community | 28 Diaspora Figures | Mother Mary Lange

Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange
Source: http://oblatesisters.com/page20.html

The early years of Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, the foundress of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, have been delineated more by oral tradition than by anything else. Elizabeth was born in the 1780s, a native of the Caribbean where havoc was constantly being created by both weather and the will of man. Her country of birth is not documented but oral tradition says she was born in Haiti and moved with her family to Santiago, Cuba. She received an excellent education and in the early 1800s Elizabeth left Cuba and settled in the United States. By 1813, Providence directed her to Baltimore, Maryland where a large community of French speaking Catholics from Haiti was established. Elizabeth came to Baltimore as a courageous, loving, and deeply spiritual woman. She was a strong, independent thinker and doer. As a well educated immigrant, she was of independent means, possessing monies left to her by her father. It did not take Lange long to recognize that the children of her fellow immigrants needed education. She determined to respond to that need by opening a school in her home for the children. She and her friend, Marie Magdaleine Balas (later Sr. Frances, OSP) operated the school for over ten years.

Providence intervened through the person of Reverend James Hector Joubert, SS, who was encouraged by James Whitfield, Archbishop of Baltimore, presented Elizabeth Lange with the challenge to found a religious congregation for the education of black children. He would provide direction, solicit financial assistance, and encourage other "women of colour" to become members of this, the first congregation of African American women religious in the history of the Catholic Church. Elizabeth joyously acquiesed. She need no longer keep locked up the deepest desire of her heart. For years she had felt God's call to consecrate herself and her works entirely to Him. How was this to be? Black men and women could not at that time aspire to the religious life. But now God was providing a way! On July 2, 1829 Elizabeth and three other women professed their vows and became Oblate Sisters of Providence.

Elizabeth, foundress and first superior of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, took the name of Mary. She was superior general from 1829 to 1832, and from 1835 to 1841. This congregation would educate and evangelize African Americans. Yet they would always be open to meeting the needs of the times. Thus the Oblate SIsters educated youth and provided a home for orphans. Slaves who had been purchased and then freed were educated and at times admitted into the congregation. They nursed the terminally ill during the cholera epidemic of 1832, sheltered the elderly, and even served as domestics at St. Mary's Seminary in a time of crisis.

Mother Mary's early life prepared her well for the turbulence that followed the death of Father Joubert in 1843. She suffered violence of soul as she was buffeted by poverty and racial injustice. There was a sense of abandonment at the dwindling number of pupils and defections of her closest companions and co-workers. Yet, through it all Mother Mary never lost faith in Providence. Mother Mary Lange practiced faith to an extraordinary degree. In fact, it was her deep faith which enabled her to perservere against all odds. To her black brothers and sisters she gave herself and her material possessions until she was empty of all but Jesus, whom she shared generously with all by witnessing to His teaching. In close union with Him, she lived through disappointment and opposition until God called her home, February 3, 1882.