Missionary John Thayer

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

John Thayer (1755-1815) was a New England convert, educated at Yale where he was taught that all things Roman Catholic were despicable. Then he went to Europe and underwent a conversion—a most unexpected religious change. He wrote a book about his experience, The Conversion of the Reverend John Thayer, formerly a Protestant Minister of Boston, Written by Himself, which was of interest to New Englanders, then he returned and became a priest, the first New Englander consecrated by John Carroll. He served in Boston (where at the time a priest was really a missionary among the overwhelming majority in opposition), got into some intellectual controversies between Catholics and Protestants, then went out west (the Old Northwest, Ohio River Valley) to be a missionary. Eventually he went to Ireland, where he lived the rest of his life as a village priest.

Thayer’s life is instructive in several ways. He was restless and headstrong, but had to learn to give into Providence, to accept God’s ways. He was controversial and opinionated—as a Catholic living in New England he experienced bias towards his beliefs, but he did not learn the lesson, and turned his bias against slaves in Kentucky. Eventually his legacy would be a symbol of wrongheaded bias that could take a fiery and deadly turn.

Thayer served as a Protestant chaplain during the Revolutionary War, but when the war began to grind to a halt, Thayer, restless, decided to travel to Europe, thinking it would be a novelty to see how Catholics in France and Italy treated a Congregational minister. He was, surprisingly, welcomed by Catholics, and made to feel at home. He learned Italian, and had a lengthy stay in Rome, where, against his previous intentions, he began to fall under the spell of Roman Catholicism: the liturgy, the Saints, the Virgin, the priests: “thanks to that admirable Providence,” he later recalled, “which made all conduce to my good; as the desire of travelling had led me to the centre of light, without my knowledge, so the desire of instructing myself, brought me to the knowledge of the truth without my intention.” Providence had steered him in the opposite way. He attended the Seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris, where he was ordained in 1789, whereupon he returned to Boston.

Boston at the time was a Protestant stronghold of the vestiges of Puritanism with some liberal Protestant beliefs springled in. The number of Catholics in the city was perhaps a hundred or so, and these were mostly French-speaking immigrants and a few Irish immigrants, and neither saw eye to eye. The French were suspicious of a convert American priest, though the Irish were more tolerant of Father Thayer. The first American bishop, John Carroll, gave Father Thayer permission to try to organize a church, and to begin to spread the Good News throughout the New England towns surrounding Boston. There were a few French missionary priests in the neighborhood as well, though they mostly did not get along with Thayer.

Father Thayer, indeed, was a fiery personality, often argumentative, unwilling to ignore an attack on his person or his religion. He often argued with his French counterparts as well as the clergy of Boston. Thayer, for example, engaged in a literary battle with the Protestant clergyman and historian Jeremy Belknap, who had written a history of colonial America in which he described the Wars for Empire between the English and the French, and accused the French of converting the Algonquian tribes of northern New England not only to Catholicism, but to hatred for Protestants as well. Thayer took Belknap to task for not presenting both sides of the story, that Protestants had been just as violent and warlike as their Native American counterparts, and French priests, such as Father Sebastian Rale, the Jesuit missionary to the Norridgewock Indians of Maine, did them a service not only by converting them to the true faith but also by helping them defend their homeland against aggressive Protestant militia forces. Thayer accused Belknap and other New England Protestants of bias and name-calling, taunting Catholics for being superstitious idol-worshippers. Such was the atmosphere of bigotry and oppression in which American Catholics lived at the beginning of the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Bishop Carroll grew impatient with Father Thayer’s combativeness, even if it was for a good cause. When Thayer, who became increasingly frustrated in his attempts to spread the Great Commission in Massachusetts, requested a new assignment as a missionary in the trans-Appalachian West, Carroll agreed. But Thayer’s time working in the vineyard of Kentucky was not fruitful either. When he arrived, he worked with Father Stephen Badin and other priests who at the time relied on slave labor to provide for material wealth to engage in their frontier ministry. Catholics such as Father Badin argued that slaves were children of God deserving baptism and the sacraments, but their inferiority to whites meant that enslavement was what was best for their own needs. The New Englander Thayer was at first outraged. But in time, when he became obsessed with building a new convent, he convinced himself that he could not do it without slaves, so changed his tune, embraced slavery, and even was accused (anecdotally) of whipping recalcitrant slaves. Such erratic behavior could only mean he was dissatisfied. He finally left Kentucky, and America as well, adding to his complete departure from his Protestant heritage by completely departing from his New England ancestry. In 1803 he journeyed to Ireland, settling in Limerick, where he became a parish priest.

But Father Thayer could not escape Providence, could not escape the impact he would have on America. In Ireland he got to know James Ryan, his daughters Margaret, Anne, Mary, and Catherine, and their cousin Catherine O’Connell Molineaux. Thayer, thinking about his homeland and wishing still to make an impact, contemplated helping the young women go to America to join the Ursuline convent in Quebec. He wrote to his friend Father Francis Anthony Matignon to help the Ryans and their cousin. The young women departed Ireland and traveled to America, where Father Matignon welcomed them and helped them to travel to the Ursuline convent at Trois Rivières in Canada, which they entered for their novitiate. Meanwhile Father Thayer became ill and died, leaving behind a legacy of funds that he had requested Father Matignon invest for the purpose of eventually building an Ursuline convent in Boston. Before he died Father Matignon invested the money, which earned interest while the Ryan women became Ursuline nuns intent on going to Boston to serve. The Ryan sisters–Mary Ryan, Sister Joseph, superior; Catherine Molineaux, Sister Mary Angela; Catherine Ryan, Sister Mary Magdalene; Margaret Ryan, Sister Mary Augustine–arrived in Boston in 1820, opened the convent (in nearby Charlestown) under the authority of Bishop Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus, and began working with the poor. In time, as renewed anti-Catholicism swept New England, the convent in Charlestown was notorious as a place where Ursuline nuns groomed young women for, Protestants believed, diabolical purposes. Intense hatred and bigotry, the kind of sinful feelings Father Thayer had experienced when he first came to Boston, the same hatred he turned upon others, slaves, in Kentucky, came full circle. The Mount St. Benedict Convent was attacked and burned down by an angry mob of Protestants in 1834, becoming a symbol of the destructive hatred that Christians—all humans–fall prey to.

A version of this essay appeared in Catholic Exchange

Posted in American History, Christianity, Great Commission | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Junipero Serra: Work and Prayer

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Franciscan Junipero Serra (1713-1784), one of the founders of Catholicism in California, should he miraculously walk the paths of California today (on tired, sore, bare feet, for he believed in the practice of mortification), he would be astonished at the vitriol and condemnations of his efforts at bringing the Great Commission among the native people of California.

