SCULPTOR WHO SAW THE SPIRIT OF MAN

 

JAMES RICHMOND BARTHE (known as Richmond Barthé)  was an African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He is best known for his portrayal of black subjects. The focus of his artistic work was portraying the diversity and spirituality of man. He once said: "All my life I have been interested in trying to capture the spiritual quality I see and feel in people, and I feel that the human figure as God made it, is the best means of expressing this spirit in man."

He became one of 20th century America’s greatest sculptors of the human form, and Mississippi’s preeminent artist in the field. 

Richmond was born in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.  His father died at age 22, when Richmond was only a few months old, leaving his mother to raise him alone, working as a dressmaker.

Richmond showed a passion and skill for drawing from an early age. His mother was, in many ways, instrumental in his decision to pursue art as a vocation. He once said: "When I was crawling on the floor, my mother gave me paper and pencil to play with. It kept me quiet while she did her errands. At six years old I started painting. A lady my mother sewed for gave me a set of watercolors. By that time, I could draw very well."

His teachers in grammar school encouraged him and when he was only twelve years old, he exhibited his work at the Bay St. Louis Country Fair.

Richmond was beset with health problems, and after an attack of typhoid fever at age 14, he withdrew from school.  Following this, he worked as a houseboy and handyman, but still spent his free time drawing. A wealthy family, the Ponds, who spent summers at Bay St. Louis, invited him to work for them as a houseboy in New Orleans.

Through his employment with the Ponds, Richmond broadened his cultural horizons and knowledge of art, and was introduced to Lyle Saxon, a local writer for the Times Picayune. Saxon was fighting against the racist system of school segregation, and tried unsuccessfully to get Richmond registered in an art school in New Orleans.

In 1924,Richmond  donated his first oil painting to a local Catholic church to be auctioned at a fundraiser. Impressed by his talent, Reverend Harry F. Kane encouraged  him to pursue his artistic career and raised money for him to undertake studies in fine art.

At age 23, with less than a high school education and no formal training in art, Richmond applied to the Art Institute of Chicago, and was accepted.  He became one of 20th century America’s greatest sculptors of the human form,  and Mississippi’s preeminent artist in the field. 

 While many young artists found it very difficult to earn a living from their art during the Great Depression, the 1930s were Richmond ‘s most prolific years.  The shift from the Art Institute of Chicago to New York City, where he moved following graduation, exposed him to new experiences.  He established his studio in Harlem in 1930 after winning the Julius Rosenwald Fund fellowship at his first solo exhibition in Chicago.

Richmond mingled with the bohemian circles of downtown Manhattan. Initially unable to afford live models, he sought and found inspiration from on-stage performers. Living downtown provided him the opportunity to socialize not only among collectors but also among artists, dance performers, and actors. His remarkable visual memory permitted him to work without models, producing numerous representations of the human body in movement.

His works were exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933. In summer 1934, Richmond went on a tour to Paris with Reverend Edward F. Murphy, a friend of Reverend Kane from New Orleans, who exchanged his first class ticket for two third-class tickets to share with Richmond. This trip exposed  him to classical art, but also to performers such as Josephine Baker, of whom he made portraits in 1935 and 1951.

During the next two decades, he built his reputation as a sculptor. He was awarded several awards and experienced success after success and was considered by writers and critics as one of the leading "moderns" of his time.

In 1945, Richmond became a member of the National Sculpture Society.  The tense environment and violence of the city began to take its toll, and he decided to abandon his life of fame and move to Jamaica in the West Indies in 1947. 

His career flourished in Jamaica, and he remained there until the mid-1960s when ever-growing violence forced him to move again. 

For the next five years, he lived in Switzerland, Spain, and Italy, then settled in Pasadena, California in a rental apartment. In this apartment, Richmond  worked on his memoirs, and most importantly, editioned many of his works with the financial assistance of actor James Garner until his death in 1989. Garner copyrighted Richmond’s artwork, hired a biographer to organize and document his work, and established the Richmond Barthe Trust.

Richmond was a devoted Catholic. Many of his later works  depicted religious subjects, including John the Baptist (1942), Come Unto Me (1945), Head of Jesus (1949), Angry Christ (1946), and Resurrection (1969). 

