Sebastian Rale: Giving All for Love

From a talk on Fr. Rale I gave to a group of college students preparing to do youth ministry in Maine earlier this summer.

Dearest Lord, teach me to be generous.

Teach me to serve you as you deserve;

to give and not to count the cost;

to fight and not to heed the wounds;

to toil and not to seek for rest;

to labor and not to ask for reward,

except to know that I am doing your will.

 Fr. Rale's story is fascinating and it hits close to home, since Fr. Rale gave his life for Jesus Christ only an hour and a half from here in present day Madison, Maine. There are a lot of lessons that could be drawn from Fr. Rale's life but here's the central one I want you to chew on: how much am I willing to give out of love? I think Fr. Rale is a model for that.

"Sell everything you have, give it to the
poor, then come, follow me."

Sebastian Rale was born in France in 1652. There are no obvious indications he was a born prodigy and he doesn't seem to be another Dominic Savio, having attained Christian perfection at ten years old. At your age, his hopes and aspirations in life were probably about the same as yours. I'm sure he wanted a good job, a loving wife and a happy family together with them. But in 1675, Sebastian Rale sacrificed all that for a life of poverty, chastity and obedience in the Society of Jesus. Like many religious before him, he chose to answer Jesus' call to the rich young man to leave everything he had and come follow Him. Those three vows by themselves require a spirit of generosity, that you would respond to God's love by making Him your all, that all you have might belong to Him, that your whole heart might belong to Him, and that your whole will might belong to Him.

This sounds like a lot, but there was still more that could be offered to God. Just when we think we've given everything, God finds something more that He asks us to give out of love for Him. For Sebastian Rale, that came in the form of the call to the missions. He was ordained a priest in 1689 and his first assignment was to Quebec to begin studying the Abekani language in preparation for one day being assigned to live among the Abenaki people and bring Jesus to them.

It doesn't get any better than Mom's cooking...

So I want you to close your eyes and imagine this. Imagine you're at home surrounded by family and friends. You've grown up in that house; it's warm, it's comfortable, it's homey. You can smell a homecooked dinner wafting through the air from the kitchen. It smells delicious and you know that there's more where that came from.

Now imagine you're in the wilderness. Those familiar faces are gone and will never be seen again and are replaced by strangers whose language you don't yet fully understand and whose customs never cease to surprise you. Your warm house is replaced by a hut made of branches and animal skins. The food you once enjoyed so much is now scavenged from the woods and is not only not to your palate but is extremely scarce. But these strangers are loved by Jesus Christ and He has called you to go there. And so you leave more than you thought possible, get in a canoe and travel to the village Narantsouack on the Kennebec River in present day Maine.

A missionary preaches to native Americans

Fr. Rale got right to work once he arrived at the village. These souls were hungry for Our Lord. They had witnessed healing miracles fifty years before when Fr. Druillettes had come and baptized them. They hadn't a priest since. They long to know more about the Great Spirit, they longed for someone to baptize their children, to hear their confessions, and to bring them Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, but there had been no one until now. Now Fr. Rale comes in and takes responsibility for the care of these souls as a father does for his children.

That relationship took work and time to build. It wasn't enough just fill a function. Fr. Rale left everything he had out of love for Christ of course, but in obedience to Christ's commandment to love his neighbor. So out of love for the Abenakis he set himself to the task of getting to know them. He lived among them and like them. He learned their language and even wrote the first dictionary of the Abenaki language ever written. He ate their food (as much as it grossed him out) and went on their hunting expeditions for months on months as their chaplain. He loved them, every part of them.

Loving the Abenaki people the way he did meant giving himself in a generous way that extended beyond his usual spiritual functions. Yes, he spent countless hours catechizing and training altar boys and decorating the church and offering Mass and leading holy hours. But he also founded the first school in the state of Maine so these children could learn both the sacred and the natural sciences. When they were sick, he cared for them. When they had problems, he was the one they went to for counsel. Amidst all these duties, Fr. Rale wrote at one point that he almost never had any time to himself and the only part of his day that he jealously guarded was the time he set aside to pray.

You're beginning to see the pattern. Over the course of his life, the more Fr. Rale fell in love with God and his neighbor, the more he offered himself at the service of both. The more generously Fr. Rale offered himself, the more God asked him to give and the greater the graces God gave to sustain him through it. Just be a holy pastor in that mission would have been a feat in itself, but Fr. Rale's mission was in a unique situation because it was got in a tense and violent conflict with the English settlers to the south of them. This conflict drew out of Fr. Rale a deeper love of God and neighbor than had been required of him before.

Although built slightly after Fr. Rale's death,
Fort Halifax in Winslow is a good example of the
type of  fort that caused such controversy.

There were several incidents with the English that concerned Fr. Rale, but the most important one began in 1714 when France lost Queen Anne's War and ceded Acadia to the English. Based on this, the English assert that the village of Narantsouack and the surrounding hunting grounds on which the Abenakis had lived forever now belonged by right to them. There was just one problem: Narantsouack was never French territory and so the king of France could never ceded that in a treaty. Nevertheless, the English began building forts and settlements and trading posts closer and closer to the Indian village.

Fr. Rale was incensed at the way his flock was being treated and so he decided to stand up to the English. This did not go over well. The English blamed Fr. Rale for riling up the Indians. Rather than seeing their own responsibility in the conflict, they accused the missionary of stirring the Indians up to rebellion in order to further French interests. Consequently, the English decided the priest had to go. They asked the Indians to hand over Fr. Rale and in turn they would give them a Protestant minister in his stead, but they refused to let go of the one whom they called their father. After peaceful means had been tried, the English put a price on Fr. Rale's scalp: whoever brought his scalp back would receive a 100 pound reward. Still, Fr. Rale refused to back down.

Then in 1722, things really came to a head. An English militia attacked Narantsouack and Fr. Rale had just enough warning to go to the church, consume the Blessed Sacrament and run to the woods to hide. By the grace of God, they didn't find Fr. Rale, but they did find his cabin (which they ransacked) and his church, which they burned to the ground. In the wake of this, the Abenakis encouraged Fr. Rale to leave. It was dangerous for him to stay. But that love of Christ and of his neighbor had grown too big for that. He knew that staying meant almost certain death, but if he left, what would happen to the faith of the Abenakis? Who would care for these souls then? As he wrote to his brother he said, "Death alone can separate me from them."

And so it happened. On August 23rd, 1724 Fr. Rale was writing a letter in his cabin. Hearing the sound of musket fire, he hurried out to see the people he loved fleeing for their lives. The men were rushing to arm themselves to defend their families and their village. The women and children were trying to get out of their but not soon enough. When the English saw Fr. Rale, they began firing on him. Seven Indian chiefs died trying to protect their father from those bullets, but to no avail. All died and fell down at the foot of the iron cross in the middle of the village. Thus Fr. Rale gave the last thing he had out of love for God and love for his neighbor.

So now I ask you: how much are you willing to give out of love?

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,

my memory, my understanding and my entire will

- all that I have and call my own.

You have given it all to me.

To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours, do with it as you will.

Give me only your love and your grace.

That is enough for me.