INBOX INSPIRATIONS
June 29, 2022
Holy Persons – 1
Mother Mary Lange
Dear Friends,
Elizabeth Clarisse Lange, a woman of color, was born in 1789 in what is now the country of Haiti. Her family was rather wealthy by the standards of that day. During the Haitian Revolution, they fled to Cuba where Elizabeth received an excellent education. She immigrated to the United States and settled in Baltimore by 1813.
At that time, the free African American population in Baltimore already outnumbered the city’s slave population. The problem was that there were not enough schools for Black children. In fact, there were no free public schools for Black children until 1866. Elizabeth recognized the need for education for African American children and opened a school for them in her home.
As time passed, she met a Sulpician priest, Father James Nicholas Joubert. He was providing education to African American children who attended the Lower Chapel at Saint Mary’s Seminary in downtown Baltimore. He needed help with this, and so he requested and received permission from the Archbishop to seek two women of color to serve as teachers. Very soon Elizabeth Lange and Marie Balas became these teachers. Father Joubert suggested that these women form a religious order. They had already felt called to become consecrated religious but did not know how to do this since no religious order would accept women of color. With Father Joubert’s efforts, the Archbishop of Baltimore approved the establishment of this new community of religious, the Oblate Sisters of Providence.
This was the first religious congregation of women of African American descent. Their primary mission was the Catholic education of young girls. In 1829, Elizabeth Lange and three other women took their first vows. Elizabeth took the name “Mary” and became the first superior general of the new community. Thus, she became known as Mother Mary Lange. The Oblates began a school that was to become known as the Saint Frances Academy and is still operating today. While experiencing poverty and racism, these Sisters sought to give a Catholic education to the Black community.
Mother Mary Lange died in 1882 after many years of outstanding and effective service. In 1991, her cause for canonization was begun and is still in process. She is one of those holy and outstanding persons in our Catholic history. By the way, in 2021, a new Mother Mary Lange Catholic School was opened, the first new Catholic school in Baltimore in over fifty years.
Father Michael Schleupner
July 6, 2022
Holy Persons – 2
Thomas Merton
Dear Friends,
This is the second in a series on Holy Persons. These are some women and men who have not been canonized or formally declared saints by the Church, but who have lived exemplary lives as persons of faith and have had significant influence both within and outside of Catholicism. Last week, in the Inbox of June 29, my focus was on Mother Mary Lange. Today it is on Thomas Merton.
Merton was born in France in 1915. With the dangers of World War I, his parents moved to the United States soon after Thomas’ birth. Raised more or less as a Christian, Merton was eventually encouraged by a Hindu friend to delve into Catholicism. He did this and was received into the Church at a parish in New York City in 1938. There, Merton had been attending Columbia University, where he earned both undergraduate and master’s degrees and did doctoral studies.
Nevertheless, three years after his baptism, Merton felt drawn to a life of more solitude and prayer and sought admission into the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He was admitted in 1941, was ordained to the priesthood in 1949, and remained a Trappist priest and member of Gethsemani for the rest of his life. His Trappist name was Father Louis.
Merton published his autobiography in 1948, The Seven Storey Mountain. This became a bestseller. It remains a widely-read book. Merton went on to write many other books and essays, such as New Seeds of Contemplation.
While very much a contemplative, Merton became more and more open to the world. He saw the connectedness of all persons and things. He was a pacifist especially in response to the Vietnam War. He was ardent in his vision of social equality and racial tolerance. Likewise, Merton was interested in what other religions and spiritual traditions taught. He was ahead of his time in being a proponent of interfaith understanding. He especially explored Eastern religions and met with the Dalai Lama and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. With the permission of his abbot, he attended international conferences on religion and died in Thailand while attending a gathering of Christian monks.
“Merton was above all man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church. He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.”
Father Michael Schleupner
Quotation above from an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in 1915 by Pope Francis.
July 13, 2022
Holy Persons – 3
Anne Frank
Dear Friends,
This is the third in a series titled Holy Persons. These are some women and men who have not been canonized or formally declared saints by the Church, but who have lived exemplary lives and have had significant influence. Today, the focus is on Anne Frank.
Born in 1929 in Germany, Anne and her family were of Jewish heritage. Her parents experienced the rising anti-Semitic hatred in Germany and, with their two daughters, moved to Amsterdam in the mid 1930’s. There they lived and worked, but as the Nazis overtook the Netherlands, life became more threatening for all Jews. So, in 1942, the Frank family (parents and two daughters) went into hiding in the attic and annex of a building owned by friends. It was during this time that young Anne began to write. She had been given a journal for her birthday in June, 1942, and decided to use this for her diary. She wrote on most days and continued until August 1944 when the Nazis discovered and arrested the family. Anne was eventually taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she died of typhoid in early 1945 at the age of fifteen. Her mother and sister also died in concentration camps; only her father survived.
A friend had saved Anne’s diary and gave it to her father Otto. He proceeded to have this published and, in that way, fulfill his young daughter’s hope of being a journalist. This became known as The Diary of a Young Girl and has been widely read throughout the world. Anne Frank’s sense of humanity and dogged hope in the face of great injustice and persecution have touched the hearts of millions of people. Here are a few excerpts from The Diary of a Young Girl.
“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
“I’ve found that there is always some beauty left – in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.”
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.”
Father Michael Schleupner
July 20, 2022
Holy Persons – 4
Galileo Galilei
Dear Friends,
This is the fourth in a series titled Holy Persons. These are some women and men who have not been canonized or formally declared saints by the Church, but who have lived good lives and have had significant influence. Today, the focus is on the man whom we usually refer to simply by his first name, Galileo.
Galileo was born in 1564 in Pisa. He received an excellent education in medicine, mathematics, and science in Pisa and in Florence where his family had moved. Eventually, he became a professor in Padua. He was an astronomer, physicist, and engineer. He and his family were Catholics.
Among other things, Galileo invented the thermometer. He also made major improvements to the telescope and with these advances, he was able to discover craters and mountains on the moon, the moons of Jupiter, and other truths of the universe.
In his day, most educated people thought that the earth was the center of the universe. It was commonly accepted that the sun and all other bodies in the universe revolved around the earth. Nevertheless, Galileo was passionate to prove the theory of the astronomer Copernicus (1473-1543) that the earth revolved around the sun. Following Copernicus, he proposed heliocentrism – that the sun is the center of the universe and that the earth revolves around the sun. Some fellow scientists disagreed with him, and the Roman Inquisition in 1615 declared his position as absurd and heretical since it contradicted Scripture. The Congregation of the Index banned his writings. Still, Galileo continued to write and defend his discovery. Finally, in 1633, the Roman Inquisition found him suspect of heresy, ordered him to recant, and placed him under house arrest in Florence for virtually the rest of his life. He continued to work on other scientific projects and finally died in 1642.
Little by little, the Church softened and changed its position. For example, in 1758, the prohibition against heliocentrism was lifted. In 1939, Pope Pius XII said that Galileo was “among the most audacious heroes of research…not afraid of the stumbling blocks and risks on the way.” Finally, in 1992, Pope John Paul II said that the Church had erred in condemning Galileo and had not recognized the distinction between the Bible and its interpretation.
Galileo made a major contribution to science. He is often referred to as the father of modern science, the father of the scientific method, and the father of observational astronomy. His body is entombed in the historic Santa Croce Church in Florence.
Father Michael Schleupner
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