In recent years the Left has joined on the bandwagon of hating Franciscan missionaries such as Fray Serra, who has become a symbol of the evils of the Spanish missionary experience in colonial California. Serra has been accused of outrageous actions by the Left in books such as Bad Indians by Deborah Miranda (2013) and in petitions to condemn his memory in such as the following: “Serra is not the historical hero people thought when this landmark statue to him was erected [in Ventura], one of many throughout California, as a historical emblem, he is toxic and should be removed. As a community we cannot and will not support the dehumanization of the Native American community any longer. We are calling for restorative justice and are petitioning for his statue to be removed immediately.” (https://www.change.org/p/ventura-city-council-removal-of-father-serra-statues-name-change-of-schools)

In response, Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez declared: “The real St. Junipero fought a colonial system where natives were regarded as ‘barbarians’ and ‘savages,’ whose only value was to serve the appetites of the white man. For St. Junipero, this colonial ideology was a blasphemy against the God who has ‘created (all men and women) and redeemed them with the most precious blood of his Son’.” Fray Serra “lived and worked alongside native peoples and spent his whole career defending their humanity and protesting crimes and indignities committed against them.” (https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/45029/st-junipero-serra-protested-colonial-oppression-and-abuses-archbishop-gomez-says)

Yes, Junipero Serra sacrificed his life for others. A native of Majorca, he was an intellectual and expert on the Medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus. A Franciscan devoted to the Great Commission, Fray Serra responded to Jesus’ commandment to leave family and friends and, in 1749, journeyed to America. Upon landing at Veracruz, he traveled to Mexico City by foot in an act of humility and mortification. Arriving, he stopped to pray at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, then joined the faculty of the College of San Fernando, where he often spent years working as a missionary to the people of the Querétaro region northwest of Mexico City. In 1767, Fray Serra was appointed presidente of Franciscan missions in California, to which he journeyed.

Fray Serra traveled to Baja California, where the Spanish had established numerous missions, before turning his attention to the north, Alta California, in 1769. He journeyed overland through Baja California, halting on his journey in April, 1769, between Mission Purisima Concepción and Mission Guadalupe, where he found the local Indian tribe, the Cochimi, suffering from lack of food. “When night came on I tarried on the ground,” he wrote in his diary. “There I talked with some ten families of Indians, and when I asked them for the reason of their being there, they told me with much sorrow that they were of the mission of Guadalupe; and that the Father, for want of provisions, had found himself obliged to send them out to the mountains to seek their food; and that as they were not accustomed to this, their hardship was great, particularly in seeing their babies suffer and hearing them cry. I felt sorry enough, and though it was somewhat unfortunate that the pack-train was behind and could not arrive that night, they were not left without some alleviation; for with a portion of pinole which I carried they made themselves a dish of good atole, which was for the women and children. Afterwards the process was repeated for the men. At this they were consoled, the more so, when I told them that they should go to their mission; that already corn was on the way to the Father by sea from Mulegé by order of the most illustrious inspector. I took my rest, and had them pray together. They concluded by singing a very tender song of the love of God; and as those of that mission have justly the fame of singing with especial sweetness, I had a good deal of consolation in hearing them.” (Quoted in Zephyrin Engelhardt, The Missions and Missionaries of California (San Francisco: James Barry, 1908), 1: 349-50.)

A month later on May 15th, still on the road in northern Baja California, Fray Serra encountered many Indians whom he called “gentiles,” meaning they had not yet heard the Good News. “And I praised God,” Serra wrote, “for allowing me to encounter such humble creatures for whom there appear to be no obstacles that would prevent them from receiving the light of the Holy Gospel.” In June Serra wrote: “The time we have spent with them has been most pleasurable. Their beautiful physique, comportment, friendliness, and happiness have won all our hearts.” June 26, “one of the women wanted me to hold the infant she was nursing. I held him in my arms for a while, so wishing that I could baptize him.” (Quoted in Beebe and Senkewicz, Junipero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015,)186, 194, 197.)

On his many journeys, usually on foot, Fray Serra often incurred leg sores that became chronic, so that his friends were worried for his health. He had such sores on his journey through Baja California. Arriving at San Diego in July 1769, Serra’s leg unexpectedly began to heal–and so too did the people under his charge at the new mission he founded, Mission San Diego de Alcalá, where he halted to take time (about nine months) to tend to the many sick. In July, 1770, he moved north, founding Mission San Carlos de Monterey on the Carmel River (renamed Mission San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo), a place from where Fray Serra would direct his missionary activities in Alta California. He founded Mission San Antonio de Padua, near Monterey in the Santa Lucia Mountains, in July 1771. Two months later Fray Serra founded Mission San Gabriel, named for the archangel. In 1772 he founded Mission San Luis Obispo de Toloso.

In November, 1776, Fray Fermin Francisco de Lasuén founded Mission San Juan Capistrano on the San Juan Creek. A month later, Fray Serra was journeying with Fray Lasuén on the path from Mission San Carlos on the Carmel River to the new Mission San Juan Capistrano. Caught in a terrible rainstorm, the two Franciscans and their military escort were confronted by warriors from the Chumush tribe, who were often aggressive toward the Spanish; indeed, Fray Lasuén the previous year had narrowly escaped death at their hands. But this time, the Chumush came to the aid of the Franciscans, carrying Fray Serra through a difficult, muddy passage. In return Fray Serra stayed with the people, getting to know them, praying and singing with them. “And for me,” he wrote in his diary, “this served to deepen the compassion I have felt for them for quite some time.” (Quoted in Beebe and Senkewicz, Junipero Serra, 19)

At some of the many missions founded by Fray Serra, such as at San Diego, the local Indians, the Kumeyaay, rebelled against the Spanish presence, especially of the soldiers at the local presidio. On several occasions the Indians attacked the mission. The 1773 attack killed the resident Franciscan missionary, Fray Luis Jayme, who ironically had been a champion of Indian rights against the presidio soldiers. Fray Serra made the decision not to avenge his death, rather to capture, briefly imprison, and set free the Kumeyaay warriors, hoping by such generosity to bring them closer to the faith.

Fray Serra followed the dictates of the Franciscans and other missionaries in America, who believed that Christianity and civilization were linked, that converts must be catechized and learn the sign of the cross before baptism, must learn to farm, and must live in missions to be directed by the missionaries, who thought of the Indians as spiritual children, and believed that often the body must be mortified to embrace the spirit; hence corporeal punishment was often necessary, even if self-inflicted. As he wrote in 1778, “I maintain that settlements populated by fine Spanish citizens who are models of good behavior can be established only after the gentiles who are scattered across the territory have become Christians and have been brought together in their respective . . . missions.” (Quoted in Beebe and Senkewicz, Junipero Serra, 357.)

In Fray Serra’s missions, every day the people of the mission came together for morning mass, which involved the homily and hymns of praise to God. “Then they go to breakfast on the mush (atole) which is made for all, and before partaking of it they cross themselves and sing the Bendito [hymn of praise]; then they go to work at whatever can be done, the padres inclining them and applying them to the work by setting an example themselves; at noon they eat their soup (pozole), which is made for all alike (de comunidad); then they work another stint; and at sunset they return to recite doctrine and end by singing the Alabado,” an evening hymn of praise. (Quoted in Elliott Coues, ed. and trans., On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer: The Diary and itinerary of Francisco Garcés (Missionary Priest) in His Travels through Sonora, Arizona, and California, 1775-1776, vol. 1 (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1900), 262.)

Junipero Serra was a teacher, a man who gave his life to Christ in obedience to the Great Commission. He believed in establishing missions for the Indians to follow the examples of St. Benedict and St. Francis, who, according to Pope Francis, believed in “combining prayer and spiritual reading with manual labor (ora et labora). Seeing manual labour as spiritually meaningful proved revolutionary. Personal growth and sanctification came to be sought in the interplay of recollection and work. This way of experiencing work makes us more protective and respectful of the environment; it imbues our relationship to the world with a healthy sobriety.” (Pope Francis, On the Care for Our Common Home, section 126: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html)

Work and prayer: Junipero Serra taught others to believe what he believed, that these are the keys to a successful life.

