Willa Cather’s 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop is set in the rugged frontier of the Southwest in the mid-nineteenth century. Based on historical figures, it is the story of Father Jean Marie Latour, later Bishop Latour, a French missionary priest sent to the southwest United States to establish a diocese there.
The situation in the Southwest was dire. Scores of people had never received Holy Baptism because of the lack of priestly presence, or in some cases, because of priestly neglect. People were living in all manner of immoral conduct because they had no one to shepherd them and teach them the faith—at least until Father Latour arrives on the scene.
Latour is the essence of a gentleman and a faithful priest. He is erudite, gentle, and pastoral. He knows how to be a faithful pastor to his flock because he is open enough to their circumstances and to God’s living presence among them. He loves his flock. He is a stable icon of God’s grace to a people starving for the sacraments and formation, to a people who have been neglected and even forsaken by their clergy.
Latour’s childhood friend, Father Joseph Vaillant, is sent to accompany Latour in his backbreaking work. They journey on horseback through the perilous terrain of unexplored frontier lands, narrowly surviving the harsh conditions imposed on them, but bringing the Gospel to all, no matter the cost. Father Vaillant is, in many ways, a foil to Father Latour. Vaillant is somewhat impetuous and emotionally volatile. He is not as subtle in his disposition as Father Latour. His faith is rustic, hearty, even flamboyant, but he is extraordinarily devout.
The difference in character between the two men is perhaps most pronounced in their understanding of God’s presence among them. Father Vaillant is entranced by miracles; he relishes such fantastic displays of God’s intervention in the natural order. As his friend Father Latour puts it, “his dear Joseph must always have the miracle very direct and spectacular, not with Nature, but against it.”
At one point in their travels in Mexico, Father Latour and Father Vaillant meet with a local priest who has just visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Father Vaillant is filled with excitement at the story behind this apparition of Our Lady to a poor Mexican boy. He tells Father Latour, “Doctrine is well enough for the wise, Jean; but the miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love.”
Father Latour responds in his measured and thoughtful fashion: “One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. . . The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”
This definition of a miracle is perhaps the best I have ever heard. Both Father Latour and Father Vaillant appreciate something important about God’s manifestation to humans. Father Vaillant recognizes the spectacular nature of God’s grace. But Father Latour is able to find these supernatural disturbances more readily than Father Vaillant, in the everyday and ordinary.
There is nothing ordinary about the Risen Christ appearing to his disciples in the aftermath of his death and resurrection from the dead. The scene in Jerusalem is a flurry of excitement. There has been a series of miraculous appearances to the disciples. This is vividly portrayed immediately before today’s Gospel story begins. Two disciples have just seen Jesus on the road to Emmaus. The Risen Lord has appeared to Simon Peter. And as the disciples are buzzing with speculation and consternation following these apparitions, Jesus suddenly stands among them and gently pauses the conversation with his greeting, “Peace be with you.”
This new post-resurrection appearance only solicits more fear and excitement. Jesus is thought to be a ghost of some sort. To these confused disciples, the moment reveals the ways in which these disciples are so much like Father Vaillant. They need to behold something that is against nature. They have no real perspective on what has happened in the past few days. There is no doctrine to ponder. They want something to hold in their hands and love. There is no way to make sense of Jesus’ seeming absence from their lives, except that now they have miraculous proof of his presence, and they are giddy with excitement.
These disciples are, in some sense, unformed. They have no theological language of which to speak of their Lord and Savior. But at least now they have some proof that he is still living and among them, and that God’s promises are true.
And yet it is tempting to idolize the miracle’s vision. The wild image of the Risen Christ eating broiled fish as if it’s some kind of parlor trick is astounding. And its incredibleness has now become the focus of everyone’s attention. It’s the flashy image used to illustrate a point which has now obscured what it is pointing towards.
But after Jesus eats the broiled fish, he continues. And when Jesus continues, the pieces of the puzzle begin to be put together, piece by piece. Just like those disciples on the road to Emmaus, their eyes are slowly opened to what has transpired. Now, the law of Moses, the cries of the prophets, and the whole narrative of Scripture is starting to make sense.
The visible sign of Jesus with flesh and bones, eating broiled fish, is only a tiny part of this spectacular picture. Its purpose has been to jog the memory. This apparition of Jesus to the disciples, which is not simply a vision but a physical manifestation of his presence, is also more than a physical manifestation. It is, to use Father Latour’s words, “human vision corrected by divine love.” The sight of Christ eating broiled fish before them means nothing without the memory of divine love that has been with them as long as they have known their Savior.
The broiled fish recalls the feeding of the multitude who were hungry. The breaking of bread on the road to Emmaus brings the Last Supper into the present. The hands and feet before the disciples are evidence that the violence done to Jesus’ physical body has not been erased but has been transformed into a sign of the hope of our redemption. And so are all our sufferings and wounds because of this.
It is no wonder that in an age so devoid of theological nuance and formation, so many are left wandering and praying for a spectacular miracle. Perhaps Father Vaillant is right: “Doctrine is well enough for the wise, . . . but the miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love.” Those who have been ostracized, wounded, and even neglected by the Church that should have loved and formed them may not really be uninterested in God. Maybe they are simply waiting for their own miracles, for the proof that God is living among them.
And those of us, too, who come week after week to worship our Risen Lord, in our moments of malaise and in the moments where we are mute before more unspeakable violence and tragedy may also find ourselves desperately longing for some incredible proof that God has not left us. We yearn to touch the hands and feet, to gaze at the wounds, to behold something more specific than bread and wine, to find proof that God is really longing to feed us.
But we know, too, that the eating of the broiled fish points towards something else. Jesus reminds the disciples of that great story of which they are a part. They now see how the gap in the puzzle has been filled. If their past is a vital part of this story, then there is a future, too. And this future is about them. It is about much more as well. It’s about the good news to which they have been witnesses.
The truth to which their eyes have been opened in that room cannot stay in that room. It must burst through the doors, locked in fear, into a world that is longing for a sign and searching for tangible proof that there is some other dimension that will satisfy their emptiness. The disciples are being called to testify to what they know because others are desperate for a sign that God is still with us.
And when this knowledge of God’s faithfulness is propelled into the surrounding world, it will interpret all that is confusing. Perceptions will be made finer. There will be no need for Jesus to eat broiled fish before our eyes. There will be no need to demand more from bread and wine, because they are enough and they have always been enough. Our eyes have simply been closed to the miracle within them.
And there is one miracle that can explain this all. It is not spectacularly visible as an apparition might be, and it cannot be touched with human hands. But it is truly present. And it is that radiant, divine love that has corrected our human vision and made our hearts sing with joy.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday of Easter
April 18, 2021