May
The Black Saints Intercede For “US” In The Presence Of Jesus
‘Then one of the elders addressed
me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they
come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are they who
have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of
God, and serve Him day and night within His temple; and He Who sits upon the
throne will shelter them with His presence. They shall hunger no more, neither
thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the
Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them
to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
-
Rev.
7:13-17
It was after the Super Bowl in
2001 and I remember that I was at a wedding for my niece way up in the
mountains of New Hampshire. My brother came to sit next to my wife and me at
the start of the wedding banquet. Pleasantries were exchanged and the “Chicken
Cordon Bleu” came quickly after the salad. I also remember this well because it
was at this point that my brother turned to me, grabbed my knee, and exclaimed,
“Dougie, I saw a ghost!” As if to accent the point, he then began to tug at my
knee and say, “And he was as real as you are right here sitting next to me!”
My brother had just returned from
New Orleans where he and a friend had spent a whole week enjoying the
festivities leading up to the Super Bowl, and celebrating with other New
England fans the phenomenal success of the Patriots that year. They had stayed
at the Best Western Inn that week – also called the Old French Quarter Inn. It
is said that part of the original structure of the historic Inn was a holding
area for slaves upon their arrival in the New World.
While the Chicken Cordon Bleu
remained untouched (Knowing my brother’s love for food, that fact in itself has
no natural explanation!), my brother proceeded to tell me his ghost story. He
told me that on the first night, a Monday before the Super Bowl, he awoke in
his room around 3:00 AM. He was sleeping on his side, facing to his right. The
sense of a presence in the room was overwhelming – a presence other than that
of his friend in the other bed also to his right.
In his half awake stupor he
slowly turned over to his left and there immediately at his bedside was a black
man in a white robe. With a gleam in his eyes the man was staring at my
brother, and there was intensity in that stare. My brother estimates that the
man was about thirty years old. His white cloth gown was sleeveless, and the
man’s arms were clearly visible. It was also the case that the man was as real
a presence as I was at that moment, hearing the story while sitting right next
to my brother.
My brother let out a scream, most
likely in kind to the type of startled scream one makes when almost stepping on
a snake. My brother thought for sure he was about to get mugged or maybe even
killed, and he had every right to be filled with fear.
But as soon as he screamed the
man in the white robe began to recede from my brother’s bed. It was then that
my brother realized that he was seeing a vision. The black man in the white
gown had no legs, no body, below the bottom of the cowl, and he was literally
floating further and further back away from the bed, dissolving and
disappearing into the air as he did so.
The rest of that week my brother
and his friend slept in that same room with TV and lights on at all times, and
the vision never happened again. As for that room in that place, they had no other
choice. They tried to get lodging elsewhere but that option like the vision
would not be naturally possible during Super Bowl week in New Orleans. They
especially tried to get lodging elsewhere when they learned on the Tuesday
morning after the apparition that the Old French Quarter Inn was haunted –
there was even a pamphlet about that down on the front desk counter of the Inn.
When my brother told his story he was treated by the hotel staff to a whole
history of strange and supernatural occurrences at the Inn. It was then the
staff who circulated my brother’s story throughout the French Quarter
In my brother’s telling of the
tale to me, it was this word, “apparition,” that struck a strong note with me.
My brother told me that by the end of the week he was pretty famous among the
black community of the French Quarter because he had had an “apparition”. It
was more prestigious than just poltergeist harassment - lights flickering and
elevators stopping for no reason, or objects suddenly flying off the fireplace
mantel. People in the neighborhood insisted that for the rest of the week my
brother was to sit up all night in the dark of his room with only one lamp lit
and with a writing tablet, waiting for the apparition to return. My brother was
then supposed to ask him if he had any message to give perhaps for someone in
the area – maybe a relative or family member.
So much then for my brother’s story…
Life has moved on and I have moved on. But despite that, I have to say that
over the years this “apparition story” keeps coming back to me in my prayer.
Why? It is because for years I
had dismissed it as simply a ghost story. How could it have any import beyond
entertainment value at best? But slowly, as many more years have past, I have
seen with God’s Grace a deeper message in the vision of the black man in the
white robe – a message from the Lord that has humbled me and truly prepared me
for my “lower place” at the table of the Messianic Banquet called Heaven.
The message? Why for years could
I not see that vision as an “apparition” in the fuller sense of this term
taught to me as a Catholic Christian? Right or wrong, as a Catholic I had this
idea of an “apparition” as the visitation to us of a heavenly being – of Jesus,
Mary, an angel of God, or of a Saint like Francis or Ignatius who like St. Paul
chose to give up all for Christ. Whatever nobility, wealth, power, prestige,
worldly importance or gain they had they counted it as loss and surrendered it
for love of Christ. In the words of Paul, “Indeed I count everything as loss
because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I
have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them as refuse, in order that
may gain Christ..., that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.”