Works like The Mother (1935) (see right), Mary (1945), or his unfinished Crucifixion (ca. 1944) are noticeably influenced by the interracial justice for what he was awarded the James J. Hoey Award by the Catholic Interracial Council in 1945.

BACKYARD BIRDERS IN A PANDEMIC

 

Fortunately for us,  birds do not know there is a pandemic going on, so are in their usual habitats. The COVID-19 pandemic with all its trials,  like social distancing, work-at-home directives, and  so many dos and don’ts, has made life complicated, and many say enough is enough.

But for many it has been a time to stop and smell the roses, or in other cases see the birds. They’ve had to find different ways to amuse themselves that don’t require being in enclosed public spaces or around other humans.

One friend in Brooklyn, gets up with the birds every morning at dawn- break, and goes across the street to a huge park to scan the skies, trees and ground for birds.

One of our Oblates in San Diego gets in a kayak, also at the crack of dawn,  watching the birds from her socially distanced vessel.

Another local friend of 25 years, called last week excited about birds she had seen off her deck.  She has never been a birder, but said “ I think I have caught the bug - birding bug that is!  You get so excited when you see birds, I said to my husband, what is this all about?”

A young couple on a neighboring island have taken up this “sport”, as it has been something they could safely do together, does not cost anything, except for the binoculars and a book or two. Now they excitedly bird watch every weekend  and even though they both grew up in the islands, they find new places to explore.

For me, it is watching birds in the warmth of the monastery, watching through the large windows.  Also, I have connected with a man on the island, who has been a naturalist all his life.  We now we do bird counts together and look forward to the Great Backyard Bird count in mid February  (12-15th).

For those who have tried getting outdoors more than usual and stopped to smell the roses or see the birds, it has brought a peace and serenity connecting with nature, and we have not had to travel far. In this time of stress and uncertainty,  birds rescued us from anxiety even if for short periods in the day.

(Photos of young birders on Shaw Island)

The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is a community science project in ornithology. It is conducted annually in mid February. The event is supported by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. During this four-day event birdwatchers all around the world are invited to count and report details of birds in the area in which they live. Data is submitted online via a web interface, and compiled for use in scientific research. The GBBC was the first community science project to collect bird sightings online and display results in near real-time.

Since 2013, the event has been observed by international bird watchers, and anyone can now participate in the event. Additional wildlife and conservation institutes around the world have also supported and participated.

Data collected during the event is subjected to verification by experts, in order to overcome potential shortcomings in the abilities of amateur participants. Data resulting from the event has raised awareness about changes in population and habitats of common birds.

In 2020 Great Backyard Bird Count resulted in:

              268,674 Estimated Participants

             27,270,156 Total Birds Counted

               6,942 Species of Birds Identified

              194 Countries

For more information go to: https://www.birdcount.org/

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RECOGNIZING BLACK TALENT

In contrast to the work of Edmonia Lewis, is  a modern sculptress, of no less talent.

AUGUSTA SAVAGE, born in  1892,  was an American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She was a teacher whose studio was important to the careers of a generation of artists who would become nationally known. She  also worked for equal rights for African Americans in the arts.

 

Augusta began making figures as a child, mostly small animals out of the natural red clay of her hometown, Green Cove Springs Florida. Her father was a poor Methodist minister who strongly opposed his daughter's early interest in art. "My father licked me four or five times a week,” Augusta once recalled, “and almost whipped all the art out of me.” This was because at that time, he believed her sculpture to be a sinful practice, based upon his interpretation of the "graven images" portion of the Bible. She persevered, and the principal of her new high school in West Palm Beach, where her family relocated in 1915, encouraged her talent and allowed her to teach a clay modeling class. This began a lifelong commitment to teaching as well as to creating art.

She arrived in New York City in 1921, applying  to Cooper Union, a scholarship-based school. She was selected before 142 other men on the waiting list.[ Her talent and ability so impressed the Cooper Union Advisory Council that she was awarded additional funds for room and board.  She studied under sculptor George Brewster completing the four-year degree course in three years.