A version of this essay appeared in Catholic Exchange

Posted in Biography, Christianity, God's Providence, Great Commission | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Louis Hennepin (1626-1704), Missionary of Hope

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

When a person thinks back to the colonial American past imagining what the first Catholic missionaries who braved the elements, journeyed into the forests, and canoed down American rivers, must have been like, they are thinking of such a person as Frère Louis Hennepin, the epitome of the Catholic missionary in America. Frère Hennepin was a Récollect Franciscan, the Récollects being one of the reform movements of sixteenth century France that emphasized austerity, penance, prayer as well as being devoted to the Great Commission. Frère Hennepin was not only a missionary explorer but a writer as well, penning one of the great accounts of missionary adventure and a lively description of the French colony of Louisiana in his book, Description of Louisiana.

Louis Hennepin was Flemish, born in Belgium, educated in Belgium and France. Early on in life realized his desire to remove himself from the concerns of the world and devote himself to his relationship with God. Hence, after traveling throughout Europe, gaining a lust for adventure and exploration, serving as a chaplain in war, working in the fisheries of Calais, listening to the stories of seamen who had crossed the Atlantic to New France, imagining what the new lands in American must be like, he joined the Récollect Franciscans. Assigned to New France, he sailed in 1675, arriving to Quebec, where he served at Hotel Dieu, the first hospital for the needy and ill in Quebec, before being assigned as chaplain at Fort Frontenac, situated in what is today Kingston where Lake Ontario is the source of the St. Lawrence River; he also served as missionary to the Iroquois at the Quinte Mission on the north shore of Lake Ontario. During these initial years in New France Frère Hennepin, when he was not praying, catechizing Indian children (often in their own languages), teaching Indian children French, caring for the sick, and saying mass, on his off time he traveled about Quebec and Lake Ontario hiking (often alone) into the interior on snowshoes with sled dogs and canoeing wild rivers and streams in search of adventure.

In 1679, Hennepin and other Franciscans joined René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, on a voyage of exploration setting forth from Fort Frontenac across Lake Ontario. They arrived at the mouth of Niagara River, ascended the river to the falls, took portage around the falls, then halted to construct a three-masted small ship, a bark, on which they crossed Lake Erie from east to west. Arriving at around present-day Detroit, they ascended the Detroit River, traveled through Lake St. Claire, then entered Lake Huron. The journey north and west through Lake Huron was harrowing. The storms on Lake Huron were notoriously dangerous, especially for a small wooden ship driven only by sails catching the wind. The Franciscans led the crew in prayers and dedicated the voyage to the care of St. Anthony of Padua. By the end of August they were glad to reach the strait between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, which the French called Michilimackinac. From here they sailed into Lake Michigan. At Green Bay La Salle ordered the bark to return to Niagara while he and fourteen men in four birch bark canoes made the treacherous way south along the shores of Lake Michigan, trying to avoid conflict with the inhabitants, the Pottawattamie Indians. For any of the hundreds of missionaries who traveled the North American wilderness, food was always an issue. The missionary explorers with La Salle faced the possibility of starvation dozens of times. Faith, hope, and commitment to the Great Commission drove them forth. Hunger led them from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River, down which they went until they came upon an Illinois village, the warriors of which threatened to attack. Hennepin recalled in Description of Louisiana that he and the two other Franciscans, Frère Zenobius and Frère Gabriel, approached the Indians, took “their children by the hand, who were all trembling with fear; we manifested much affection for them, entering with the old men and the mothers into the cabins, taking compassion on these souls, which are going to destruction, being deprived of the word of God and lacking missionaries.” Love averted conflict.

               Nearby La Salle established a fort; the men were still desperate for food; their ultimate goals, the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, were still far away. La Salle sent Hennepin and two French voyageurs to reconnoiter the way to the Mississippi. Upon reaching the great river, they did an exploratory descent; they felt much fear. Hennepin led the French canoers in prayer, especially calling upon the aid of St. Anthony, hoping that they would survive if and when they met Indian warriors. Their prayers were answered, as upon meeting with a Sioux war party who threatened death, Hennepin approached them and prostrated himself on bended knee with presents; the warriors spared their lives but made them captives. Forced to ascend the Mississippi to the Sioux village, for nineteen days the war party paddled upriver. Hennepin repeated time and again the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary to gain patience and strength. Soon they reached the path to the village, but the challenges of the forced journey were just beginning. Prayers helped Hennepin endure forced marches from dawn to dusk, crossing icy streams in which Hennepin, who was able to swim, exhausted himself in rushing water with ice shards cutting his skin. He could barely walk at times, but he could not halt, or the penalty would be death.

The Sioux village was at the Falls of St. Anthony on the upper Mississippi River. Here Hennepin was adopted by a Sioux family. His life was hard, with much work and little food, but Hennepin never lost his faith in God. He never lost his purpose for the journey, attempting to impart the Christian message by words and actions to the warriors, their wives, and the little children of the tribe. How does one go from being a captive to a teacher? Challenges faced by all missionaries in North America were the difficulty in communicating their message and the apathy of their listeners, who were engaged in the struggle to survive. Hennepin, like Franciscan missionaries before and since, taught the people of the village to cross themselves, to repeat basic prayers, to kneel, to do homage to the Virgin Mary. He used pictures, prayer beads, crucifixes, all of which the Sioux enjoyed. But often after catechism and prayers they seemed to forget, and the lessons would have to start again. To gain their trust, Hennepin practiced healing arts. He had brought herbal healing aids with him and applied them to the sick along with prayers to Christ and the Virgin for healing. Hennepin was also genuinely fascinated by the people, their culture and customs, their language and beliefs. The Indians, he thought, were amazingly superstitious, but his knowledge was not that much better—Hennepin believed like other seventeenth-century Europeans that the tribes of America were descended from the Lost Tribes of the ancient Hebrews. Indeed, the knowledge of America of the greatest thinkers in Europe was primitive. Knowing this, Hennepin kept track of where he went and what he learned, planning to tell the story of his travels in this massive land that the French had christened Louisiana.

During the summer of 1680, Sieur Du Luth (Dulhut) arrived with a small French contingent, convincing the Sioux to release Hennepin and the two voyageurs. After the grueling trip back to Lake Michigan, where he was able to bivouac for several days to collect himself and rest, he celebrated mass, for he had not had wine for the Eucharist for nine months. “All our Frenchmen went to confession and communion,” he wrote in Description of Louisiana, “to thank God for having preserved us amid so many wanderings and perils.” From here he traveled back to Quebec, and eventually returned to France, where he published his Description of Louisiana in 1697, recounting his many adventures. He concluded the book restating his original aim in going to America —obedience to the Great Commission.

Father Hennepin had been a stranger in a strange land, a Frenchman lost somewhere in North America. Prayer and faith were the foundations to keep himself from the shifting sands of doubt and despair. Another man of God many years later who experienced the challenges of coming to America, an Italian immigrant, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, learned that “hope is an anchor.” In America, Hennepin realized through hunger, fear, and despair that, in Pope Francis’ words, “God has made hope for us.”

Pope Francis, Hope: The Autobiography (NY: Random House, 2025).

Louis Hennepin. A Description of Louisiana. Translated by John Shea. New York: 1880.

