“He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” Luke 24:35
Desolation
This month I attended A Conversation on Race and Slavery at Fordham University, my alma mater and a place where I worked for six years connecting students, faculty and staff at the university to Bronx nonprofit community partners for experiences of service and accompaniment, research, internship and mentoring. Dr. Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School and a staff writer at the New Yorker, opened the conversation with several examples of ways slaveholding is rooted in the foundations of our economic, political, social and educational systems: “when we peel back layers of our founding institutions, there should be no surprise when we encounter slavery.” Sadly, I am not surprised by the possibility that financial resources gained from slaveholding came with the French Jesuits who left St. Mary’s College in Kentucky for the Bronx to help St. John’s College flourish, the school that would become Fordham University. My desolation emerges from our resistance to digging into the research necessary to more fully understand our past. As Dr. Cobb said, “redemption begins with the unflinching willingness to look history in the face and assert the truth, even when it makes us look bad or fall short of our ideals.”
Monique Trusclair Maddox, President and CEO of the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation (DTRF) and a descendant of two people enslaved and sold by the Jesuits to support Georgetown University and the work of the early Jesuits in Maryland, sometimes tells the story of a book she inherited from her grandmother written by a priest at her hometown parish in Maringouin, Louisiana about the history of the Catholic Church in the region. That book was sitting on her shelf for a long time before she opened it and learned from excerpts about her family, including Jackson Hawkins who was 3 years old when the Jesuits sold him and his parents along with 271 others. That history, her family’s history, has been here all this time, like the details in the letters and records kept by the Jesuits detailing the lives of enslaved people on Jesuit plantations that helped Rachel Swarns center Descendant voices in her book 272. It was sitting there, but we weren’t talking about it. What do we miss by not seeing what is right in front of us?
Consolation
The same evening as the conversation at Fordham on race and slavery, Monique Maddox was joined by Fr. Tim Kesicki, SJ for a conversation with members of five New York City Jesuit communities about the shared work of Descendants and Jesuits in the DTRF. The work of the DTRF is an invitation to individuals and Jesuit institutions to remain in relationship with Descendants, to have our faith deepened together, and to walk with one another as Descendants lead our journey toward reconciliation.
The disciples did not recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Their eyes were clouded with fear and uncertainty until Jesus broke and blessed the bread as they ate together. My prayer echoes a song that I came to love from the performance of Cristo Rey New York High School’s choir, then under the direction of Ms. Natasha Cooper: Open the eyes of my heart, Lord! Give me the courage to unflinchingly look at our history and shape our work of racial reconciliation today.
This month’s reflection was provided by Nick Napolitano, provincial assistant for justice, ecology and reconciliation for the USA East Province of the Jesuits. If you would like to volunteer to provide an upcoming reflection, please contact Nick Napolitano: ueajars@jesuits.org.
The views and opinions expressed in this reflection do not necessarily reflect those of Jesuits USA East.
