed huge quantities of food, clothing and toys each holiday season from her West Oakland warehouse. Mother Wright held a very active schedule into her 80's, usually arriving at the foundation at 6 a.m. and would tirelessly continue to move boxes herself! 

She was born into a Christian Catholic African-American family in New Orleans and raised in the small town of Darlington, Louisiana. She grew up poor, lost her mother when she was only 5 years old, and was raised by her father. She was married at 14 years old and had her first child at 15. In 1950 she fled an abusive husband and took her nine children and moved to California. As a single mother, she worked long hours picking cotton, walnuts and strawberries in Hayward, Walnut Creek, and around the state. For another stretch of time she worked two jobs to make ends meet as a domestic helper during the daytime shift and in a San Leandro cannery during nights. She later remarried and had three more children, one of which was adopted.   

In 1980 she says she was awakened by God in her sleep when she received a vision in a dream who told her to feed the hungry. "The Lord woke me up in the middle of the night and told me what he wanted me to do, which was feed the hungry," she said.  She started out feeding the poor and homeless by serving one meal a week, on Saturdays, downtown at Jefferson Park in Oakland, supported by her $236 Social Security check.

With help from others, among them grocers, produce merchants, the leaders of local churches and community groups, and city officials, this effort grew to become the Mother Mary Ann Wright Foundation. Through the Mary Ann Wright Foundation, Wright, family members and numerous volunteers regularly collected food and clothing from various local businesses (i.e. Safeway) and other donors to distribute to the needy. The foundation's warehouse on San Pablo Avenue at 32nd Street has been her main distribution center. At the holidays, long lines always formed outside with Mother Wright often on the sidewalk, bullhorn in hand, leading a prayer as people picked up bags of boxed and canned food, toys and Christmas trees. Mother Wright spoke in a fiery brimstone preacher style voice, pleading her case well to all to HELP

As well as helping people in Oakland, her foundation has provided help to people in Russia and Vietnam, and founded a school in Kenya. Mother Wright, accepted no pay and was assisted primarily by her daughters.

In 2005, Mother Wright was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Caring Americans, by the Caring Institute. She was invited to more than one presidential inauguration.

Mother Wright, who had been struggling with heart trouble for several years, died at age 87 in Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley. She was survived by 10 children, 33 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren, and preceded in death by two sons.

”I’m a ship without a sail, and by God’s grace, I’ve come a long way. I don’t know what I would have done without the Lord.”  

ANGEL of CHARITY

SERVANT of GOD JULIA GREELEY, Denver's Angel of Charity, was born into slavery, at Hannibal, Missouri, sometime between 1833 and 1848. While she was still a young child, a cruel slavemaster, in the course of beating her mother, caught Julia's right eye with his whip and  destroyed it.

Freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Julia subsequently earned her keep by serving white families in Missouri, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico-  though mostly in the Denver area. Whatever she did not need for herself, Julia spent assisting poor families in her neighborhood. When her own resources were inadequate, she begged for food, fuel and clothing for the needy. One writer later called her a "one-person St. Vincent de Paul Society." To avoid embarrassing the people she helped, Julia did most of her charitable work under cover of night through dark alleys.

Julia entered the Catholic Church at Sacred Heart Parish in Denver in 1880, and was an outstanding supporter of all that the parish had to offer. The Jesuits who ran the parish considered her the most enthusiastic promoter of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus they had ever seen. Every month she visited on foot every fire station in Denver and delivered literature of the Sacred Heart League to the firemen, Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

A daily communicant, Julia had a rich devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin and continued her prayers while working and moving about. She joined the Secular Franciscan Order in 1901 and was active in it till her death in 1918.

When Julia's body was laid out in church, immediately many hundreds of people began filing pass her coffin to pay their grateful respect. She was buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery and to this day many people have been asking that her cause be considered for canonization.

The most thorough compilation of the facts of Julia Greeley’s life have been published in a book by Fr. Blaine Burkey, O.F.M.Cap. The book, In Service of the Sacred Heart: The Life and Virtues of Julia Greeley, recalls the memorable stories and events of this remarkable woman by those who knew her best.

REMEMBER WHOSE YOU ARE

Bro. Mickey McGrath

Some of the Franciscan sisters who were on Shaw Island with us for 28 years, were in the novitiate with this next saint to be, whom they all loved.

SERVANT of GOD SISTER THEA BOWMAN F.S.P.A., was a  teacher, and scholar, who made a major contribution to the ministry of the Blacks in the Catholic Church.

She was born Bertha Bowman in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1937. Her grandfather had been born a slave, but her father was a physician and her mother a teacher. She was raised in a Methodist home but, with her parents' permission, converted to the Roman Catholic faith at the age of nine, and later joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at La Crosse, Wisconsin. There she attended Viterbo University, run by her congregation.

She later attended The Catholic University of America for advanced studies, where she wrote her doctoral thesis on the American writer, William Faulkner.

