Book Review: Sacred Remedy
By Lindsey Weishar
Paige Courtney Barnes’ Sacred Remedy: A Catholic Response to Racism
Paige Courtney Barnes’ Sacred Remedy: A Catholic Prayer Book to Atone for the Sin of Racism invites readers into conversation and prayer about our own relationship with racism. A Black Catholic herself, Barnes shines a light on our faith’s ability to forge a new path in the conversation about race—one in which we, like the Good Samaritan, pass up no opportunity to see our neighbor and to attend to his or her wounds, recognizing these wounds as our own by our shared membership in the Body of Christ. This movement toward others, then, becomes a call to recognize our personal wounds, as well as our own contribution to the sufferings of others by nature of our broken humanity. Barnes’ work challenges readers to see past the lens of politics in addressing racism, instead encouraging them to see racism through the lens of our faith.
Utilizing St. John Paul II’s framework of the Culture of Death and the Culture of Life, Barnes points out a pervasive Culture of Racism and our call to a Culture of Fraternal Charity. Her prayer book opens with three meditations on racism and our shared responsibility to address this wound. The meditations guide the reader through recognizing the sin of racism, repenting of the sin, and reconciling with our neighbors.
To activate this process of atonement, we must begin within. “We don’t have to come up with complex plans to bridge social inequity,” Barnes says, “we simply have to be honest enough to ask ourselves what obstacles are blocking the love in our own hearts? How might I best remove them? The human heart is a receptacle, not a void. Once a hatred is rooted out, apathy will simply take its place unless we make a concrete effort to love.” We are called to activate love toward our neighbor, to become more sensitive to the ways in which covert racism might linger in our own hearts. To help us discern this, Barnes offers powerful questions for reflection and conversation at the end of each chapter of this book. These questions include the following:
“Have I ever prayed for racial reconciliation in America?”
“Have I ever prayed for an end to social inequality in America?”
“Would a person of color feel welcome in my parish, family, school or work communities?”
“In what ways might a homogenous environment be psychologically damaging to minorities? In what way might it be damaging to me by denying me friendship/communion with my brothers and sisters in Christ?”
To create a more lasting peace both in our society and in our own soul, the call to repentance involves a personal examination and a conversion of heart. One block to this change is the false assumption that racism is simply a political invention. Barnes calls us to see racism as a human issue: “Racism is not merely a political issue, it is first and foremost a sin against love of God and love of neighbor. Once Christians repent of sin and resolve to avoid future offenses, there is still the fractured relationship between God and our fellow men that must be healed.” This involves turning to the sacrament of reconciliation for timely help, and then living out our atonement in the world. In a Culture of Fraternal Charity, our lives are oriented toward the lives of others, in whom we recognize ourselves. Ignoring the sin of racism poses grave danger not only to our society, but to our very selves:
As is the case with any sin, those Christians who refuse to acknowledge the reality of racism lingering in their own souls are in danger of additional sins of omission and hardness of heart, vices which cut us off from God’s grace. Furthermore we cannot hope for a true and lasting reconciliation until we, as sinners, acknowledge the presence of sin, express sorrow for the damage we have inflicted to the body of Christ, and petition God for the grace of healing.
To help readers pursue this healing, Barnes offers an array of Catholic prayers to help us meditate upon and atone for racism. She offers an “Examination of Conscience to Acknowledge and Repent of the Sin of Racism,” “A Rosary for an Increase in Fraternal Charity,” and “Stations of the Cross for Racial Reconciliation,” in which the drawings for each station alternate between Jesus’ passion and the passion that Black people have suffered in the past and presently. Each of these prayers guide readers into reflecting not only upon racism’s reality, but also the reality of our need for Christ to expand and heal our hearts. The reflection for the 13th Station (“Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross”) reads: “Jesus, My Beloved Savior, you held nothing back from the souls that you love so intimately. Yet we your disciples continue to withhold love from each other. We now resolve to put to death every form of prejudice, bias and hatred in our own souls so that we may become pure vessels of your love.”
After guiding us through these prayers, Barnes invites readers to consider the paucity of Black American saints, and introduces us to Sister Mary of the Rosary, O.P., Venerable Augustus Tolton, and Servant of God Mother Mary Lange, O.S.P. In doing so, Barnes reminds us that there is much unplumbed richness when it comes to the history of Black Catholics.
In her preface to Sacred Remedy, Barnes says, “The church is not immune to sin. Like the human soul, the church is the mysterious battlefield where sin is not instantaneously eradicated, but slowly removed seed by seed.” In this battle, we must wrestle with ourselves and the ideas, attitudes, and (in)actions that make racism possible. Barnes’ prayer book is both beautiful and compelling in its location of the sacred remedy to racism in Christ: “Therefore, the final, yet on-going, step of atonement for racism is accessing the grace of reconciliation through the sacraments and prayer. The sacred remedy is inviting God himself to heal us of sin, and to unite us to our neighbor through the bond of love.” He is the remedy to whom we all have access. It is He who can transform both our hearts and our world.
The fight against racism involves a shifting of our vision, of seeing ourselves “in what I’ve done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” It is staying engaged in a conversation that hurts, leaning heavily on His mercy, and ultimately to be activated by love to make our communities, homes, and very selves a haven for all people. That Barnes leads us here through the tradition of Catholic prayers is a reminder that our faith calls us to respond to racism, and to be active in rooting it out wherever we encounter it. This responsibility belongs to each of us.
Sacred Remedy is available in ebook format via Google Play, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Scribd.
