Recollections of Father Price (August 19, 1860 - September 12, 1919)
by VP
Posted on Thursday September 12, 2024 at 01:18AM in Documents
Heavenly Father, You so inspired Father Thomas Frederick Price with love
for You and zeal for the Gospel that he dedicated his life to serve You
and Your Church,
first in North Carolina, his home state, and then in
the foreign missions. Grant that by his example we may grow in holiness
and into a deeper union with Our Lord
Jesus Christ. Help us to be authentic witnesses of
the Gospel and proclaim the Holy Name of Jesus throughout the Diocese of
Raleigh and to all the people and in
all the places we are sent to love and serve.
If it be according to Your Will, glorify Your
servant, Father Thomas Frederick Price, by granting the favor I (we) now
request through his prayerful
intercession (mention your request here).
I (we) make this prayer confidently through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.
Imprimatur: Most Rev. Michael F. Burbidge, Bishop of Raleigh June 15, 2012
"Rev. Thomas Price: What explanation can be given to the
questions: When a person has been thoroughly educated in the Catholic
Faith, having had great care bestowed on his training, but who when he
reaches manhood falls away from the Church and says he does not believe
in the religion of his childhood?
The general reply is that faith
is a gift of God whereby we trust God and all that He says simply
because He says it, and that a person loses this trust in God because of
his faithlessness to God's grace. Education and training, the very best
education and training, are after all only a means, a great means, but
after all only a means, to strengthen this trust in God and what He
says, and after it is all done a person may and sometimes does through
faithlessness to God's grace fall, that is, lose this belief in God and
God's words. No man ever loses faith in God or the Catholic Church
except by his own fault. The fault may be hidden. It may be pride,
especially of intellect; it may be wilful trifling with temptations
against faith, it may be a loss of grace through immoral life, or it may
be a neglect of the means of grace, the sacraments, etc. But in every
particular case, if the truth can be reached, it will be found to be
faithlessness to God's grace. Neither any amount of education nor
training nor anything else can save a man against his own will, nor
cause him to retain Catholic faith if he is untrue to God's grace. Such
persons as you speak of are usually led away from the Church by pride,
or baneful associations of one kind or another, terminating in
faithlessness to the graces of faith. They often yield to these
influences for a time and then return to God and the Church. Let our
correspondent pray, as St. Monica prayed for St. Augustine, and the same
God who listened to Monica's prayers will not fail our correspondent." Source: Truth Magazine page 74. June 1908 Founded 1897 by Rev. Thomas Frederick Price
Recollections of Father Price by Father W. B Hannon, Buckfast Abbey, England The Field Afar, Volumes 15-16, 1921
"It was a bright day in late spring when I accompanied Father Price and two of his students to open a week's mission to non-Catholics, at a little mission church in Wake County. Large fleecy clouds floated in a blue sky, but the sun was warm. I had been spending a few days at Nazareth, and gladly consented to join in the good work. Some beds and household effects were placed in a farm wagon, and the two priests. and two students took their seats and set out for the place of rendez-vous.
The road was full of ruts, and the passengers received many a jolt on the way. We passed settlements, then quite new and curious in my eyes. The large farm horse went by fits and starts, creeping along at a snail's pace, and then galloping as fast as his cumbersome load would allow. It was a fairly picturesque route, past pine woods, where doves cooed lazily among the trees, and many plantations of white folks, who placidly gazed at "Priest Price" and his luggage and companions, or looked with wonder and suspicion on the advent of the Catholic folk of Nazareth, invading the undisturbed territory of their Protestant creed, whose conflicting and unsightly churches were seen in all directions. I do not know where there are such ugly churches to be found as in the solid Protestant South, save in Wales.
We saluted the people as we passed, and some jerked back a nod of recognition over their shoulders, as if making an effort to return the salutation. The people are well schooled against Catholicism by their spiritual teachers, who revel in all the old exploded scandals and lies concerning the Church. It is easy to see the glint of dislike on their faces when they know that one is a Catholic or a priest. The Southern States are still the happy hunting grounds of prejudice and illiteracy.
I was rather disappointed on seeing the mission chapel or shack, called very appropriately after St. Teresa, who had to put up with such crude structures in her new reform establishments. It presented an interior of confusion, not having been used for months, but it soon changed its appearance. The mattresses were duly laid on the sacristy floor, where we were to sleep, and the novelty was pleasing to us. As for Father Price, he was unconscious of any difference, and was quite as at home in the poorest hut in the backwoods as in the most agreeable city home. One of the students, now a Superior in a Religious Order, went out to the natives, who were viewing from afar the invasion, and bargained with them for milk and other sundries, and so broke the ice.
Father Price, with his truly devotional spirit, was full of the fire of prayer and zeal, but it was truly a barren soil for converts. However, its spiritual distress was an appealing plea to his apostolic heart. I noticed during my sermon that men and women were continually spitting, and felt hurt at the profanity in a Catholic church, even in this poor shack. Afterwards I was informed that the men were chewing big quids of tobacco, and the women were dipping or chewing snuff. They certainly spat with geometrical precision, and never touched one another, but aimed well into an opening on the side of the building, and always reached it with unerring aim.
