Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman: Making a Eucharistic Offering

“I bring myself, my black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become … as a gift to the Church” (Sister Thea Bowman).

At Sister Thea’s funeral on April 3, 1990, the question “Who was Sister Thea?” reverberated off the church walls of Holy Child Jesus in Canton, Mississippi. It was a difficult question to answer, because words cannot begin to capture the depth of her soul and the indelible impact she had on the lives she touched.

Her Early Years

To begin to paint a picture of her life on this side of eternity, we begin on the mild winter day of December 29, 1937, in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Sister Thea was born to a physician father and teacher mother, and she was the granddaughter of an African slave. She was raised Methodist but, inspired by the service of the Trinity Missionaries in Canton, converted to Catholicism at age nine. She was educated by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, who were stationed in Canton to provide educational opportunities to segregated Black children. At age 15, Thea joined their religious community in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

Sister Thea headed to the midwest, where she was welcomed not only by blustery winters but also the icy storms of discrimination of some sisters in her religious community. She was the first and only Black religious sister. When asked by a friend why she didn’t leave the convent, she responded, “I knew that God wanted me. I knew that Jesus called me. I wasn’t going to let a group of stupid white women tell me that I could not go the way God wanted me to go!” (ibid., 55-56).

And so, she continued down the road God paved for her, earning her bachelor’s degree in English from Viterbo University in 1965 and her master’s and doctorate degrees in English at Catholic University of America in 1972. She would later teach at both her alma maters and become a founding member of the National Black Catholic Sisters Conference and the Institute of Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans.

Her Ministry

After she spent 16 years in education, in 1978, the Bishop of Jackson, Mississippi, invited Sister Thea to lead the Office of Intercultural Affairs. She embraced her role with great joy and responsibility and worked diligently to empower the Black community from all faiths, with a concentration on Black Catholics, and educate others on the richness of African-American history and experience.

“Those who survived the indignity of the Middle Passage came to the American continent bringing treasure of African heritage,” she reminded us, “African ways of thinking, of proceeding, of understanding values, of celebrating life, of walking and talking and healing and learning and singing and praying” (Sister Thea’s address to the USCCB). In 1987, she was instrumental in creating the inaugural Black Catholic hymnal, “Lead Me, Guide Me: The African American Catholic Hymnal,” and she produced the albums “Songs of My People” and “‘Round the Glory Manger” in 1988.

In 1989, Sister Thea was invited to address the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on what it meant to be Black and Catholic in America. She began her address bellowing operatically, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child … a long way from home.” She added that the Church was her home and that Heaven was her home, and she petitioned the cardinals, bishops, and Church to help her get home.

Sister Thea went on to describe the African-American journey as one that includes slavery: “My people came over here on slave ships in chains …[to] an alien land.” By “surviving our history physically, mentally, emotionally, morally, spiritually, faithfully, and joyfully,” she said, her people brought to this alien land “the secret memory of Africa ... the memory of color and texture” — a memory that the Church and the country has yet, even in 2021, to fully appreciate.

In 1989, Sister Thea shared, Black Americans were disproportionately poor, making up more than one-third of families living in poverty and lacking the basic necessities such as food and shelter. Children, she said, lacked “equal access and equal opportunity because poverty doomed them” to an unequal access to education. Sister Thea believed that education was the key to evangelization in Black communities and critical for rising out of poverty and having a chance to flourish in this country. She said, “ignorance cripples us and kills us.”

Sister Thea did not mince words, but the heaviness of the reality of racism, discrimination, oppression, and poverty that plagues Black families does not dilute their “African spiritual and cultural gifts — wisdom, faith and faithfulness, art and drama …. song and instrumentation.” African-American history brings “a totality of minds, imagination, memory, feeling, passion, emotion, intensity,” and it knows “how to find joy even in the time of sorrow.”

Sister Thea’s message to the Bishops in 1989, and her message throughout her life, was one of celebration — what she termed “embodied, incarnate praise.” This embodied worship offered to God demands that the entire person offer himself or herself to Him in love.

As Sister Thea put it:

I bring myself, my black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become, I bring my whole history, my traditions, my experience, my culture, my African American song and dance and gesture and movement and teaching and preaching and healing and responsibility as gift to the Church.

Sister Thea was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1984 and entered her heavenly home on March 30, 1990, at age 52. In her address to the USCCB, as she sat in her wheelchair on the stage, she moved the members of the Church hierarchy to join hands and sing aloud, “We Shall Overcome.”

At the close of her address, she accepted a bouquet of roses “in the name of all the mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters and friends, all the women who have brought you to priesthood, who have nurtured you toward episcopacy, who have strengthened you in faith and hope and love.”

Rising to the Challenge

As we celebrate Black History Month this month and the life and legacy of Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman this week, let us rise up to a threefold challenge she posed to us: First, she celebrated our unity in diversity (1 Cor 12), and we are challenged to join her in the celebration. Second, we must not shy away from the history that continues to impact our Black brothers and sisters today. In their history, we see a reflection of Christ’s life in a unique and profound way, as the wounds of racism are as visible as the wounds on Jesus’ body hanging on the Cross. At the same time, we affirm the beauty of their heritage, which injects joy, passion, and an understanding of solidarity into our society and into our Church.

Finally, let’s challenge ourselves to imitate Sister Thea and her total self-gift to the mystical Body of Christ on earth, the Church. Just as Christ emptied Himself for love of His Bride, the Church (Phil 2:7), so Sister Thea imitated Him in offering her life as a eucharistic gift. As a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, we can imagine Sister Thea sitting in the small Adoration chapel in the early morning hours alone with her Beloved, who is present in the simple monstrance upon the altar. As she gazes at Him lovingly, she hears Him say to her, “This is my life, given up for you” (Mt 26:26, 1 Cor 11:24).

Let us challenge ourselves to discover the unique beauty that we have been blessed with in a universal, multicultural Church. Let’s not keep any of it for ourselves but offer it all to the Lord and His Church.

Vanessa Crescio is an accountant with the Archdiocese of Saint Louis. She earned an MBA from Notre Dame and worked in the real estate and banking industries prior to serving in church management roles at the parish and diocesan levels. She is working toward a master of theological studies at Newman University and is interested in thinking through co-responsibility in the Church and developing leadership programs to form Catholics to serve the Church with not only their knowledge, skills, and abilities but with the servant heart of Christ. Read more of her writing here, and follow her on Instagram.