Grow closer to Jesus during Black Catholic History Month

The celebration of Black History Month can serve as a powerful opportunity for evangelization within the Catholic Church, highlighting the diverse richness of our faith’s history and its impact on all communities.

Black History Month, as with all celebrations of ethnic diversity, allows us to learn of and appreciate what makes our sisters and brothers who they are. Our neighborhoods, parishes, nation and world can be brought closer and made better by sharing our cultures.

With respect to the Catholic Church, Black History Month holds great promise for learning, healing, and evangelization in Black Communities long estranged from the Sacraments by a difficult history. The Catholic Church can be a beacon of hope and justice for Black individuals and communities.

As I’ve shared before, during my trip to the National Black Catholic Congress (NBCC) XIII in July of 2023, I was astonished to find myself in the midst of nearly 3000 Black Catholics – Laypersons, Religious and Clergy, many of them so-called “cradle Catholics”.

If you ask them, and I did, they say that Jesus is their beacon of hope and justice; and that He abides in a particular way, in the Eucharist, only in the Catholic Church. So when they were prohibited from worshipping at their local churches, they pursued ordination, began their own worship sites, and started their own religious orders, but they never left the Catholic Church.

The opportunity before us is bringing the Black Community together and then into the larger Catholic community by sharing this incredible story of perseverance for the sake of the Eucharist. The story isn’t just Black history; it’s Church history; and it has the power to attract souls to Jesus and to the Sacraments.

Black History Month has ensured that Black leaders, innovators, athletes and performers are recognized and celebrated each February. With the now-established Black Catholic History Month, the Church seeks to do the same each November from a Catholic perspective.

There are Black Catholics that are leaders, innovators, athletes, artists, musicians – highlight them as examples for Blacks and for all. There are also Black Saints. Celebrate them! Be proud of them! They will be beacons to others that look like them and can be inspirations to us all.

Currently the canonization causes of the so-called “Saintly Six” (Mother Mary Lange, Father Augustus Tolton, Mother Henriette DeLille, Mr. Pierre Toussaint, Ms. Julia Greeley, and Sister Thea Bowman) are under consideration and in various levels of the process. Seeing the canonization of the first African American saint(s) is something that we should all be willing to pray for. Recognition and sharing of these and other exemplary Black Catholic names and stories during Black History Month and Black Catholic History Month can stir up a spiritual curiosity that can be used to evangelize.  

Black History Month and Black Catholic History Month present us with opportunities to grow closer to Jesus and to each other, in and through Black Peoples. Simply “observing” the celebrations misses the opportunity. We don’t, or at least shouldn’t, “observe” Lent; we should experience it with Jesus! We should come out of Lent changed and closer to Jesus in some way each year. I propose that we treat Black History Month and Black Catholic History Month in the same way.

Black History Month and Black Catholic History Month can be our times set apart twice a year, like Lent and Advent, to look inward for areas where we can call upon Jesus to help us improve; to become more like Him in a particular mission … the evangelization and salvation of souls within the Body of Christ in Black families and communities.

Deacon Fortune serves in the Cathedral of St. Francis Assisi, Metuchen.