My thoughts of that mission are half pleasant, half pathetic. To think that the large attendance was untouched, like many millions in the Sunny South, was the sad feature of Catholic failure to reach the people. They go through life in the old circumscribed familiar ways, knowing little of the Church of God, and, in fact, ignorant of the fundamental truths of Christianity; passing from youth to old age, and from the death-bed to the graveyard, missing so much certain hope that the Church gives the peasantry elsewhere. Such has been Catholic endeavor for generations. Even the great heart of Bishop England had to feel the same trial after all the torrents of his fervid eloquence, his poverty, self-sacrifice, and the clouds of suspicion in which his open, generous nature had to be enveloped. It is recorded that this holy and gifted man made few converts in his day.
There was something infinitely beautiful and consoling in a visit that I paid with Father Price to a dying black man one evening. The old fellow had been a slave in his youth, and appeared to have "had religion," as they say. He was also gentle and mannerly. He had known the priest for years, and, like other unsophisticated persons, was able to discern how unworldly his visitor was. He loved the Lord in his own simple creed, and Father Price had the way open to baptize, anoint, and give him the last Sacraments in a few days, after convincing him that the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ. The death of the old man was an edifying sight. The evening air seemed full of a deep content. Birds fluted softly under the eaves of the cabin, and the few long-leaf pines near by stirred in the wandering breeze as if bending to salute the departing soul. We came away filled with solemn thoughts as the cold stars glittered in the sky, which seemed the footstool of the Almighty. A wistful silence prevented us from speaking, as our spirits had been drawn near to the flight of a soul out of this vale of tears and we were confronted with the mystery of death. God grant us courage and trust, when He calls us to go out to the "great Beyond," like those of Uncle Ike!
Father Price had a rare priestly influence with sinners and lapsed Catholics.
Very few, if any, preached so often and gave so many missions, but as they were unheralded and unknown outside his humble walk of life, they are unrecorded, save by the ministering angels of the souls swayed for good by them.
He never was so cramped and selfish to think that his work was within the confines of a particular territory, and that souls elsewhere had no claim on him. His zeal was truly Catholic, not parochial. It looked to souls, and, like the celebrated Father of the Church, he reckoned one soul worth the ministry of a bishop. He would preach to two black children as earnestly as if they were a large congregation.
He was not eloquent and never went outside the themes of the plain gospel to try and captivate the fancy of of his audience. "Christ and Him Crucified" were his frequent subjects of inspiration, and something generous, honest and sincere seemed to radiate from him. The most illiterate white or black people understood him. He impressed them with the ringing truths of eternal life that came from his lips. He gave them plenty to think about, and they did not forget the divine message when he had finished. He listened patiently to the tiresome talk of conversationalists, but insisted on charity. He had no uneasy questionings, no remorse, no useless melancholy. He was simple and tranquil, and this temperament promoted the rugged health so essential to his arduous missionary life.
What an appropriate and long novitiate Father Price had in his own homeland for the Chinese Mission of his last year on earth! He accepted whatever God sent and recognized that he had to plough the furrows and wait for God to give success or failure. He never repined, but did his utmost, and was cheerful at small results or none at all. Perhaps in years to come the tiny seeds of eternal truths implanted by Father Price will break forth into flower and fruit for the cheerless missions of North Carolina.
A critic may be prompted to say it was a huge mistake for such a man as Father Price to leave a sphere of spiritual activity at home, to waste and shorten his existence in the barren mission fields of the Orient.
It is a hard question to answer, but there are reasons for every action which cannot be discussed in public. Then, again," the spirit breathes where it will." A man must look deep down into his heart and face a situation of the kind, bravely and simply, and pray that the new call may be a summons from God, not a temptation disguised as an angel of light. Father Price acted judiciously, and gave the question of leaving his life work for a new apostolate prayerful consideration. He acted on the judgment of venerable and holy advisers.
He left no interpretation with us. Not a word comes out of the silence to show what he thought of his long ministry with its light and shade as he lay dying so far away from his own Sunny South.
What an inspiration, to find the old priest dying in another and more fruitful apostolate, after a life of labor and sacerdotal virtues in his native State! Others would have yearned for rest and retirement after a comparatively fruitless career. One apostolate is usually sufficient for even the most pious and energetic. But Father Price was in the spring of life at fifty-nine years of age, ready to encounter untold hardships fit to overwhelm the youngest and most fervent Levite. Like the Apostle, he always looked on himself as the unprofitable servant.Martyrdom was his desired goal, and the subject of years of prayer. He met it not as sought for, but in the mysterious way designed by Providence, according to the accounts given of his sickness. The desired death was the highest expression of his love for God.
Ah, he was "a visionary" and "had China enough in North Carolina," sneer critics who flee from labor and sufferings. How we realize the meaning of the eloquent denunciation of the poisonous powers of the tongue given by St. James, when we hear such language from effeminate believers! He will be long remembered and live anew in his good deeds, when their names are long forgotten.
A verse of an old hymn heard in an ancient church comes floating down the aisles of years to me, and I apply it to the great but humble priest:
Without the people stood,
While unseen and alone,
With incense and with blood,
He did for them atone.
Death was no distressing thought to Father Price, and hence when it came on a foreign strand he could meet it like another Xavier."