She taught at an elementary school in La Crosse, Wisconsin and then at a high school in Canton, Mississippi. She later taught at her alma maters, Viterbo College in La Crosse and the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., as well as at Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

She had a big impact upon Catholic liturgical music by providing intellectual, spiritual, historical, and cultural foundation for developing and legitimizing a distinct worship form for black Catholics. She explained: “When we understand our history and culture, then we can develop the ritual, the music and the devotional expression that satisfy us in the Church.”

She was instrumental in the publication in 1987 of a new Catholic hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me: The African American Catholic Hymnal, the first such work directed to the Black community. 

After a career of 16 years in education, the Bishop of Jackson, Mississippi, invited Sister Thea to become a consultant for intercultural awareness for his diocese. She then became more directly involved with ministry to her fellow African-Americans. She began to give inspirational talks to Black congregations and found a tremendous response by the people to whom she spoke.

 Even after she developed cancer and her health began a steady decline, she continued to speak to religious groups, becoming a model of hope and faith. “Remember who you are and whose you are”, she said.

In 1989, shortly before her death, in recognition of her contributions to the service of the Church, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Religion by Boston College in Massachusetts.

She died of cancer in 1990, aged 52, in Canton, Mississippi, and was buried with her parents in Memphis, Tennessee. Sister Thea lived a full life. She fought evil, especially prejudice, suspicion, hatred and things that drive people apart. She fought for God and God's people until her death.

“I find that when I am involved in the business of life, when I'm working with people, particularly with children, I feel better. A kind of strength and energy comes with that.”

The Diocese of Youngstown as well as the Diocese of Jackson held a proposal towards the Canonization cause for Sister Thea , through the decree of Heroic Virtues for her untiring efforts of evangelization and Catholic missions. 

"Brother Sun -Sister Thea"  (Bro. Mickey McGrath)

THE ETERNAL WOMAN

As I have said in past Blogs, every generation in a monastery is exposed to great writers who influence our journey towards the Lord.  One, who is having a revival of sorts, is GERTRUD VON LE FORT.

She was born in the city of Minden, in the former Province of Westphalia, then the Kingdom of Prussia within the German Empire. She was the daughter of a colonel in the Prussian Army, who was of Swiss Huguenot descent. 

She and her siblings, Elisabeth and Stephan, grew up in a very secure and loving family . She was educated in Hildesheim, and went on to study at universities in Heidelberg,  Marburg and Berlin. She made her home in Bavaria in 1918, living in Baierbrunn until 1939.

Despite publishing some minor works previously, Gertrud's writing career really began with the publication in 1925 of the posthumous work Glaubenslehre by her mentor, Ernst Troeltsch, a major scholar in the field of the philosophy of religion, which she had edited. She converted to Roman Catholicism the following year. Most of her writings came after this conversion, and they were marked by the issue of the struggle between faith and conscience.

Another turning point in Gertrud von le Fort's life was the end of the World War I which meant a great disaster for the defeated Germany. Shortly after her mother died, and in 1920 their family estate Boek was confiscated following her brother's participation in an attempt to anti-government monarchist coup. Gertrud suddenly found herself completely alone and at first without any means. The situation was even more difficult for her because she was accustomed to social etiquette and secured living from her background.

In 1931 she published the novella, de:Die Letzte am Schafott (The Last One at the Scaffold), based on the 1794 execution of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne who were guillotined during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. The English translation, entitled The Song at the Scaffold, appeared in 1933, and is still considered as her greatest work. This work was the inspiration for the opera Dialogues of the Carmelites written by Francis Poulenc, which premiered in 1957. The opera was based on a similarly entitled libretto by Georges Bernanos.  

Gertrud went on to publish over 20 books, comprising poems, novels and short stories. Her work gained her the accolade of being "the greatest contemporary transcendent poet". Her works are appreciated for their depth and beauty of their ideas, and for her sophisticated refinement of style.

She became friends with  the theologian and philosopher Romano Guardini (see Blog 8/2/16). In 1920's he was active at Rothenfels/Main castle that was a centre of the Catholic youth movement. As early as 1921 Gertrud  read Guardini's The Spirit of the Liturgy and in the following years helped to bring it to awareness of the general public. Father Guardini did the same when Gertrud  published her book of poetry Hymns to the Church  (another masterpiece in my opinion) in 1924. It was read in the Catholic youth movement and gained popularity there.

She was nominated by Hermann Hesse for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was granted an honorary Doctorate of Theology for her contributions to the issue of faith in her works.

In 1952, she won the Gottfried-Keller Prize, an esteemed Swiss literary award.

German Stamp- 1975

Among her many other works, were The Eternal Woman (my favorite)  in 1934, which appeared in paperback in English in 2010. In this work, she countered the modernist distortions of the feminine, a meditation on what it means to be a woman.

Last year, Ignatius Press brought out a collection of three of her novellas,The Wife of Pilate and Other Stories, thus introducing her to a new generation of readers. 

In 1939  Gertrud made her home in the town of Oberstdorf in the Bavarian Alps, and it was there that she died on  the feast of All Saints, 1 November 1971, aged 95.