Lamy of Santa Fe (72 page)

In November 1881, General Charles Ewing—the same who had been unable to further Lamy's plan for the Pueblo agency schools—had put up at the Exchange Hotel in Santa Fe and had gone at once to call at the archbishop's
“palacio.”
It was a reunion which bound the early days in Ohio to the decades which followed in the West, for Ewing and his parents had belonged to Lamy's parish in Lancaster, and Purcell had married Charles Ewing and his wife, all of which Lamy recalled. They toured the garden where snow had fallen, and the general picked a flower out of a snowbank to send his wife.

Lamy invited him to see the Villa Pintoresca, and took him there in a buggy. “The Archbishop drove me himself, and he drove like a Jehu [
and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously
—
2 Kings 9:20
]. We had lunch at the ranch—a wild beautiful place from which you can see Mountain Peakes covered with
snow that are 120 miles away.” Lamy took him to the chapel and showed him a chalice set with jewels, “very old probably over 300 years that he found there thirty years ago when he came here first as Bishop of Santa Fe. The old gentleman was very kind and fatherly—talked of my old home when he was a young Priest where he was often kindly cared for, when I was a child only six years old … and his visits there as bright places in his missionary life that never grew dim, but to which he turns with pleasure and loves to talk …” In his life's fabric there seemed to be no broken thread.

iii
.

The Apostle

W
ITH SALPOINTE, HIS COADJUTOR,
to share his duties, and to be ready to succeed him if sudden need arose, Lamy was lighter in spirit and more energetic than he had been for some time. His main local concern now was to see the cathedral completed. It stood covered, services were regularly held there, but the towers rose slowly, the sanctuary was still the old tapering, coffin-headed, adobe enclosure which he had found in 1851; and funds were slow to come.

He worked every possibility to bring in more; but it was still an astonishment, given his recent serious illnesses, when he left Santa Fe in 21 July 1884, for another trip of many months in Mexico, to raise money by donation, loan, and the little fees which would come to him in giving confirmations. The prospect of a long journey and hard work in the great land of which his diocese was a physical extension seemed to bring him zest and a return of strength.

Going south by the Santa Fe Railroad, he met with a washout above Socorro—sudden heads of storm water tore away the old silt left ages before by the Rio Grande—and going single file with the other passengers along a sloping path on the bank of an arroyo, he had to walk from the broken track to the other side of the washout where the track resumed and another train was waiting. He was glad that his two valises were not heavy, for he was carrying them, and even at that, had to stop twice to rest in the heat.

A few days later he reached Chihuahua city, travelling by President Diaz's Mexican National Railway, where thirty-three years ago he had
advanced a few miles a day by horse. He was acclaimed on his arrival now, and was taken on a whirl through the city in a carriage, and visited the “beautiful chapel of Guadalupe” where he had said Mass in 1851. He spoke to his host—a rich man—about a loan of a few thousand dollars, but seemed unlikely to receive it. The governor and his staff, and splendid Mexican music from the bands of the infantry and cavalry regiments, paid him respects, and he felt “very well.' though the heat was frightful, and there had been no rain for months. A day later he was to go on to Zacatecas, and then to Mexico City. At every stop he was received with “ovations.” Word of his arrival was always telegraphed ahead. The archbishop of Mexico, whom he had met at the Vatican Council of 1869, received him warmly, and invited him to give confirmations anywhere in the huge diocese of the primacy.

He went, then, to Puebla, and at every train station, there were delegations of clergy and faithful, and he was taken to the “grand palaces” of the leading citizens. At Puebla, he was dazzled by the magnificence of the churches—the great cathedral with its huge dome, its towering choir and dazzling gold everywhere, and its bells (more beautiful in tone than any he had ever heard in Europe). With the image of his half-stone, half-adobe unfinished cathedral surely in mind, he remarked the decorations, marbles, gilded sculptures, of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel in the cathedral, which alone, he was told, had cost “one million and a half dollars.” The golden altar screens of Mexican churches were like nothing anywhere else, and the profusion of churches in city after city was astonishing.

