“All Christians are called to be saints. Saints are persons in heaven (officially canonized or not), who lived heroically virtuous lives, offered their life for others, or were martyred for the faith, and who are worthy of imitation.”
The quotation above is from the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the subject of saints. The webpage also briefly outlines the complex and detailed process the Church undertakes before an individual is designated “saint.” The title Servant of God is given to an individual who is a “candidate for sainthood.” This means the individual’s life is “under investigation,” which is the first of three phases in the cause for canonization.
This year I embarked on a personal journey to learn about the life and legacy of Servant of God, Sister Thea Bowman. Fortunately, I did not have to do this alone. With the support of The Catholic University of America, from which Sister Bowman earned both her master’s and doctorate degrees, a series of activities were sponsored throughout the year with the goal of introducing Sister Bowman to members of the community who were not familiar with her story and to create a study group opportunity to learn more about this amazing woman’s life and connection to the University. The yearlong activities were concluded on Saturday, March 29th, with a wonderful conference celebrating the life, legacy and ministry of Sister Bowman.
What did I take away from this year of study of Sister Bowman and why her cause for canonization is an important example for me as a Catholic Christian? She is clearly an example of one who lived a good life, lived to serve others, and did so with a boldness that we all as Catholics should aspire to emulate.
From the start, Sister Bowman’s life story intrigued me. I could not let go of the fact that at the age of nine she asked her parents, who were Methodist and Episcopalian, to permit her to join the Catholic Church. Initially, it seemed incredulous that a child at such a young age would make such discernment. However, when Catholic religious orders, Trinitarians and Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, came to her home town of Canton, Mississippi to open a school to provide a quality education for the African American community that had been neglected and oppressed in Jim Crow Mississippi and they fully immersed themselves into the community, it made perfect sense. Sister Bowman said she was drawn to the “the day-to-day lived witness of Catholic Christians who first loved me, then shared with me their story, their values, their beliefs...then invited me to share with them in community, prayer and mission.”
I also learned about her courage and her understanding of love, as commanded by Jesus, to love everyone, which enabled her, at fifteen years of age, to go to La Crosse, Wisconsin, a place far from her home in Mississippi to fulfil her desire to become a Catholic nun. There she would be the first and only African American to enter the convent and to live in a community that had not encountered many if any other African Americans before her. Her father had warned her that they may not like her, her response was “I’m going to make them like me.”
As a teacher of children, college students and adults, I learned from their stories that Sister Bowman was challenging and demanding, seeing and expecting the best from her students. And they would do their best because they knew she believed in them, would lift them up in encouragement and inspire them to find and embrace their gifts and be a beacon of light, “You have a gift. You have a talent. Find your gift, find your talent and use it. You can make this world better just by letting your light shine and doing your part.”
This aspect of Sister Bowman as a loving teacher believing in her students, also made perfect sense to me and gave me a greater appreciation of her famous saying “I bring myself, my Black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become.” She did that to the very end of her brief life, offering her gifts, ministry and voice to everyone.
Moreover, Sister Bowman was not shy about speaking the truth about the Church and what she thought it should be. In one of her final appearances, one before the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, she boldly called the Church leadership to seek out greater understanding, appreciation and reconciliation with the Black Catholic community, linking this with the teachings of the universal Church:
Today we’re called to walk together in a new way toward that Land of Promise and to celebrate who we are and whose we aren’t.... The Church teaches us that the Church is a family of families and the family got to stay together and we know,... if we walk and talk and work and play and stand together in Jesus’ name – we’ll be who we say we are – truly Catholic and we shall overcome – overcome the poverty – overcome the loneliness – overcome the alienation and build together a Holy city, a new Jerusalem, a city set apart where they’ll know that we are here because we love one another. We shall overcome.
In my study of Sister Bowman I have found so much to imitate, particularly in her example and understanding of Christian love. That is, love is active service to others; love is for those who want us and for those who do not want us; love lifts others up; and love speaks truth to the powerful for the powerless.
Veryl Miles serves as special assistant to the president of The Catholic University of America and is a professor at the university’s Columbus School of Law.
