Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Memorial of Saints John de Brebeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Black Robe
I became a minister by the gift of God’s grace. This grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ and bring to light for all, what is the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past in God who created all things.
Eight European Jesuits prayed with, converted, and baptized North American Indians in the 1600s. All of them were eventually tortured and killed by unconverted Indians. But they were not forgotten, and three hundred years later they were canonized. Author James Martin calls Black Robe, a movie about Brebeuf and Jogues, one of the top ten movies about saints: “Black Robe offers a man who strives to bring God to the people that he ends up loving deeply. The final depiction of the answer to the question, “Blackrobe, do you love us?” is an attempt to sum up an entire Catholic tradition of missionary work.”
This was according to the eternal purpose accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness of speech and confidence of access through faith in him. God indeed is my savior; I am confident and unafraid.
But still, bad stuff happens. Wikipedia’s summary of Black Robe’s plot concludes: “The film ends with a golden sunrise. (However) an intertitle states that fifteen years later, the Hurons, having accepted Christianity, were routed and killed by their enemies the Iroquois; the Jesuit mission to the Hurons was abandoned and the Jesuits returned to Quebec.”
My strength and my courage is the Lord, and he has been my savior. With joy you will draw water at the fountain of salvation. Among the nations make known his deeds, let them be known throughout all the earth.
In 2016 my buddy Chaplain Chris and I were among the first to see Silence, a Martin Scorsese film about seventeenth century Jesuits in Japan, who like Brebeuf and Jogues, encountered initial acceptance and then endured horrible torture and death as their hosts realized the political and social consequences of allowing Christian evangelists into Japan. We sat in the dark theater, spellbound by the music and the story unfolding in front of us.
After the movie, after our weeping, we walked a bit and made the inevitable comparison of our lives to the lives of those Jesuit missionaries, to our freedom and their persecution, to our life and their death, and our lazy-hazy-days-of-summer way of pursuing God, going to church, praying, witnessing to others … you name it. Christianity is easy for us. Too easy.
Be sure of this: at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. So you must be prepared. Much will be required of the person entrusted with much.
Chris and I wanted to be entrusted with much. We want to be ready, alert, watchful, and prepared. Six years later he is still a prison chaplain and I am a spiritual director and counselor. We have not been tested with physical torture. Are we doing what God asks of us? Can we do more?
(Ephesians 3, Isaiah 12, Matthew 24, Luke 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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