A version of this essay appeared in Catholic Exchange

Posted in American History, Biography, Christianity, God's Providence, Great Commission | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

God’s Shadow over History

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Jean-Pierre Caussade in Abandonment to Divine Providence writes truthfully that God is behind all historical events. If so, then it is God’s will that the United States is in 2025 exactly where He wills it to be. And further, that each person is alive and living their lives according to the divine will. This presents each of us with an enviable but problematic position. Enviable, that we are so blessed by God. Problematic, in that we are responsible to our God to make this life as godly and worthwhile as possible. As Caussade tells us, God is with us, working with us. The metaphor Caussade uses is the shadow. Mary was overshadowed by the divine will, and so are we all, he argues. The shadow is “like a veil” covering “sensible objects,” hiding “them from us.” God’s shadow is near us, even merging with our shadows in the bright sunlight. The shadow, the reality of God’s will, is typically concealed from us. How often do we see it, are we aware of the presence of the Lord?

Working backward in time, what are the signs in our lives, individually and collectively, of God’s shadow? History is a collective story of individual lives. God’s interaction with each person, God’s shadow in the lives of hundreds of millions, becomes one great multifaceted shadow that we call American history. How is it possible to make sense of such a complex interaction? How can 350,000,000 stories come together into one? How can 350,000,000 shadows of God’s will be cast into a remarkable yet incomprehensible single shadow?

More mind-boggling is the population of the earth, over eight billion, each human a part of God’s will. Incredibly, there are millions of species of animal types sharing Earth. The numbers of individual animals are in the hundreds if not thousands or millions of trillions– researchers with a great capacity for counting at the National Science Foundation have estimated that there are at least one trillion species of microbial, plant, and animal life residing on Earth.

To make this assessment of the vast wonder of God’s will even more mystifying, consider the infinite layers of time, of births and deaths, even on a single day, and how these wonderful and tragic events, reflecting God’s will, inform us individually of our own lives in the shadow of His will as well as collectively of a single story of the American people in the vast shadow of His will. But more, what of the dead, and their past lives still impacting the present, the memory, the consequences of their actions, all a part of the collective shadow of God’s will? Proceeding further, what of the angels and their actions on behalf of God’s will interacting with humans as they move hither and yon under the eternal shadow of the will of God?

We love to focus on specific instances to reveal for us the significance of time’s passing, God’s will. Some events are incomprehensible. Each individual death appears a tragedy, and collective deaths even more so. How can we make sense of the 9/11 terror attacks, the deaths so apparently random, the impact on other lives so confusing and terrifying? War is like this. It appears so random. Why is one person destroyed when the next person is spared? Often our greatest leaders at such time of war and disaster are those who accept the will of God. George Washington, for example, was praised for this. A minister wrote during the Revolutionary War that “A man is never more truly noble than when he is sensible that he is only a secondary instrument of bringing to pass God’s great designs.” This was in reference to Washington, whose characteristics included humility before God, his realization that Divine Providence, the will of God, was the ultimate reason for American success during the American Revolution. Abraham Lincoln likewise could not understand why America was being destroyed during the Civil War, but he accepted it as God’s will and put himself, as President, in God’s hands. The Gettysburg Address was his most profound statement in this regard. In other revolutionary events, such as the discovery and colonization of America, the one who relies on God’s will and serves as an instrument of that will—people such as Columbus—are most remembered. Pope Leo XIII praised Christopher Columbus for his devotion to God’s will, quoting the explorer as saying “‘I trust that, by God’s help, I may spread the Holy Name and Gospel of Jesus Christ as widely as may be’.”

There is overwhelming evidence in the affirmative to the debate in recent years as to whether or not the United States was formed by Christians who were sure that God’s will was behind the discovery of America by the Europeans, the colonization of the east coast of North America by the British, and the emergence of an independent United States of America in the 1770s and 1780s. Today, this idea is often derided with the sneer that conservatives believe in “American exceptionalism,” yet like it or not, the founders of this country did believe in American exceptionalism because they believed that God was behind the founding and success of the United States of America. And over the course of the past two hundred and fifty years, there continue to be huge numbers of Americans who believe that God has destined America for greatness, past, present, and future, conforming to the will of God.  

Of this greatness, this conformity, no single mind can comprehend the infinite thoughts, actions, hesitations, mistakes, influences, accidents, layers and layers of interactions of humans, animals, supernatural presences, all foreseen, all known, all willed in a mysterious shadowy form, like mist on a foggy day, or rays of sunlight filtering through cloudy skies. Trying to conceive of it all just in a moment much less to consider scores of years appears impossible, fruitless, defeating. And yet God wills us to contemplate it, to trace our individual and collective pasts, for Jesus Himself lived in time, moment by moment in the shadow of God’s will. Salvation is accomplished in time. Miracles occur in time. Sin shackles and redemption releases in time. The Eucharistic miracle occurs in time. When Jesus was overwhelmed by time’s passing, by the demands of so many souls, so many people acting in the shadow of God’s will, he sought refuge in quiet and prayer. This was His way of making sense. Prayer is the only way we can make sense of time, of the past, the present, and the future, and God’s will guiding us along the path to Himself.

Posted in Christianity, God's Providence | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

God is with Us in Each and Every Moment: The Teaching of Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751)

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, an eighteenth-century French Jesuittheologian, provided a seminal study of God’s will in Abandonment to Divine Providence. Caussade writes that to sense God in each present moment that connects the past and future moments sets the mind to work to know that each moment is an entrance into a knowledge and awareness of God, by which to act accordingly.

Caussade was born but a century after Michel de Montaigne; interestingly, the philosophy of the presence of divine providence suggested in Montaigne’s Essays is found in Caussade’s thought; or rather, Montaigne’s Essays reflect Catholic teachings on providence that Caussade elucidates so brilliantly. In Montaigne’s last essay, “Of Experience,” he anticipates Caussade when he has a person worry that they have not done great deeds, to which Montaigne responds, “What, have you not lived?” The act of living, and the act of living appropriately according to God’s will, is the great task of life, Montaigne argued, as did Caussade.

It is easy today, at a time of “influencers” in social media, of people who hunger for instant fame and fortune, to feel oppressed by time and its passing, that life is going by without any great, noteworthy accomplishments that are news headlines. The love for the future, when a person cannot wait for the moments to pass to get to another time, another day, another week, which Montaigne argued was a disease in his time, as it is in ours, prevents people from actually experiencing the present moment. Each moment is a gift from God and should be savored—one doesn’t know how many such moments one has in life, how many are left.

Caussade argues that each moment is an entrance into the divine, into God’s singular moment. How? Imagine the following: To accept God’s will, accept the presence of God’s will in each and every moment, is to accept the moment, and to accept is to find peace. If each moment is up to me then I resist because of my uncertainty and powerlessness. But if each moment is God’s will, and I don’t resist it but accept it, then the moment, now, as well as what will happen, as well as what has happened, is not up to me. To surrender to God’s will is to surrender to the moment, and to embrace the infinite and the eternal. Caussade teaches that God’s will and my will can be simultaneous in operation. God gives us free will to accept His will. I can use free will and resist, but that is when anxiety and confusion take over. To allow fear and anxiety to control in the moment is to resist, to not accept, because of the assumption that my will, or another’s, is in control, and not God. Such is sin.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade was a spiritual director to the Nuns of the Visitation at Nancy, France; he was a priest and college professor and rector, a director of theological study for Jesuits. His surviving works are his short book Abandonment to Divine Providence as well as letters to the Sisters at Nancy. Caussade’s Abandonment reads like a manual for students, for those engaging the religious life as members of a religious order, but his book also is addressed to everyday people living in a secular world. One can sense in reading his work that he experienced the failures and successes that he describes, and that his understanding of divine providence came about from a life of intense devotion and prayer.