He wrote to Mother Francesca frequently during the tour, sometimes in English, often in Spanish.

In the midst of the alien splendors and the ardent people he encountered, he was mindful of more homely affairs—there were running accounts to meet at Santa Fe, Mother Francesca was to see that a draft on Paris was duly presented to Mr Spiegelberg at the Second National Bank. If Juan, the caretaker at the Villa Pintoresca, needed food for repair work there, it was to be taken to him, and he should bring a horse to Louis the gardener, take him to the villa, and show him how he keeps the place. It was time to lay in firewood for the next winter—let them bring three hundred loads at least—the little bundles which a burro could carry. If there was any money left after paying for the wood, Mother Francesca could keep and use it.

Wherever he went to hold services, Lamy preached. Asked what sort of preacher he was, a priest who knew him well said, “Very good preacher.” He wrote his sermons and his retreat reflections in pencil. They were brief, and wherever he gave them, they brought in simplicity of word an often freshly stated idea of the equation possible between
God and man. He was a man of his time and place, and he met its hard conditions without much comment; but he would not have been so effective if he had not also been a man of a timeless faith which was his source of strength and the medium of his humanity as he extended it to each being in whom he always saw the universal—Indian, Protestant, Jew, or Catholic. He would say:

The divine word is a mirror that discloses to the ambitious all the infidelity of the world which he serves. It lets him see his ingratitude toward God, whom he has rejected, abandoned. This divine word is a mirror without taint that shows the impenitent sinner the danger to which he exposes himself in falling into the hands of the terrible justice of God.

On 13 August, he came by train in the state of Puebla to a station where he was met by priests who conducted him on horseback to a town eighteen miles away at the base of the mountains, “rather cool and damp.” After confirming many hundreds there, he left to go thirty-six miles deep into the mountains to a town where sixteen or twenty strong men took away the four horses of his waggon and pulled it themselves to the church, where “a splendid choir with a grand organ sang the Te Deum.” There he was informed that deeper in the mountains were two more curacies they hoped he would visit.

In the words of the Epistle we are sons of the Light, for the same reason that we are Christians. Let us go out of the fog of sin.…

Among the throngs who responded to him in Mexico—the greatest crowds of his apostolate—he seemed to demonstrate that a great priest was one not less like, but more like, all humanity.

In Zacatlán toward the end of August at least six thousand people came out to meet him on the road, where on every side he saw green fields reaching as far as the highest hills. He passed between gardens and orchards—every kind of fruit but grapes; he supposed the excessive rainfall rotted the vines. There were two grand churches, one of which “would make a good cathedral.…” He confirmed four or five thousand people there, and invitations kept arriving from other places asking him to come. He would be at least two more months in the diocese of Puebla. The local general and the mayor came to dinner at the pastor's house. In most places, he found, the civil and military authorities did not enforce “those tyrannical laws of this government against the Church.” If Mother Francesca should write to him—he was troubled at not having heard from her—let her “put sixteen cents' worth of stamps.”

In another day, he had come to Chiuawapa, where he saw in the
local curate a man after his own heart. This was an Indian of fine education and a most neat appearance, who for his eight thousand souls had established schools, educated young men, helped to build and improve the town which was now almost new, including a new church being built to replace an older one—itself very fine, but its roof leaked. The
padre
led his people to “open good roads, plant trees,” and he had embellished the place with “a large and beautiful park and a fountain where the water is brought from over ten miles.” Lamy had had too many ovations, he said, which made him feel miserable, the fatigue made his work all the harder afterward. “I will be glad when I get through and be able to be in a quiet place.”

A humble fervent prayer is necessary to obtain the grace of God that permits us to meet our duties, to practice our virtue, and to avoid sin: keep vigil and pray, find refuge in all humility, put your confidence in God, assure your salvation by your good deeds … that is the grace I ask of God for everyone.

