“In another portion of the diocese, at Grossetete Bayou, there is a somewhat similar settlement of negroes, who before the war were sold in Maryland, to Louisiana Protestant planters. The history of their trials for religion, their constancy to the faith, would embellish a page in the history of the Martyrs of the Church. Much is said of the inconsistency of the negro, but my experience convinces me, that when the negro has been brought up in the knowledge and practice of religion, he is as constant as any white Catholic under the circumstances. Bad training and ignorance degenerate their mind and heart, as it does with the white population. We are trying to raise means to build a church for that settlement. I regret very much that the Commission has been obliged to diminish the allocation. Our work is increasing and the funds diminishing. May the Lord provide some other means.”
The following Pastoral Letter issued last year by the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Louisville, sets forth strongly and earnestly the claims of the Negro and Indian Mission work on our sympathy and generous aid.
The Colored and Indian Missions.
The following is taken from a Pastoral Letter issued last year by Rt. Rev. Bishop McCloskey of Louisville. It sets forth strongly and earnestly the claims of the Negro and Indian mission work to our sympathy and generous aid.
“If thousands of these wretched beings of whom we speak, are still as ignorant and destitute of the light of Christianity, as heathen, so to say, as when the first settler landed on our shores, whose fault is it? And if they are now fast falling back into the practice of their old heathen rites, who are responsible for abominations which disgrace the Christians’ name? Christ died for all; for the African as well as the European. Have we recognized this fact? Have we come up to the full measure of the duty we owe to our less favored brother? and when we found him lying in helpless misery, bruised and beaten,—have we taken him up and carried him to an inn, and like the good Samaritan, pored oil into his wounds? or have we not rather, like the unfeeling priest and cold hearted Levite, passed him by and left him lying by the way-side, as if his heavenly Father was not ours also? These, dearly beloved, are questions that we must answer at the judgment seat. “I was hungry and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me not to drink: naked and you clothed me not; sick and you did not visit me;” and the answer will come to you as distinct and definite as to the astonished culprit, who could not see Christ in the person of the poor and needy. “Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least ones, neither did you do it to me.”
Yes, dearly beloved, He who died to redeem us all, will surely hold us accountable, unless we make such tardy reparation as we are able, for the wrongs done these neglected creatures, in whose behalf the Church pleads so earnestly and yet so tenderly to-day. “Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”
What the Church wishes you to do just now is to strengthen the hands of those noble bands of missionaries—priests of God and devoted Sisters of Mercy and Charity; heroic Ursulines and brave daughters of St. Benedict, now laboring among our Colored brethren in the South, and, in the far West, among the scanty remnants of a race that still clings (and who can blame them?) with the tenacity of despair to their last footholds in a land they once proudly called their own.
The Church, which to the Catholic, is the voice of God, wishes you to put in the hands of the self-denying workers in that rougher portion of the Lord’s vineyard, the funds they need to carry on the work they have in hand. These holy missionaries would carry the glad tidings of salvation to the benighted children of the forest. They would plant in their midst schools in which young Indian boys and girls may be trained in civil learning; and churches into which all may be gathered round the altar of God, and taught to know and worship in spirit and in truth Jesus Christ, their Redeemer, whose children they are, and, equally with us, heirs of eternal life. “Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” It is the humility and the meekness of Jesus that is to win for us the great prize of eternal life for which each one, in his own way, is daily striving. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.” It is the beauty of our soul not the color of our skin that will be the real test of our right to gaze upon the glory of God in paradise. “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.”
Such then, in brief, is the object for which this collection is to be taken up at all the Masses on the First Sunday in Lent—a noble and a blessed work, and full of richest merit for all who approach it in the spirit of Christian charity, and with kindly feelings toward those of their brethren, who, as you know too well, are utterly unable to help themselves.
The heroic self-abnegation of those priests and nuns who have gone forth into a sort of voluntary exile to spend themselves and be spent for Christ in the service of the forsaken and despised Indian, whose lot, to some extent, they share, is worthy of our highest admiration; for this, Dearly beloved, is not a field of labor which all would willingly select—this life of perpetual self-sacrifice, ending only in death. The very nobility of the sacrifice they have made is in itself one of their strongest claims on your generous support; for (do not forget it), but for this their heroic self-denial, you would not easily find a means of discharging a debt you owe a race which for two long centuries has been so cruelly dealt with;—a race, too, that has proved itself time and again, in council and on battle field, as brave, as skillful, and as magnanimous as your own. And yet, to our shame, be it spoken, nearly all that are left of this singular, and in some respects, mysterious people, are now wanderers upon the wild prairie, eking out, as best they can, a miserable existence on the paltry pittance that is doled out to them, and are to-day, practically speaking, as destitute of religious instructions as were their pagan forefathers. Oh! Dearly Beloved, what a commentary is this sad spectacle on the boasted superiority of our Christian civilization! Take heed, lest Christ’s words on witnessing the faith of the centurion, and the want of it on the part of those to whom He was speaking, may one day rise up in judgment against you: “I say to you that many shall come from the East and the West, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Come, then, We entreat you in the bowels of Christ’s mercy;—in the name of Him who for your sakes, and for the sake of those for whom We are pleading, hung naked on the cross, despising the shame; come to the aid of these devoted missionaries who are doing what they can to save this people worthy of a better fate; remembering the rich graces poured out centuries ago on your own ancestors in the faith; for what after all, are these brave missionaries doing, but just what St. Patrick did for Ireland, St. Boniface for Germany, St. Francis Xavier for the savage tribes of India, and St. Francis of Sales, the gentle apostle of the Swiss, for the tens of thousand whom he rescued from the enemy of souls.
Dearly beloved, a glorious work is going on in your midst and you know it not. If, then, you hear the voice of God to-day, harden not your hearts; turn not a deaf ear to the voice pleading within you for your destitute Colored and Indian Brethren; but take in hand at once the blessed work which your generous hearts prompt you to do. Rise up like true men, and shake off the forgetfulness of the past, and let your charity respond in full measure to this earnest appeal to you for help. It comes to you with the sanction of grave and venerable prelates who in council have weighed the matter well, and now make known to you the obligation you are under. The rich results of your generosity you may not live to see. Leave that to God. The just man lives by faith, and knows that if in loving kindness to the poor and destitute he casts his bread upon the waters, it will come back to him, not in the shape of human praise, but in the fullness of divine mercy, which will not be wanting to him in that supreme hour when he will stand most in need of it. Strive thus, dearly beloved, to make your vocation and election sure; that, for your kindness to the needy, you may one day hear those words so full of comfort and divine love: “Come ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you; for I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink; I was naked and you clothed me; sick, and you visited me; for as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to Me. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”
You will have the sweet consolation of knowing that you have hearkened to the voice of the Bishops whom the Holy Ghost has placed over the Church in this our beloved country—this favored land which is ours by so many pleasing associations;—discovered by a fearless Catholic navigator, aided, as he was in turn, by the royal munificence of that pearl of Christian Queens, “Isabella the Catholic;”—its early missionaries devoted sons of St. Dominic, St. Francis and St. Ignatius, who were the first to plant the cross and spread the true faith on American soil, which they watered with their blood;—this blessed land of ours now dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and tenderly guarded by our dear Lady, the Immaculate Mother of our God, and sweet comforter of the afflicted.
