Sunday, July 8, 2012

Willa Cather, Death Comes For The Archbishop

I often think that if I had read Death Comes For The Archbishop back in 2007, when it was first recommended to me, I should have discerned my vocation to the priesthood much, much sooner. I should have read it many, many times and written much about it, in my journal and elsewhere. As it stands, I have read it at last and am extraordinarily impressed. For it is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read - I have only seen Melville paint such beauties with words in American literature. Short phrases like, "his diocese lay within the icy arms of the Great Lakes" fill me with wonder each time I return to them, and her evocative descriptions of New Mexico are something truly wonderful to behold. I could scarcely believe it to be the work of a Protestant (Cather was Episcopalian, I think), for it is so reverent in its portrayal of the Church and her practices (especially the veneration of the Blessed Mother) that I might have thought it the work of a devout Catholic.

Death is about the reign of New Mexico's first bishop, Jean Marie Latour, a French missionary, and his decades-long tenure. He upholds the true faith of the Fathers through political intrigue, dissolute, rebellious priests (some of which live in open concubinage), and his own loneliness. It is a portrait of a man who left what was comfortable and familiar in order to follow God's call no matter where it led. Bishop Latour is gentle as dove, subtle as a serpent, and courageous as a lion as he spreads and protects, as a True Shepherd ought, the apostolic faith of the Catholic Church.  As such, Latour is an inspiring figure, one whom I very much wish to emulate (I had a similar reaction to Dostoevsky's Alyosha), but one who already reflected much of my soul, which I cannot yet say of the third Karamazov. Sometimes I think that these two men from literature, Raistlen and Father Latour, though from drastically different novels, when taken together, illuminate my soul with startling, even frightening accuracy. For Raistlen is often what I am, but Father Latour is what I am beginning to be and hope most of all to become. Perhaps I ought instead to wish to emulate his lifelong friend, Father Joseph Vaillant, but I have less the simple, honest love that a man of the people possesses and more the courteous, earnest soul of a lonely aristocrat. For its illustration of such a man that is as profound as it is stirring, I owe Willa Cather a great deal.

"What will your new bishop drink in the country of bison? And what will he eat?"
"He will eat dried buffalo meat and frijoles with chili, and he will be glad to drink water when he can get it. He will have no easy life, your Eminence. That country will drink up his youth and strength as it does the rain. He will be called upon for every sacrifice, quite possibly for martyrdom. That is how things stand in New Mexico."

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