In 1923 she applied for a Summer art program sponsored by the French government; although being more than qualified, she was turned down by the international judging committee solely because they refused to award a spot to a Black person. Augusta was deeply upset and questioned the committee, beginning the first of many public fights for equal rights in her life. Though appeals were made to the French government to reinstate the award, they had no effect and Augusta was unable to study at the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts. The incident got press coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, and eventually, the sole supportive committee member sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil – who at one time had shared a studio with Henry Ossawa Tanner – invited her to study with him. She later cited him as one of her teachers.

She obtained her first commission for a bust of W. E. B. Du Bois for the Harlem Library. Her outstanding sculpture brought more commissions. Her bust of William Pickens Sr., a key figure in the NAACP, earned praise for depicting an African American in a more humane, neutral way as opposed to stereotypes of the time.

In 1928 Augusta won the Otto Kahn Prize in an exhibition at The Harmon Foundation with her submission Head of a Negro. She was an outspoken critic of the fetishization of the "negro primitive" aesthetic favored by white patrons at the time. She publicly critiqued the director of The Harmon Foundation, Mary Beattie Brady, for her low standards for Black art and lack of understanding in the area of visual arts in general.

In 1929 with pooled resources from the Urban League, Rosenwald Foundation, a Carnegie Foundation grant, and donations from friends and former teachers, Augusta  was finally able to travel to France when she was 37. She lived on Montparnasse and worked in the studio of M. [Félix] Benneteau [-Desgrois].

While the studio was initially encouraging of her work, Augusta later wrote that "...the masters are not in sympathy as they all have their own definite ideas and usually wish their pupils to follow their particular method..." and began primarily working on her own in 1930.

Knowledge of Augusta's talent and struggles became widespread in the African-American community; fundraising parties were held in Harlem and Greenwich Village, and African-American women's groups and teachers from Florida A&M all sent her money for studies abroad.

In 1929, with assistance as well from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, Savage enrolled and attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, a leading Paris art school. In Paris, she studied with the sculptor Charles Despiau. She exhibited and won awards in two Paris Salons and one Exposition. She toured France, Belgium, and Germany, researching sculpture in cathedrals and museums.

Augusta returned to the United States in 1931, energized from her studies and achievements, but The Great Depression had almost stopped art sales. She pushed on, and in 1934 became the first African-American artist to be elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. She then launched the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, located in a basement on West 143rd Street in Harlem. She opened her studio to anyone who wanted to paint, draw, or sculpt.

 Her many young students included the future nationally known artists Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, and Gwendolyn Knight. Another student was the sociologist Kenneth B. Clark whose later research contributed to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that ruled school segregation unconstitutional. Her school evolved into the Harlem Community Art Center; 1500 people of all ages and abilities participated in her workshops, learning from her multi-cultural staff, and showing work around New York City. Funds from the Works Progress Administration helped, but old struggles of discrimination were revived between Savage and WPA officials who objected to her having a leadership role.

Augusta was one of four women and only two African Americans to receive a professional commission from the Board of Design of the 1939 New York World's Fair. She created Lift Every Voice and Sing (also known as "The Harp"), inspired by the song by James Weldon and Rosamond Johnson. The 16-foot-tall plaster sculpture was the most popular and most photographed work at the fair; small metal souvenir copies were sold, and many postcards of the piece were purchased. The work reinterpreted the musical instrument to feature 12 singing African-American youth in graduated heights as its strings, with the harp's sounding board transformed into an arm and a hand. In the front, a kneeling young man offered music in his hands. She did not have funds to have it cast in bronze or to move and store it. Like other temporary installations, the sculpture was destroyed at the close of the fair.

Augusta opened two galleries whose shows were well attended and well reviewed, but few sales resulted and the galleries closed. The last major showing of her work occurred in 1939. Deeply depressed by her financial struggle, in the 1940s she moved to a farmhouse in Saugerties, New York. While there, she established close ties with her neighbors and welcomed family and friends from New York City to her rural home. She cultivated a garden and sold pigeons, chickens, and eggs.  She taught art to children and wrote children's stories.