Abandonment to divine providence is the “Sacrament of the present moment.” To abandon oneself can be by the active duty of embracing God’s will in the church sacraments, or it can be by the passive duty of accepting in each moment what one discerns as God’s will. It might involve pain and suffering, but in acceptance one is doing one’s duty. Here saintliness is not in great deeds, rather in willingness to accept God’s will. To accept God’s will is to discover an inner contentment; but the exact opposite is true: to deny God’s will is to find the ultimate punishment of anger, frustration, discontent, self-persecution. To be focused on self is “to prevent God from finding an entrance.”

Faith and love are the tools for discovering God’s will, Caussade writes. Faith provides us with the intuitive knowledge of God’s will and of the mysteries of the universe. Those with faith have a different source of information, a different knowledge, from those who examine the world by the senses alone. “To consider God equally good in things that are petty and ordinary as in those that are great and uncommon is to have a faith that is not ordinary, but great and extraordinary.”

God’s will encompasses all things. Caussade provides a fascinating argument that echoes the writings of Pope Francis on “Our Common Home” that “the divine activity permeates the whole universe, it pervades every creature; wherever they are it is there; it goes before them, with them, and it follows them; all they have to do is to let the waves bear them on.” The key to life (which all creatures know, but do humans?) is “to submit with faith and love to the designs of Providence in all those things that have to be done or suffered without going out of their way to seek occasions for themselves.” To do God’s will, no matter if animal or human, is to be sanctified.

Pope Francis could have easily written these words from Abandonment to Divine Providence: “All creatures that exist are in the hands of God.” “The action of the creature is a veil which covers the profound mysteries of the divine operation.” “If only we had faith we should show good-will to all creatures; we should cherish them and be interiorly grateful to them as serving, by God’s will, for our perfection.”

Another welcome and astonishing argument that Caussade provides regards history. His arguments reflect the writings of Pope Benedict XVI. “The sacred Scripture,” Caussade writes, “is the mysterious utterance of a God yet more mysterious and the events of the world are the obscure language of this same hidden and unknown God.” As a professor of history, I particularly cherish the arguments that Caussade makes that just as nature is “Elder Scripture, writ by God’s own hand” (Edward ), likewise human history is a scripture, a tale of God’s will, and it is wrong for us to neglect this way to interpret the past, that is, to assign all events in history to human will rather than to God’s will. “All the events which form the world’s history show forth these divine attributes,” Caussade writes; “all teach the same adorable word.”

Caussade also does not ignore the role of the Logos in time. For He through Whom all things exist has a continuous role in the history of the universe. As Caussade writes, “That which God does at each moment is a divine thought expressed by a created thing, therefore all those things by which He intimates His will to us are so many names and words by which He makes known His wishes.” How the Logos, the Word, acts in time is a mystery that far surpasses human understanding, even awareness. Caussade counsels us to accept that “The divine action beholds in the Word the idea after which you ought to be formed and this example is always before it.”

An important argument in Abandonment to Divine Providence is that those are blessed who abide by God’s will in whatever role in life God assigns: “The more assiduously do they apply themselves to their little work, so simple, so hidden, so secret, and outwardly contemptible, the more does God embroider and embellish it with brilliant colors. On the surface of this simple canvas of love and obedience His hand traces the most beautiful design, the most delicate, and intricate patterns, the most divine figures.” There is beauty in every task. There is wonder in every job. Disappointment, being laid off, failing to get a promotion, finding one’s cherished dream hitting a wall: these are all part of God’s will. Caussade argues that to question such disappointments, or to condemn God for unexpected tragedies, is to blaspheme.

The ultimate teaching of Jean-Pierre de Caussade is love. To accept God’s will in the moment is to accept God’s love, to decide to live in that moment in love. Faith allows us to recognize the love God has for us in each moment. There is “the real presence of divine love in all creatures, and in all the events of life.”

After reading Abandonment to Divine Providence, this is my mantra: “The divine will is a deep abyss of which the present moment is the entrance.”

(Abandonment to Divine Providence, trans. E. J. Strickland (Tan Books, 2010).)

Posted in Christianity, God's Providence | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Martyr for Christ: Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649)

Posted on August 4, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

The images of the great martyrs of the past, those disciples and followers of Christ who committed their all—body and soul—to the Great Commission, to spread the word to all creatures worldwide, inspired Jean de Brébeuf as a young man growing up in France. To the end of personal sacrifice for Christ he became a novice of the Jesuit order in Rouen; in 1623 he was ordained a Jesuit priest. Two years later, when he was thirty-two-years old, he journeyed to America.

The French since Champlain’s founding of New France had generally befriended the native tribes of the St. Lawrence Valley. These were largely Algonquin tribes of the American northeast. French missionaries, the Jesuits and Franciscans, were pushing further west during the seventeenth century into a region the French called Huronia–what is today Ontario west of Lake Ontario and north of Lake Erie to Lake Huron–where an Iroquoian tribe, the Hurons, resided. This region among the Hurons was where Père Brébeuf ultimately wanted to perform his missionary work.

Upon arriving in New France, he at first served as a missionary with an Algonquin tribe, the Montagnais (today called the Innu), learning their language and culture so he could teach them about the life of Jesus, the sacraments of the Church, as well as prayers and the most important Scriptures. For a few years, 1629-1632, Père Brébeuf and other missionaries had to return to France because the English had taken control of Quebec; but in 1632 England relinquished control and the missionaries returned. Brébeuf journeyed to Huronia. Foretelling his future fate, Brébeuf had proclaimed on the eve of his return to New France, “Lord Jesus, my Redeemer, Thou hast saved me with Thy Blood and precious Death. In return for this favor, I promise to serve Thee all my life in Thy Society of Jesus, and never to serve anyone but Thee. I sign this promise with my own blood, ready to sacrifice it all as willingly as I do this drop.”

He ministered to the Neutral Indians of the Niagara region (an Iroquoian tribe) as well as the Huron (now known as the Wendat) during the 1630s and early 1640s. Eventually Brébeuf and other missionaries worked out of Fort St. Marie on the Wye River. The Hurons were much weaker than the Iroquois tribes to the south, the Mohawks and Senecas, and under constant threat of attack. The fort provided some protection, but not enough, for the Jesuits had spread themselves out in ten different missions in the Huron region.

In 1649 Seneca and Mohawk warriors attacked Huron villages, overrunning them. Père Brébeuf and a colleague, Père Gabriel Lalemant, where captured. The Huron villagers and the French who lived and served the missionaries were either summarily killed or captured. The Iroquois peoples of this time, before their conversion to Christianity, believed in torturing their victims to taunt and humiliate them, to watch them suffer, and to avenge their dead. The Black Robes such as Brébeuf and Lalemant especially annoyed the Iroquois because the Jesuits had made known their desire to come among the Iroquois to teach and convert and turn them to French ways of Christian civilization. The warriors made a point with these two Jesuits: they stripped them, pulled out their finger nails, and beat them with cudgels on their loins, arms, legs, belly, head, and face. All the while Père Brébeuf prayed and sang, and told the other Christians suffering torment to be true to Christ who suffered with them. Some of Brébeuf ‘s tormentors knew him. One, whom Brébeuf had tried to convert several years before, said to the priest, according to an eyewitness whose memories were later recorded in the Jesuit Relations, “thou sayest that Baptism and the sufferings of this life lead straight to Paradise; thou wilt go soon, for I am going to baptize thee, and to make thee suffer well, in order to go the sooner to thy Paradise.”