Yet what about those who did not
chose, who as slaves or the marginalized of society had no choice, but yet
embraced for Jesus the Hell they were consigned to because of the color of
their skin? I now believe that my brother’s vision of the black man in the
white robe was also an apparition in the fuller sense taught me in Catholic
school. And why not? How I could I have been so short-sighted, even blind to
the truth and power of that vision as an apparition of a Saint equal if not
greater in the eyes of God than a St. John The 23rd, or a St. John Paul The 2nd?
Who was the man in the vision?
Did he arrive long ago on a slave ship? Was he centuries ago bound in chains in
that part of old French Quarter Inn that was once a holding area for those
slaves? What was the man like? What was it like to be like him? The questions
are difficult to answer because in life they were nameless – no birth
certificate or baptismal certificate. They were doomed and condemned to be “No
One!” “No One!” - the tormented cry of the demonic spirit in “The Exorcist!”,
the experience of being stripped of all dignity, worth, and value that is the
essence of Hell.
There are myriads of these people
– tens of thousands of them – that are now Saints in the next world, the
Kingdom of God. But in this world their starting point was chains. I have seen
those chains in the slave quarters of the southern plantations – chains
attached to a large iron ring bolted into the cold cement floor of the slave
shacks. Did the man of the vision know the humiliation and indignity of those
chains? Was he like the nameless slaves who gave us the beautiful hymns we sing
in Church to this very day: “Kumbaya” – (Or what it means: “After you leave the
white Church, come by I, Lord!”); and “Were You There When They Crucified
My Lord?” In the hymnal for these songs the only reference to author and source
is “Old Plantation Hymn” or “African American Spiritual”. The slave authors
were not allowed to have a song – and credit for a song - that only they could
sing; or to have poem that only they could pen; or a book that only they could
write.
Was the man of the vision such a
man? I believe that he was. Like all the people who centuries ago passed
through the holding areas in the cities of a slave-based culture, that man was
denied dignity, denied the opportunity to impact and transform society in a way
that only his unique set of talents and gifts possibly could. Like Jesus he was
led “…as a lamb to the slaughter” into a life that precluded dignity, into a
life where he would be “no one”, into a life where he would be marginalized,
victimized, and discriminated against; into a life where only humiliation and
injustice awaited him. (Isaiah 53:6-8)
And was he a Saint – one who
embraced for Jesus the Hell he was consigned to because of the color of his
skin? I believe that he was.
What is it like, the “Hell” of
such a life? Or to rephrase the question in the words of Aibileen at the beginning
of the film “The Help”, “What is it like to be me?” The trenchant images of that film more than
suffice to speak to us of life without dignity, of what it is to be
marginalized and victimized by racial hatred; of life consigned to humiliation,
persecution and injustice. Let the words of Aibileen, narrating the death of
her son to Skeeter (“Skeeter” is Eugenia, author of “The Help” in the film),
speak to us of the nightmare and “Hell” (Her word, not mine!) that was her
life:
They
killed my son, Miss Skeeter. He fell carrying two by fours at the mill.
The
white foreman drove over him, crushing his lungs. They threw his body in the
back of the truck,
drove
to the colored hospital, dumped him there and honked the horn. There was
nothing they
could
do, so I brought my baby home; laid him down on that sofa right there. He died
right in front of me.
He
was just 24 years old, Miss Skeeter, best part of a person’s life… Anniversary
of his death comes, every year, and I can’t breathe. But to y’all, it’s just
another day of bridge. You stop this (Writing the book, “The Help”), everything
I wrote, he wrote, everything he was, is gonna die with him.
“Hell” was her
life, and the life of others in the stories of “The Help”. And like the slaves
saints before them, Aibileen and others portrayed in the film endured for Jesus
and with Jesus the Hell consigned to them. More than that, as their love did
not grow cold even in the face of hate and persecution, they witness to us of
Jesus’ Love, Divine Love, the Love of the Cross, and the Face of Christ living
on in the here and now in His people, the Church.
The story of Constantine in that
same film is a classic case of this – of someone who, like Aibileen, mirrors to
us the Sacred Heart of Christ. In
the film Constantine’s story is the last one that Skeeter includes in her book.
The scenes leading up to Constantine’s dismissal are poignant and compelling in
capturing the Hell Constantine must feel.
Her daughter Rachel comes back unexpectedly to the Phelan
residence, Skeeter’s home, and wouldn’t you know it, right during a celebration
dinner for Charlotte Phelan, Skeeter’s mom. Charlotte had just received the
honor of being named the State Regent for Mississippi of the Daughters of
America. Even the President of that prestigious society had come all the way
from Washington to honor her, and she was now in attendance at the banquet in
Charlotte’s home.
When Rachel knocks on the front door adjacent to the
dining room, it is Charlotte, not Constantine, who answers the door, though
that is the servant’s role. Constantine is now too old and slow to stop serving
the meal and get to the front door quickly. Charlotte hastens to the door
before a third round of knocks further disturbs the dinner party.
It is Rachel, now a young woman Skeeter’s age, who
has come back to the home where she too was raised since childhood.
Ignoring Charlotte’s instruction to go around back to
the kitchen door, Rachel enters the banquet room without permission in order to
greet her mother Constantine who is serving at the dinner table. She tells
Charlotte that she will go the kitchen as instructed, but only after embracing
her mother.
At this point Constantine addresses Charlotte by her
first name, saying that now she and Rachel will dutifully leave the banquet
room and go to the kitchen where the servants belong.
But a line has been crossed. It is too late. The
President of the Daughters of America, a staunch racist, is shocked and furious
at such flagrant violations of segregation law protocols. She rises to scold
Charlotte and demands that the servants be punished.
Charlotte, like Herod long ago, must save face in
front of her honored guests. She becomes stern, caustic and callous in tone as she
orders Constantine and Rachel to leave – not just for the remainder of the day,
but forever. They are to be shut out, cast out, forsaken, banished, abandoned.
The scene is difficult and disturbing to watch as
Charlotte with cold and heartless cruelty shuts the screen door in the face of
Constantine. The pleading eyes of the cast out servant search the eyes of
Charlotte, looking for soul and mercy, forgiveness and grace, love and
compassion – but there is none.
Skeeter had been away at college when all this
happened. Coming back home after spring exams, she finds Constantine and Rachel
are gone, moved out. And no explanation is forthcoming from Charlotte. But
Skeeter demands one.
Charlotte tells what happened with a forced sense of
self-righteousness. Constantine had left Charlotte no choice but to demand that
the servant leave. Charlotte’s words are hollow, empty of conviction. She is
disingenuous and hypocritical, and she knows it. Skeeter exclaims that
Constantine and Rachel were “family” for over twenty years. Skeeter knows that
her mother loved them. The banishment and excommunication were heartless and
unconscionable.
Bur Charlotte protests. Still justifying herself she
remonstrates that she went to Constantine’s house the next day, but she was
already gone. She even sent Skeeter’s brother up to Chicago to bring
Constantine home, but when he got there Constantine had died.
In a most powerful and poignant scene, Skeeter with a
tear-stained face confronts her mother and cries out, “You broke her heart!” A broken
heart had killed Constantine, a heart broken and pierced by the rejection of
those she loved.
Yet even in the face of that rejection and the pain
it caused, it is so clear that the love of Constantine – and that of Aibileen
as well – never grew cold toward those who pierced them. They showed to the
very end of the film a Love like only God can love, Divine Love, courageous
Love, the Love of the Cross, the Love of the Sacred Heart of Christ.
Why do I believe this? Why do I believe that
Constantine to her dying breath searched the horizon for “family” to come for
her – like the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son? Why do I even know with
certainty that Constantine “passionately embraced” Charlotte’s “…rejection of
her with a love unto death, with a love that would never let go.” (Quote from
Fr. Simeon at St. Joseph’s Abbey, Spencer, MA)
It is because of her communion with Jesus – Jesus
Who, like the loving Father of the prodigal Son, shows us a redeeming Love that
clings to us, a Divine Love that will never let go; Jesus Who shows us a forgiving
Love, a Love that is Grace, a Love that waits for us and watches the horizon
through sleepless nights, hoping against hope that we will come home – and yet
more than that, a Love that pays the price of the Cross to get us home; a Love
of Christ that empowers us in Holy Communion with Him to journey back home to
the Father’s Love. There, in His presence a vision of Divine Love awaits us in
all its fullness, a burning Love beyond belief, a fire of Love for us in the
Sacred Heart of God.
It is a glimpse of that Love which Constantine,
Aibileen, the black saints, and all the saints of the past mirror to us.
At this time in our country people are once more
playing the race card. Racism itself once more threatens to raise its ugly head
throughout our land and destroy the “united stand” of the United States. Let us
then invoke the black saints and all the saints to intercede for us before the
presence of Jesus. May they pray with us to the Lord for God to save our
country from the demonic darkness that has in so many ways come over our land –
especially though may they pray with us for God to save our country from the
demonic darkness of racial hatred – a hatred that once gripped our land like a
vice, and threatens to do so once more, now, again, in our day and time.