The K-B Products Corporation, the world's largest growers of mushrooms at that time, employed her as a laboratory assistant in the company's cancer research facility. She acquired a car and learned to drive to enable her commute. Herman K. Knaust, director of the laboratory, encouraged Augusta to pursue her artistic career and provided her with art supplies. She created and taught art and sculpted friends and neighbors. Her last commissioned work was for Knaust and was that of the American journalist and author Poultney Bigelow, whose father, John, was U.S. Minister to France during the Civil War. Her few neighbors said that she was always making something with her hands.

Much of her work is in clay or plaster, as she could not often afford bronze. One of her most famous busts is titled “Gamin” which is on permanent display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; a life-sized version is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. At the time of its creation, Gamin, which is modeled after a Harlem youth, was voted most popular in an exhibition of over 200 works by black artists. 

Her style can be described as realistic, expressive, and sensitive. Though her art and influence within the art community are documented, the location of much of her work is unknown.

Augusta died of cancer on March 26, 1962, in New York City. While she was all but forgotten at the time of her death, she is remembered today as a great artist, activist, and arts educator; serving as an inspiration to the many that she taught, helped, and encouraged.

BLACK CATHOLIC SCULPTRESS

While researching Robert Sheldon Duncanson, I noted that while there have been many fine Black artists in America, few are known.

A very talented Catholic Black sculptor, whose life was fascinating, was EDMONIA LEWIS, who was born around 1844 in Greenbush New York. She descended from African American and Native-American ancestry, becoming the first professional sculptor representing both communities and the only Black female of the era recognized in the American art scene. 

Her mother was a Native American from the Chippewa Indian tribe, and her father was Afro Haitian and African American.  Her paternal side traced back to Dahomey, what is now present day Benin.

She was orphaned at an early age and, as she later claimed, was raised by some of her mother's relatives.

With the support and encouragement of a successful older brother, Edmonia attended Oberlin College in Ohio where she emerged as a talented artist. The abolitionist movement was active on the Oberlin campus and would greatly influence her later work. But life at Oberlin came to a violent end when she was falsely accused of poisoning two white classmates. Captured and beaten by a white mob, Edmonia recovered from the attack and then escaped to Boston, after the charges against her were dropped.

There she met sculptor and mentor-to-be Edward A. Brackett and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. After setting up her own studio, she began creating plaster medallions of famous abolitionists starting in the early 1860s, but it was her 1864 bust of Civil War hero Colonel Robert Shaw, who led the African American 54th Massachusetts Regiment, that brought her national prominence.

With the funds she earned from the copies she made of the Shaw bust, Edmonia furthered her art in Rome, sculpting in Neoclassical-style, where she was celebrated for works like Arrow Maker (1866), a sculpture of a Native American father teaching his daughter how to shape an arrow, and Forever Free (1867), a piece that emotionally captures two Black slaves encountering freedom for the first time. In Italy, Edmonia continued to work as an artist. Her work over the next several decades moved between African American themes to subjects influenced by her devout Catholicism.

Along with her busts of American presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and works that paid homage to her Catholic faith, Edmonia was also known for her marble depiction of Cleopatra called The Death of Cleopatra, which was on display at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876.

Much like her childhood,  her final years are shrouded in mystery. Until the 1890s, she continued to exhibit her work and was even visited by Frederick Douglass in Rome, but little is known about the last decade or so of her life. It was speculated that she spent her last years in Rome, but the recent discovery of death documents indicate that she died in London, England, in 1907.

In recent decades, however, Lewis's life and art have received posthumous acclaim. Her pieces are now part of the permanent collections of the Howard University Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Today  she stands as a light for  self expression through art,especially for women, even in the face of adversity. 

BLACK PAINTER WHO LOVED SCOTLAND

 

On the occasion of the inauguration of Joseph Biden, his wife Jill presented the nation with a piece of art by a very talented artist who has been all but forgotten.  And while the piece in question is lovely and certainly symbolic of hope with a rainbow, it is not my favorite.  When studying in Europe he spent time in the Scottish Highlands (where my grandmother was born) and something there touched him deeply as seen in his painting.