The baptizer, true to his words, began the most unimaginable tortures that are best left unsaid. It took Brébeuf hours to die and Lalemant even longer. Their martyrdom was truly Christ-like, the intense pain, the need for patience, waiting upon God’s will to take them to Him. Brébeuf knew that he was not the first, rather there had been thousands of Catholic martyrs over the centuries, and in New France, there had been martyrs before him, and others would come after. French Jesuit René Goupil, for example, had suffered martyrdom in 1642, seven years earlier, at the hands of the Iroquois. Another French martyr, Isaac Jogues, had escaped with his life after watching Goupil’s martyrdom. “During thirteen days,” he recalled, “that we spent on that journey, I suffered in the body torments almost unendurable, and, in the soul, mortal anguish.” Jogues returned to France in 1646 only to come again among the Huron, was captured again, tortured again, this time to death. He had been sent as a peace ambassador to the Mohawks, who received him and his fellow Jesuit Jean de Lalande with death. Another who had been martyred, just a year before Père Brébeuf, was Jesuit Antoine Daniel, who during an attack on the Huron village of St. Joseph, regardless of his own danger, baptized as many children as he could before they were clubbed to death by the invaders. When all was lost he stood between the attackers and the innocent children and aged and was struck down by the aggressors. There were two other Jesuits who died the same year as Père Brébeuf: Charles Garnier and Noël Chabanel. These eight who died during the decade of the 1640s were canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1930 and are known collectively as the Canadian martyrs.

The word martyr in the New Testament is Greek for witness. The Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans and other Catholic missionaries who came to America knew that in going among the American Indians that some tribes like the Iroquois were intransigent toward their teachings, and their violence and cruelty knew no bounds. Père Brébeuf knew this, yet such was his drive, his desire to spread the word of God, to fulfill the Great Commission, that he put his life in God’s hands, knowing that whatever his fate it would conform to Divine Providence: even if he was to be tortured to a horrible bloody death that it was God’s will that the other sufferers watch and learn, and that even the torturers watch and learn, so that in time, eventually, they too would succumb to God’s will, and embrace the Good News.

This essay appeared in a slightly modified form in Catholic Exchange: https://catholicexchange.com/whats-better-left-unsaid-the-testimony-of-jean-de-brebeuf-martyr/

Posted in American History, Biography, Christianity, Great Commission | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

St. James, a Son of Thunder

Posted on August 4, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

James the son of Zebedee and brother of John the Apostle was one of the first disciples of Jesus, was a fiery personality completely committed to the Great Commission, and was the first martyr of Jesus’ disciples.  

The Gospels tell the story of an occasion of no clear time or place, perhaps at Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, when and where Jesus was preaching to listeners from this town and others about the Kingdom of God. It was early in his ministry. Capernaum was a place of fishers, those who went out every day, or night, fishing the great freshwater lake. Among the listeners were two young men, James and John, the sons of a fisher named Zebedee. Jesus preached from a fishing boat owned by Simon Peter, who with his brother Andrew were engaged in the fishing business either alongside or as partners with the Zebedees. After Jesus spoke, he asked Peter to take the boat further out into the lake. Peter had spent some time with Jesus, even had had him at his house, and though the fishers had fished the previous night without success, Peter complied with Jesus’ request to take to the lake again to fish. The fishers lowered the nets and to their astonishment there was such a catch that it threatened the sturdiness of the nets, even threatening the stability of the boat. The Zebedee brothers witnessed the miracle and brought their boat alongside and lowered their nets, which filled with fish. Peter, afraid now, asked the Lord to depart. The Gospels do not record the reaction of the Zebedee brothers.

We can gather from their subsequent relationship with Jesus what might have been their response. One of the brothers, John, was closer to Jesus than his older brother James, and besides John outlived James by a good fifty years; he came to regard Jesus early on as the Christ, but more, the Wisdom of God, the Word, the Logos who was with God in the beginning. We might assume that his brother James had somewhat the same intuitive understanding.

Not only had James witnessed the miracle of the fish, but he was with Peter and John on the mount when Jesus was transfigured. He was with Jesus the many times that Jesus healed the physically and mentally ill. On one occasion at a synagogue a man possessed demanded what Jesus wanted from him, crying out that he knew Jesus was the “holy one of God.” James listened to the parables and sermons, hearing words so forcefully put, so astonishingly truthful, that he knew this person was the Christ.

James, along with his brother John, had learned that Jesus, a craftsman from Nazareth, knew people, each person, knew them entire, their past and future, their suspicions and problems. What is more, the miracle of the fish informed James that this man not only knew each human, but each creature as well: how else would he know where schools of fish were in the lake unless he knew each fish as an individual, as he knew each human as an individual? Thus did James and John discover that Jesus was not only the long-anticipated Messiah but the eternal spoken and written truth, the Logos, long talked about by Greek philosophers. Jesus was (is) God become flesh.

About the particulars of James’ life little is known. He is rarely mentioned in the Gospels, though his presence is implied in the major actions of Jesus’ ministry. His mother, according to Matthew (27: 56), was present at the crucifixion, as was his brother John, hence so too was James. Mark (15,40) says that James’ mother was Salome, wife of Zebedee. John (19, 25) implies that Salome was Mary’s sister, which if true, would mean that Jesus and James were cousins. Salome, if Jesus’ aunt, was sufficiently audacious to request of Jesus that her sons James and John be granted the privilege of sitting next to him in Heaven. Jesus responded that only if they could drink from his cup of suffering. That they were so willing explains Jesus’ nickname for the two brothers, the “Sons of Thunder.” That James was so fervent an apostle explains his early martyrdom.

James was executed in 44, Anno Domini, by Herod’s grandson Herod Antipas, who the Roman emperors Caligula and Claudius allowed to rule a huge amount of territory, including Judaea and Samaria. Antipas was obsequious to the Romans as well as the Jews, hence he was a persecutor of Christians, and for an unknown reason had James beheaded, as recorded in the Book of Acts (12,2).

Anecdotal evidence suggests that at some point between the Crucifixion and his own death James was an Apostle in Spain, and that his remains are at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.

This article originally appeared in slightly modified form in Catholic Exchange: https://catholicexchange.com/st-james-son-of-thunder/

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08279b.htm
Posted in Christianity, FAQs of Christianity | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saint Anthony of Padua, Franciscan Thaumaturgist

Posted on August 4, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

St. Anthony (1195-1231, Anno Domini) was a Franciscan thaumaturgist famous for his erudition, oratory, works of charity, and miracles. A native of Portugal, for a time he was a cleric with the monastic order of St. Augustine. In his early twenties, hearing of the martyrdoms of followers of Francis of Assisi, and stirred to imitate their sacrifice for Christ, he joined the Friars Minor of St. Francis. Although Anthony lived a short life, he was noteworthy for his willingness to conform to the will of God; for combining the qualities of a scholar and a pastor, for his thought and charity; and for his many miracles.