Though the work of confirmations left him little time—in one cluster of five parishes he gave over twelve thousand—he took a few minutes every day to write letters. In Ixtacamastitlán they told him, in September, that they had never seen a bishop. Lamy was not astonished to hear this—the remoteness of so many Mexican towns was daunting. For fifteen days, with Mexican companions, he had ridden on horseback, for there was not a single waggon road—nothing but “narrow, rocky paths, and high precipices.” It was high, rough mountain country. But he lovingly described the cultivated mountain slopes, where beautiful green fields were seen at altitudes of six thousand feet or more. He saw, even in such a remote place, various kinds of mills for the manufacture of cloth, pottery, paper. The people were admirably simple and full of faith. They were very clean, their style of dress exceedingly plain. They came to receive him with fine flourishes of music, “dozens of violin bows decorated with a great variety of flowers—Mexico is the land of flowers.” They overwhelmed him with attentions and invitations. These he had mostly to decline, for after so much work he was beginning to feel tired. On some evenings he could scarcely stir because of extreme fatigue, though, he wrote his niece, “I feel no pain.” He retired early, slept soundly, and the next day found himself strong again.

What happened with a missionary who had converted a certain Indian? The Indian, after being well prepared, received the holy Sacraments. The priest left. After a year he returned to the same place and the converted Indian again asked him for communion. The priest told him he would gladly give him communion after he had been to confession. The Indian was horrified,
and said to the priest, “Can one sin after being baptized and having had first communion? Thanks to God, I have committed no sin!” Nevertheless, to comply with the precept of the church, he confessed himself.—Oh! that it might happen so with every Christian!

He hoped to be able to hold out—it was now nearly the middle of September—so that he could go to five more parishes which he promised to visit on his way back to Puebla and Mexico City. Luckily these were places along the railroad and his journey would be less tiring. The bishop of Durango had asked him to give confirmations at Chihuahua on his way north—he hoped to be there by 15 October, and by the twenty-fifth in El Paso, and in early November back in Santa Fe, where without much respite he would have to prepare to attend the Plenary Council to be held in Baltimore later in November. Meanwhile, events in Mexico continued in much the same style. He was accorded so many attentions that he felt almost ashamed. Home thoughts: he hoped Mother Francesca had received the money Father Farini was to receive, and also that if she needed them, she would get some eggs from the
ranchito
. She was to pay Juan his wages (and the little boy helper—twenty-five dollars for both) and give them money for grain; and if there was a balance she was to keep it for herself.

As God said to a just man, “I give myself as your reward, because I cannot give anything greater than myself.” So also God said to the soul of the reproved, “I myself will be your torment, by separating myself from you, because in the treasures of my wrath I have nothing any more terrible than parting and separating myself from you.”

In early October he returned exhausted one evening from a ride of over thirty miles across the “highest ridge of this cordillera.” (He was in Zacopoaxtla.) For fear his horse would stumble and fall on the steep, stony, high path, he dismounted, and leading his horse walked down the mountain for at least three miles. Still, from the summit there was a wonderful view of immense peaks near Veracruz—Orizaba and Perote—and he rode through the semi-tropical lands of sugar cane and coffee plants. For more than a month he had seen no waggon road, and there would be one more week of such travel. Even so, the cordillera was thickly settled, there were fine churches everywhere and even “the highest class” of people had truly admirable faith. Every priest whom he met had enough work “as would commonly occupy two or three.”

There is no neutrality between the son of God and the world, between the happiness of being one of His disciples and the misfortune to be against Him, in the kind of his enemy.

At last, on 10 October 1884, he would take the train for Chihuahua and the north. He had already written to Salpointe to meet him in New Mexico at some southern railroad station. When he reached home in late October, the
New Mexican
reported his “most cordial welcome,” and noted that “during his absence he travelled about 10,000 miles and confirmed 35,000 people—a remarkable feat for the reverend father who is in his 72nd year.”