                                                                 Landscape  with Rainbow

 ROBERT SHELDON DUNCANSON (1821-1872) was born in New York state, the grandson of a freed Virginia slave on his mother’s side and a white father. He started out as a house painter, but his talent and creative ambition exceeded this work. In 1840, at the age of 19, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to begin his art career. Cincinnati was rapidly growing and had a strong arts community, earning the nickname the “Athens of the West.” It was also home to a large free black community and sympathetic white abolitionists. 

Robert  saw early success as a portrait painter, with works selected for exhibition at the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts. However, his family was unable to visit the exhibition due to their race. Undeterred, Robert’s mother, Lucy, stated “I know what they look like. I know that they are there! That’s the important thing.” Robert was inspired by the early Hudson River School artist’s portrayal of the American landscape. He studied the works of Thomas Cole and traveled with fellow Cincinnati artists Worthington Writtredge and William Louis Sonntag.

 

He received patronage from wealthy abolitionists, allowing him to go on a grand tour of Europe in 1853. Work supported by abolitionists often reflected their cause, such as his Uncle Tom and Little Eva, depicting a scene from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s controversial 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

With the onset of the American Civil War, Robert exiled himself first in Canada, and then in the United Kingdom. This is where the story of Mount Orford, on display at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, picks up. The tranquility of this Quebec mountain scene serves in stark contrast to the turmoil of war raging across the United States.

Robert was accepted enthusiastically by the art community of Montreal before traveling to the United Kingdom where he was again well received, gaining recognition in the international art scene.

He returned to the United States and continued to paint. However, his health deteriorated quickly, likely due to lead poisoning suffered as a result of his years as a house painter, and he died in 1872, only 51 years old. His work was largely forgotten, a symptom of racism prevalent in art history, until the 1960s and 1970s, when advancements made by the civil rights movement began to shed light on the historical and artistic accomplishments of African Americans. 

Today, Robert Duncanson’s legacy is as one of the few African American painters to achieve international recognition during this time.  We are grateful to Jill Biden for exposing his work to our nation.

 

                             (2 bottom paintings- Left-  "Loch Long",  Middle-   "Scottish Landscape")

NEW LETTER ON THE EUCHARIST

 

Since we are in the midst of  the Year of the Eucharist in our Archdiocese (Seattle),  I am presenting a recent the letter by one of my favorite Bishops.

A Pastoral Letter from Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted
To all the Faithful of the Diocese of Phoenix

January 28, 2021

Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Son of French aristocrats, orphaned at six years of age, twice dismissed from the French army, recklessly adventurous, the life of Charles de Foucauld was eventually seized by the love of Jesus. Not many years after his return to faith, Charles was ordained a priest and lived several years absorbed in prayer as a Trappist monk. Yet his personal love for the Lord now united to his zealous nature made complacency unthinkable. Brother Charles left the Trappist monastery and lived the last twenty-some years of his life essentially homeless without companions, dedicated to loving the Lord in the Eucharist and serving the needy with warm hospitality. It was clarity about the transformative power of the Eucharist that unleashed in him an unshakable confidence and love. For him, the Eucharist was simply “Jesus handing over His life for His people.” Blessed Charles de Foucauld shaped his life around this simple truth.

My dear sons and daughters, I write to you now because we need the clear and simple faith in the Eucharist of Blessed Charles de Foucauld.

Many have shared with me the heavy grief they have carried during the COVID-19 pandemic at the loss of regular accessibility of the great Sacrament of the Eucharist. As a spiritual father and spouse of the Church, it grieves me to see the flock entrusted to my care suffer separation from the Lord whom I have dedicated my life to serve and to make present among His people. Deprivation of the Eucharist is deprivation of Christ. Whether it was due to my prudential decisions or yours, I am aware of the pain you have suffered. What is more, I know your grief does not stop there.

A recent Pew Research Center survey (July 2019) showed that most Catholics don’t believe in the Eucharist. Nearly seven-in-ten Catholics (69%) say they personally believe that, during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Communion “are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” Just one-third of U.S. Catholics (31%) say they believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.” This report was a confirmation of what had long been known but not often voiced: there is a grave crisis of faith in the Eucharist as the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God. 

These are our own friends and family, our sons and our daughters. What suffering to see those we love not sharing our faith and devotion to our Redeemer.

