David was a shepherd—a teenager tending his father’s sheep.
Samuel was a child given to God by his mother, Hannah.
Abraham was one hundred years old, and Sarah was ninety when the promise of God was fulfilled and Isaac was born.
I was fourteen.
And Mary Elizabeth Lange was about forty-four.
There seems to be something here worth noticing.
In 1828, Mary Elizabeth Lange was a Black Haitian refugee living in Baltimore, Maryland. She saw children of Haitian refugees around the city who had little opportunity for an education. Slavery was still alive and well in Maryland, and opportunities for Black children were severely limited.
Mary Elizabeth was a devout Roman Catholic. But she did more than pray about what she saw.
She opened her home.
She gathered children there and began an informal school.
Eventually, when she told a priest that she wanted to devote herself completely to God, Mary Elizabeth and three other Black women formed the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first permanent religious community of Black Catholic sisters in the United States.
Their ministry went far beyond education. They sought to meet the needs of Haitian refugees and other Black people whom much of society preferred to overlook.
Their work was not easy.
They faced racial prejudice, financial hardship, and opposition. Even within the Church, support was uncertain. At one point, enrollment at their school dwindled to around twenty students. Yet the sisters continued.
A newly ordained Bavarian immigrant priest believed in their work enough to go from house to house begging for money to keep it going.
During the Civil War, the sisters continued caring for and educating Black children.
Mary Elizabeth Lange lived long enough to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of her religious vows. The community she helped establish was still doing what it had been called to do—serving people whose needs others were unwilling to meet.
Her story reminds me of the mysterious ways God’s grace works.
Jesus told his disciples:
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
—Matthew 9:37–38
Mary Elizabeth Lange heard the call.
And she answered.
David received his anointing while he was still a young shepherd.
Samuel heard God calling his name while he was still a child.
Abraham and Sarah waited until old age to see God’s promise fulfilled.
And when my father died in 1964, I was fourteen years old.
I heard the call.
I answered.
At fifteen, I became pastor of a little country church. At sixteen, I was ordained.
People sometimes have difficulty believing that a boy that young could have done such a thing.
But I did.
And in many ways, I am still answering that call.
That is what strikes me about Mary Elizabeth Lange.
God’s mysterious grace is already at work in this universe.
God hears the cries of people who are suffering, just as God heard the cries of the Israelites in slavery. And God calls people who can become part of the answer.
Sometimes God calls a child like Samuel.
Sometimes a teenage shepherd like David.
Sometimes an elderly couple like Abraham and Sarah.
Sometimes a fourteen-year-old farm boy who has just lost his father.
And sometimes God calls a forty-four-year-old Black Haitian refugee in Baltimore who looks around her city, sees children who need someone, and opens her home.
The question isn’t really whether we are too young.
Or too old.
Or whether we have enough money.
Or whether the institutions will support us.
Or whether society thinks we are the right person.
The question is whether we are listening when Grace whispers:
Whom shall I send?
And whether somewhere, someone will finally answer:
“Here am I; send me.”
The call has never stopped going out.
The harvest is still plentiful.
The laborers are still few.
And God’s mysterious Grace is still at work—calling ordinary people in unexpected places and at unexpected times to become instruments of God’s love.
I stand amazed at the way God works.
To God be the glory!
Source: A Year with American Saints, September 10 — Mary Elizabeth Lange.
The Curious Pilgrim 
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