In February, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI, in a General Audience, discussed at length the life and significance of Saint Anthony. The Pope, himself a superb scholar, recognized the same ability in Saint Anthony. And like Saint Anthony, Pope Benedict found in his life frequently the call of God to shape his course not to his own choosing, but to Another’s will. Saint Anthony was so stirred by the martyrdom of five Franciscans at the hands of the Saracens that he, too, wished to end his short life with martyrdom. But this was not God’s will. As Pope Benedict said, Anthony, having “set out for Morocco,” was stopped by illness, as “divine Providence [had] disposed otherwise.” Anthony ended up in Italy, where he attended a Franciscan meeting at Assisi. The same sense of humility and obscurity that had convinced him that his life should be a brief testament to Jesus Christ made him retire to a cell to live in isolation and solitude. But “the Lord called him to another mission,” in the words of Pope Benedict. Asked to preach, his listeners were astonished by his rhetorical skill, his prodigious memory, and his sophisticated comprehension of the lessons of Scripture. Soon after, Francis sent Anthony a brief message: “To Brother Anthony, . . . Francis sends his greetings. It is my pleasure that thou teach theology to the brethren, provided, however, that as the Rule prescribes, the spirit of prayer and devotion may not be extinguished. Farewell. (1224).”

In his teaching, Anthony focused on the love and charity of Christ. He said, as quoted by Pope Benedict: “Charity is the soul of faith, it gives it life; without love, faith dies. . . . Christ who is your life is hanging before you, so that you may look at the Cross as in a mirror. There you will be able to know how mortal were your wounds, that no medicine other than the Blood of the Son of God could heal. If you look closely, you will be able to realize how great your human dignity and your value are…. Nowhere other than looking at himself in the mirror of the Cross can man better understand how much he is worth.”

Anthony’s many miracles are fascinating and controversial. We live in a time of reason, when according to the laws of nature we expect and assume that observation will confirm the process of the laws of space and time. But God and His ways are so different, so beyond our comprehension, that it is singularly arrogant to assume we know, and only what we know and observe, or hypothesize and predict, can exist. As a result during the past few centuries humans doubt miracles, anything supernatural. (Seehttps://theamericanplutarch.com/2015/05/18/history-and-miracle/)

St. Anthony could perform astonishing miracles, such as, according to the 14th century book The Little Flowers of St. Francis, sermonizing to a school of fish, who lined up in orderly rows with open mouths to listen to the lessons of St. Anthony. He taught them: “My brothers the fish, much are ye bounden so far as in ye lies, to give thanks to our Creator, who hath given you so noble an element for your abode; . . . God, your kind and bountiful Creator, when He created you, gave you commandment to increase and multiply, and poured on you His blessing.” God blessed fish such that they played an important role in God’s plans for the salvation of Creation; the Son of Man ate fish before and after Crucifixion. (The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi, trans. T. W. Arnold, London: Chatto and Windus, 1908)

St. Anthony’s life teaches us that the path we have chosen will continue as long as we exercise free will according to God’s grace. This sometimes entails a different direction, even a miraculous transformation, than what we have hitherto conceived for ourselves. We must be guided, as was St. Anthony, by love and charity for others, including all life, all creation. Saint Anthony taught: “If you preach Jesus, he will melt hardened hearts; if you invoke him he will soften harsh temptations; if you think of him he will enlighten your mind; if you read of him he will satisfy your intellect.” (Pope Benedict, Feb 10, 2010, General Audience)

This article originally appeared in a slightly modified form in Catholic Exchange: https://catholicexchange.com/unexpected-paths-examining-the-life-of-saint-anthony-of-padua/

Posted in Christianity, FAQs of Christianity | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saint Athanasius: Saint and Doctor of the Church

Posted on August 4, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Athanasius (196-373 AD) lived a long and varied life subject to philosophical, political, and theological controversies, violence, exile, and contentious relations with the most powerful rulers of his time, the Roman Emperors. Athanasius is well known for the Creed named for him formulated by his disciples after his death. Athanasius’s significance lies in his valiant defense of the Trinity at a time when this fundamental basis of Christian theology was under attack.

Athanasius was born in Alexandria, which was a center of violence, persecution, and civil conflict as well as one of the great cities of antiquity, a cosmopolitan center of learning and a growing center of Christian thought. Athanasius was of a well-to-do family; he benefitted from an excellent classical and Christian education. When Athanasius was growing up, the Roman Empire came under the control of an autocrat, Diocletian, succeeded by the first Christian emperor, Constantine, who used Christianity as a way to solidify his power. Even though Constantine’s Christianity was underdeveloped, as head of the state religion he mediated conflicts among Christians over doctrine. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, he heard the arguments of the Arians, that Christ was not co-eternal, not the same substance as God the Father, and the Nicaeans, who believed that the first chapter of John’s Gospel proved that Christ, the Logos, was co-eternal, and of the same substance (homoousios), as the Father and the Holy Spirit. Constantine supported the Nicaeans and repressed the Arians. According to the fifth-century historian Socrates Scholasticus, Athanasius was present at the Council of Nicaea as an aid and secretary to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria. Athanasius forcefully presented the arguments for the Trinity. Constantine supported those who believed in the concept of homoousios and he banished the Arians, but only briefly; thereafter, the emperor agreed to end the exile of Arius and his supporters. By this time Athanasius was Bishop of Alexandria and he refused to accept the Arians, arguing that once they had disowned Christ the Logos they could not be forgiven. This earned him the ire of the Arians, led by Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, as well as the emperor, who forced Athanasius into exile.

When Arius died a horrible death in 336, according to Socrates Scholasticus, Constantine was reaffirmed in his Nicaean views. After Constantine died, the empire was left to his three sons: Constantine II, Constans, and Constantius II, who controlled the East, including Alexandria. Constantine and Constans supported their father’s Nicaean creed. Constantius supported the moderate Arian belief that Christ is like (Homoean) but not the same or equal to God.

In the ensuing years, there was a fierce debate between Constantine II and Constans and the bishops of the West against Constantius II and the bishops of the East. In 338, Constantine II tried to re-invest Athanasius in Alexandria, but Constantius in turn deposed him—but only temporarily. Upon Athanasius’s return, his enemies renewed their attack. In the Council of Antioch of 341, dominated by Arians, Gregory of Cappadocia was appointed to the See at Alexandria. Five thousand soldiers accompanied the new Bishop Gregory to Alexandria, forcing Athanasius to flee. He journeyed to Rome and made his case to Pope Julius, who agreed that Athanasius had been wronged. Nevertheless, Athanasius was forced to spend many years in exile away from Alexandria. According to Sozomen, the fifth century author of Historia Ecclesiasticus, Constans supported Athanasius’s attempts to return to Alexandria, even threatening war, forcing Constantius to agree: Athanasius became Bishop of Alexandria again. Constantine II had already been defeated and killed by Constans; when Constans died in 350, Constantius II, as sole emperor of the Roman Empire, became more oppressive to the Nicaeans and their leader Athanasius.

During these years the Council of Arles in 353 and the Council of Milan in 355 renewed the condemnation against Athanasius, again forcing him into exile. But upon the death of Constantius II in 361, the Apostate Emperor Julian came to power. Julian’s rule was brief, followed by the Christian Jovian, similarly brief. Athanasius was in and out of exile during these years. As the recognized leader of the Nicaeans he bore the brunt of the Arian anger. He revealed during these many years resilience, faith in the midst of danger and scandal, and hope in the triumph of the will of God.

Today, we venerate this Doctor of the Church and most forceful proponent of Christ’s divinity and of the eternal Logos, who provides us with an example to fight for our beliefs in the face of ridicule, hatred, and violence. As the 21st century progresses, Christians will find, as in previous centuries, that we will have to rely on prayer, and the intercession of such saints as Athanasius, to support us in patience, perseverance, and suffering in the face of an increasingly atheistic world.