This crisis of faith affects us all, not only from outside but also from within our souls. Doubt and mistrust are like a virus that spreads from heart to heart at an exponential rate.

A renewal of faith in the Eucharist is desperately needed!

My brother priests and deacons of the diocese, those for whom I have ever-increasing gratitude and affection, you, too, have suffered greatly the pain and confusion caused by this crisis of faith. You are the men who have “left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields” to serve the Lord at the Altar (Matthew 19:29). You have shouldered with Christ the weight of this loss and felt much of the grief our Lord felt as he wept for Jerusalem (cf. Luke 19:41ff).

Adding to our grief, all of us know Catholics who even before COVID regularly excused themselves from Sunday Mass. But our love of the Eucharist cannot be separated from the Sunday celebration of the Mass! As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “The Sunday celebration of the Lord’s Day and His Eucharist is at the heart of the Church’s life” (CCC 2177). Even before live-streamed Mass was commonplace, the centrality of the Lord’s Day in the life of Catholics has been dramatically diminishing for years.

What value does the Sunday Mass have? For a group of forty-nine Christians in the 4th century, it was fuel for life. Emperor Diocletian of Rome found these faithful believers guilty of celebrating Sunday Mass which had been outlawed. When they were asked why they broke the law, one member of the group, named Emeritus, spoke in response: “Sine dominico non possumus,” which our Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI once explained to mean, “without ‘Dominicum’ [Sunday], that is, without the Sunday Eucharist we cannot live” (Angelus, 26 June 2011). Why did they feel so strongly?

For more than nine years I was blessed to observe and learn from the spiritual fatherhood of Pope Saint John Paul II as an assistant at the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. Permit me to share an exhortation he gave us nearly 22 years ago, expressing our faith in the Sunday Eucharist:

“From the beginning of my Pontificate, I have not ceased to repeat: ‘Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!’ In the same way, today I would strongly urge everyone to rediscover Sunday: Do not be afraid to give your time to Christ! Yes, let us open our time to Christ, that he may cast light upon it and give it direction. … The rediscovery of this day is a grace which we must implore, … so that we may respond concretely to the deepest human yearnings. Time given to Christ is never time lost, but is rather time gained, so that our relationships and indeed our whole life may become more profoundly human” (Dies Domini 7).

I wish to unite myself to the words of our late Pope: as the pandemic subsides over the coming weeks and months, I would strongly urge everyone to rediscover Sunday Mass! I invite you to implore from God the grace of rediscovering the joy and rest of the Lord’s Day.

My dear brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, with love and care as your spiritual father, I call you to turn your hearts with renewed fervor to our Lord in the Holy Eucharist and to unwavering fidelity in keeping holy the Lord’s Day every Sunday.

These are difficult times with health concerns and conflicting information about what is needed to remain healthy and to prevent the spread of disease. However, we all have a real need to find our security and life in Christ. Are we not in need of a Savior? Is He not the only Lord?

I wish to assist and accompany you to an ever-increasing knowledge, love, and commitment to this great gift of our God. To seek to do so in a short letter would not give due reverence to either the needs of our times or the thirst of our souls.

For this reason, I now would like to announce a forthcoming Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist.

Five years ago, I discerned there was a great need to write a substantial exhortation for Catholic men. Two years ago, I discerned a need to do the same for marriages and families of our diocese. These two documents have born and continue to bear much fruit.

The time is now to speak to the Heart of it all.

Another humble man with a great Eucharistic heart is St. Thomas Aquinas who wrote the familiar Eucharistic hymn, Tantum ergo, among many others. For the name of the forthcoming Exhortation I have chosen two words from the second line of this hymn of praise of the Eucharist: Veneremur cernui. It is difficult to translate these words, yet they capture the reverence we should foster: Let us venerate with body prostrated which are expressed in reference to the Great Sacrament of the Eucharist.

In my forthcoming Apostolic Exhortation, I wish to offer a thorough exploration of the Church’s faith on the Sunday Eucharist with a particular attention to the following:

The Gift of the Real Presence in the Eucharist

Eucharist as Sacrificial Offering and heavenly banquet

How the Eucharist unleashes peace, charity, and justice to our society

Ways for parishes and families to deepen their Eucharistic faith and love

Proper Disposition for the Reception of the Eucharist

How to reach out to friends and family who do not share our faith.

