May The Black Saints Intercede For US In The Presence of Jesus

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 2^nd?

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.