(This article first appeared in a modified form in the online journal, Catholic Exchange: https://catholicexchange.com/an-early-christian-saint-for-our-time-st-athanasius/

Posted in Christianity, FAQs of Christianity | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Sorrels Family Orchestra

Posted on June 24, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Ephraim Deals (Deal) Sorrels, Arkansas farmer and woodcutter, was a singer and perhaps a fiddler–at least it is clear he had a musical bent. And Van, his son, took after his father. Whether or not Van was a singer is not known, but he clearly was a musician, and a fiddle-maker as well. 

Left to right John on violin, Daisy standing, Van on guitar, Susie standing between her parents, Tina on mandolin, and Martha on ukulele 

The above picture of Van and Martha and their young family of musicians appears to have been taken around 1905. The family portrait is posed beautifully, and looks as if the instruments were mere props. But they weren’t. Van and Martha, both musical, taught their children to play and christened the Sorrels Family Orchestra. This portrait, then, was perhaps a promotional photograph to encourage would-be planners of feasts, dances, celebrations, and contests to employ the Sorrels family to provide music. Family tradition has it that Van was a fiddle-maker. Did he make all of the instruments played by the family–in addition to the fiddle, the mandolin, guitar, and ukulele? The latter two instruments were relatively new on the mountain folk music scene in early Appalachia, including Arkansas. Some musicologists argue that the guitar wasn’t seen in Oklahoma until the second decade of the twentieth century. If true, then Van was a pioneer in guitar playing so early in northwest Arkansas. The ukulele was introduced to Americans from Hawaii, and became wildly popular among musicians in the early 1900s. An Arkansas music critic a few years after the family portrait was taken wrote mirthfully, “A justly famous music critic announces that the ukulele is not a musical instrument, but an instrument of torture, and that it has no place in modern civilization. But the many new-fangled ways of making people suffer have so crept into our modern civilization that the ukulele has come forward boldly and now has maintained its mournful cadence for several months.” The fiddle had the oldest pedigree among the Arkansas players of the past. Assuming that tradition is accurate, and Van made the family instruments, it reveals not just a man handy with an axe, but a skilled woodworker who could select the finest wood–for musical instruments like the fiddle maple, pine, rosewood, ebony, walnut, and mahogany–using tools such as saws, gouges, chisels, planes, knives, scrapers, callipers, hand screws, and clamps to fashion the instruments. John Broadhouse, who wrote the manual on fiddle-making in 1894, claimed: “A man of fair intelligence, and some aptitude in the use of tools, will be able to construct a violin. Whether it will be a good or a bad violin will depend mainly upon things which will come gradually, and after some failures and many attempts, within the maker’s own control. There is no magic in the art of making a fiddle, but there is a wide scope for the exercise of the mental powers of him who would make a good violin.” One guesses that Deal knew how to make fiddles, perhaps learning from his father, and he taught Van, who perhaps taught his son John. The fiddler of the family, John, who in the family portrait would have been about ten years old, did not have musical training, per se, rather that during winter or rainy days when stuck indoors in the small cabin challenged the hearing of his family screeching on the fiddle until he came to master some of the chords. Doubtless his father and grandfather steered him in the right musical direction. This was the way of fiddlers at the time in rural America anyway, playing by feel, intuitively, without music; hence the fiddler played the same songs but differently every time. Listeners didn’t mind, because the other fiddlers were doing the same thing, and the beauty of the fiddle was the loud reverberations of the strings and exhilaration of the songs. 

The fiddle and other stringed instruments highlighted conventions and contests through the American South in the early 1900s. “A typical fiddlers’ convention usually began in early afternoon and continued into the night. At 1:00 p.m., there would be an open-air concert kickoff with as many as a dozen fiddlers playing at the same time. Thirty minutes later, with the convention now in full swing, the tempo changed producing two hours of breakdown music that echoed into the surrounding hills. Its manner mirrored the simple yet often capricious life of the mountainous community.” “The evening continued with a compilation of tunes from a dozen fiddlers sawing away on “Dixie,” “Arkansas Traveler,” “’Billy in the Low Ground,” “Fox Chase” and “Devil’s Dream.” Next came a fiddler, described as having plenty of resin on his bow, fingering and bowing to “Bonaparte’s Retreat.” Seven fiddlers followed by grinding out the ditty, “Goin’ Long Down to Town.” The show concluded with a combination of performers playing: “Fire on the Mountain,” “Leather Breeches,” “Sugar in the Gourd,” “Please Don’t Shoot the Fiddle,” “Down in Bolson’s Hollow,” “Peter Went A Fishin’” and “Sally Goodin.”

Whether or not the Sorrels Family orchestra played any, some, or all of these tunes is unknown. Doubtless they played the most famous and popular fiddle tune of the day, “Arkansas Traveler,” which was a story about a traveler who came upon a shack where lived a rough impoverished squatter who was playing a tune on his fiddle. The traveler asked for directions, which the squatter was reluctant to give, until the traveler pulled out his fiddle and played the remainder of the song the squatter was playing. The squatter was so happy he gave directions, but advised the traveler to stay put instead, offering his hospitality. One popular fiddle contest in northwest Arkansas was held at Monte Ne, a resort founded by Coin Harvey held for several years in a row. During the contest held in June, 1901, the fiddlers each played “The Arkansas Traveler” and the best fiddler won. 

Ten years later, there was another fiddle contest at Monte Ne again hosted by Coin Harvey, a local celebrity. At this festivity, held August 9, 1911, after speeches and a brass band playing tunes, as the fiddlers prepared for the contest several stringed orchestras played for the crowd. One of those orchestras was “the Sorrels family orchestra of West Fork.” By this time, Van appears to have dropped out of the orchestra, according to surviving photos. John was sixteen, Tina was fourteen, Daisy was ten, and Susie was eight. The photo inscribed with names by Susie appears to have been taken a few years earlier, perhaps about 1908. Susie omitted (or when she wrote the names forgot) the tall brunette girl in the middle. Who was she and how did she fit the band? One possibility is Ethel Abshier, a friend of the family who often played music with the Sorrels.

Indeed, several years later, perhaps about 1915 or 1916, a photo was taken of a much different family orchestra, in this case combining two families, the Sorrels and the Abshiers. The Abshier family lived nearby the Sorrels and became good friends. George and Tonie Abshier, on the left sitting and standing, George played banjo and Tonie played guitar, and their son Lacy, far right played the violin, and their daughter Ethel, sitting in center played guitar, were joined by Tina Sorrels, standing next to Tonie playing guitar, Martha, playing ukulele standing between Tina and her son John, playing violin, and the two younger Sorrels girls, Susie on the right, and Daisy on the left, with her face partially obscure–both girls playing ukuleles.An obscure notice in the Springdale News for April 28, 1916, reads in full: “Geo. Abshier, his daughter Miss Ethel and Mr. Sorrls and his three sisters of Cove Creek came over for the entertainment and furnished music for the play.” What the reporter meant was that George Abshier and daughter Ethel of Cove Creek, Arkansas, joined John Sorrels and sisters Tina, Daisy, and Susie to provide entertainment at a school play, as schools in northwestern Arkansas in late April, 1916, were engaging in various festivities to bring their school year to a close. 

For a complete history of Van Sorrels and his extended family see Van Sorrels the Woodcutting Musician | Ash Hill Publishing

Posted in American History, Biography | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment