What can we learn today from Servant of God Mother Mary Lange? Above all, we find in her an example of what it means to trust in God’s providence. Like each of us, her life is a mixture of accomplishments and failures. Mother Lange gives us a model for how to see God’s hand at work and how we can allow him to shape us.
There were many circumstances in which Mother Lange opened herself up to God’s will, which was the driving force in her life. But, as was the case with Jesus’s disciples, others can get in the way. Our task is to keep pushing for what is right and trusting in God’s ways.
Lange’s ability to trust in God’s plan defined her, especially in dangerous and uncertain circumstances. Her life story reminds us that God will not deny his grace to those who do their best, so long as they cooperate with his grace. Who knows what fruits we may receive when we trust in God’s providence?
Roughly 150 years after Lange passed through Charleston, South Carolina, on the way to her new Baltimore home, her legacy of educating Black children would be fulfilled there by her order of sisters. As a student of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, my own life was shaped by her reach and influence early on, though I did not realize it at the time. And it was not just me—my sisters and hundreds of Black children in Charleston were able to flourish because of Lange’s obedience to God’s plan
Lange had no easy road to religious life, and many obstacles stood in her way. Chief among them was the status of Black people and people of color in the society in which she made her home. It was against the backdrop of the long history of slavery in the colonies and early United States that Lange arrived in Baltimore in 1812. Her life in America coincided with the struggles for racial justice that defined much of the nineteenth century. Upon her arrival, Maryland was still a slave state, and its residents still had great animosity toward Black people, free and enslaved. Lange also lived through the Dred Scott decision (which said she could not be a citizen of the United States) and its aftermath. Decades after she arrived her new country was torn apart by the Civil War.
Lange, a financially secure, educated immigrant, who spoke French, Spanish, and English, witnessed white society grapple with the idea that Black people are humans who have a right to liberty and protection under the law. She also experienced the challenging postwar reality that saw Black persons—even while embracing their freedom—continue to be subjugated socially and legally by a predominantly white society.
Operating within the reality of a society conditioned to see Black skin as a mark of inferiority, Lange was a firm protector of the Oblates’ avowed religious life. A white priest asked Lange’s Oblates to serve as housekeepers at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. Lange agreed to the invitation, but in a gutsy, clear-eyed manner, she told the white priest that he had to meet her terms before she would agree. Her intention was that she and her sisters would not “have other relations with other servants and outside people other than our obligation require.” The priest agreed to her terms. Establishing that boundary enabled the sisters to focus on living a consecrated life and was an example of how Lange fought racism in her own quiet way. What humility we find in this woman of means and education, who took on service work at a seminary and even willingly relinquished the role of superior for the community she cofounded! One could imagine that a similarly situated white woman—trilingual with financial means—might have had a different status in the Church.
Though Lange grew up free from the racist social conditioning that was present in the United States, she understood its impact on her existence and survival. It is interesting to note that her faith was not shaken even as some other Catholics, including the Jesuit order, openly enslaved Black persons and embraced racist attitudes and customs.
Lange continually trusted in God despite living in a time of much upheaval and uncertainty for Black people. She defied the unofficial prohibition facing people of color who wanted to live religious life in America then. She yearned to give herself to God and longed to be of service to him in some way. That she risked educating girls of color, even before she became a religious sister, is a beautiful testament to her trust and her hope in God’s plan. She risked her comfort to open her home, to use her assets for the school, and to use them for the benefit of others. Lange used her own financial means for service to the good. Her faithfulness to her Catholic values and reliance upon God for security, rather than money, is an example for us all. Her witness was in sharp contrast to society’s willingness to embrace and legalize race-based slavery for means of profit.
Certainly, Lange’s societal standing as a free Black Catholic woman in a slaveholding state made her existence much more tenuous and subjected to the vagaries of the white society. And yet she risked and trusted God. This trust bore fruit when Father Joubert approached her about teaching Black girls, adding that he thought a religious community of Black women could provide a steady supply of teachers. In response, Lange revealed her desire to serve the Lord and that she had been waiting ten years for an opportunity to consecrate herself to God.
Lange was unsure how a religious community of Black women would be received, and this uncertainty gave her reason for hesitation. Being in a slave state, she understood many people would be unhappy with the idea of Black religious women. Some people still believed Black people did not even have souls. What danger and hostility might they face? I believe because of Mother Lange’s desire, patience, humility, and trust, God rewarded her and aided her by his grace to overcome her natural hesitations and move forward in founding her religious community.
There is no question that life did not go smoothly for Lange. Time and again in her story, we see that if she solely trusted her earthly friends instead of God, she might have crumbled. But she did not crumble—far from it. She persevered, knowing that God is able to do the impossible. She was his willing instrument, and for this we revere and seek to imitate her. Servant of God Mother Mary Lange, pray for us!
EDITORIAL NOTE: This excerpt is taken from Black Catholics on the Road to Sainthood, courtesy of OSV Publishers, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
