A Sermon for the African Heritage Month Proclamation
February 3, 2025 at the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre
Hebrews 11
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ☩ Amen.
I’ve been asked to preach a sermon, but I want to tell a story. The story will do the preaching.
It’s a story about hairdresser named Pierre. As a young man, he spent time in France, but he immigrated to New York at the age of twenty-one and took an apprenticeship with one of New York’s leading stylists. He was talented. It didn’t take long before he was serving the elite clientele of New York City—old money and the friends of past presidents, those sorts of folks. He did well for himself. Just by cutting hair, he bought himself a house on Franklin Street in Lower Manhattan.
And he didn’t forget to be grateful. For sixty-six years he attended daily Mass at St Peter’s Church in the Financial District. As his life went on and his wealth grew, he shifted his focus from hairdressing to philanthropy. He supported the New York Orphan Asylum, not only by donating money, but by personally bringing baked goods he and his wife had made and spending some time with the kids. Orphans were especially dear to him, because he had adopted his niece after his sister died young. He was the main fundraiser for building St Patrick’s Cathedral. Speaking both French and English, he provided personal assistance to Haitian immigrants and fundraised so they would have a little money to start out with. During a cholera outbreak in New York he snuck into the quarantined zone to personally nurse underserved patients. He founded a credit union, an employment agency, and a hostel for travelling clergy. When he died, they buried him in the crypt under the altar at St Patrick’s, where the only other residents were the departed archbishops of New York.
We’re here celebrating the legacy of Black brilliance, so you think you’ve already guessed the punchline. Yes, Pierre Toussaint was Black. But here’s the rest of the story.
Pierre was born in 1766—in Haiti—on a plantation—in slavery. Nobody knows who is father is. He wasn’t free when his owners took him to France, and he wasn’t free when they took him to New York. He wasn’t free when they enrolled him as a barber’s apprentice. He was allowed to keep most of his growing income, which meant that, when his master died, he was free to keep his money to himself, but instead he compassionately used his income to support his master’s widow. When she remarried, she made her new husband promise to free Pierre. So in 1807, after 41 years in slavery, Pierre was his own man. He fell in love with Juliette, who was the cook for another family of Haitian colonists. He purchased her freedom too, and the couple began their life of charity.
In 1996, Pope John Paul II began Pierre’s process of canonization for sainthood in the Catholic Church.
So when I hear that the theme of this year’s African Heritage Month is “Legacy in Action: Celebrating Black Brilliance,” what I hear is this. It’s tempting to think that the story of Black folks in North America is just a story of slavery, of discrimination, of misunderstanding and neglect. But it’s also a story of success—of people so driven that none of their troubles could hold them down. It’s a story of people of compassion and generosity, even people of holiness. They leave a legacy behind them, but that legacy is so big that it overflows the “Black history” box we sometimes try to keep it in. It’s a legacy that touches everybody.
I hope that Pierre Toussaint prays for me in heaven. And I think that if I had a tenth part of his Christian charity I would do just fine. May God bless the legacies of all those brilliant men and women who went before us so that we could follow.
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