You can expect this document to be made public on the Feast of the Lord’s Supper, Holy Thursday of the Sacred Triduum, which this year falls on the first of April.

In 1916, Blessed Charles de Foucauld was engaged in Eucharistic adoration when he was attacked and killed for his Christian faith in North Africa. All hope seemed lost, his life and faith without noticeable effect. French soldiers who came upon his ransacked hut found a monstrance with the Sacred Host still inside. They placed the monstrance with the Host exposed on the saddle of a horse and walked back to the French camp—the first Eucharistic procession in that part of the world. Charles’ blood had hardly dried and his Catholic faith was being boldly announced to the world. Since then, the Church in Africa has been blessed with breathtaking growth and remarkable strength.

My dear brothers and sisters, faith in the Eucharist is always fruitful when it is cherished and lived. My hope is that our rediscovery of the beauty and truth of the Eucharist might be similarly blessed.

With sincere hope and fatherly affection, I remain

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+ Thomas J. Olmsted
Bishop of Phoenix

BLACK HISTORY MONTH- THE CHURCH

 

November was Black History month, and we published information on the six Americans up for canonization.*  One is Venerable Pierre Toussaint  (Blog  Oct. 26, 2012), whose holy wife is now being considered. For Black History month (Feb) we need to ponder  the lives of the people who continued the faith, as well as politicians and other public figures we see in the daily news. 

Interestingly enough, PBS is  doing a series "The Black Church":

“In this intimate four-hour series from executive producer, host, and writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., we trace how this came to be in the 400 year-old story of the black church in America, all the way down to its bedrock role as the site of African American survival and endurance, grace and resilience, thriving and testifying, freedom and independence, solidarity and speaking truth to power.”

 

JULIETTE NOEL TOUSSAINT, born around 1786 in Haiti, was a freed slave who became an American philanthropist, collaborating closely with her husband Pierre  in helping the poor as well as doing charitable works in New York city. Pierre and Juliette deeply esteemed and loved each other, and became models of married people.

Little is known about the early life of Juliette, except that she was born into slavery in the former French colony of Haiti. The Noel family came to Baltimore with their slave owners at some point during the Haitian Revolution. There she labored as a housemaid, assistant cook and nanny.

In the wake of the Haitian Revolution, Pierre Toussaint's master also went into exile in New York City.  Thus Pierre and Juliette met in circumstances unknown. . Juliette was twenty years younger than Pierre.

While Juliette still worked for her master, Pierre saved enough money to purchase her freedom. In August 5, 1811, they were married privately. For four years they boarded at the house of Pierre's master before settling themselves finally on Franklin Street. Pierre worked as a hairdresser while Juliette focused on the household needs and availed herself in volunteering for the local church activities.

They adopted Euphemia, the daughter of Pierre's late sister Rosalie who had died of tuberculosis, raising the girl as their own. They provided for her education and music classes. Euphemia would die before her adoptive parents, of tuberculosis, like her mother.

The couple attended daily Mass and began a career of charity among the poor of New York City regardless of color and creed. They often brought baked goods to the children of the Orphan Asylum and donated money to its operation. In their own house, they sheltered and fostered numerous street children, travelers and homeless people.

Together the Toussaints organized a credit bureau, an employment agency, and a refuge for priests. They helped  many Haitian refugees in finding jobs for them. They often arranged sales of goods so they could raise money to live on. With the Oblate Sisters of Providence, they established a school for black children.

They also helped raise money in building a new Roman Catholic church in New York, which became Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mott Street. Pierre was a benefactor also of the first New York City Catholic school for Black children at St. Vincent de Paul on Canal Street.

In May 14, 1851, Juliette died of natural causes. Two years later, Pierre Toussaint died on June 30, 1853. They are buried alongside with Euphemia, in the cemetery of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral.

(Photo of Euphemia)

 * Venerable Father Augustus Tolton, Ven. Henrietta Delille, Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman,  S of God Mother Mary Lange, and S of God Julia Greely