The Slave and His Master

By Sandro F. Piedrahita

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A Spanish priest leads an African prince in suicidal despair on a journey to Christ.

​
“I consecrate myself
to God till death, looking
on myself henceforth as a
slave whose whole office
lies in being at the service
of his Master.”

Saint Pedro Claver


Incensed, incensed! Padre Pedro tries to control his ire, lest it be a sin. He cannot believe how horribly the slaves are treated, so much worse than animals. He addresses the captain who has brought them to Cartagena, making no effort to disguise his anger.

“If you want to rip them from the liberty of their land, then at a minimum you might treat them humanely when you bring them on their voyage of doom.”

“They are blacks without souls,” the captain responds. “They are not baptized Christians. They pray to pagan gods.”

“Of course they have souls,” Padre Pedro responds emphatically. “They are made in the image and likeness of God! And you should be concerned about the state of your own soul at this moment. Torturing these innocent men and women for profit will take you far from Heaven!”

“Look, father, I did not let you come on board to preach to me. You said you wanted to take care of the sick Negroes and baptize some of the others. So have at it! I don’t need to hear you preach.”

Father Pedro looks at the crowded compartment at the bottom of the ship in disbelief. There is barely any space for the Africans to stand, and all the men are shackled together in pairs, sweating in the preternatural heat. There are feces all over the floor, and many are visibly ill, their bodies covered in ulcers or bleeding pustules. There is one man lying on the floor, his left leg obviously suffering from gangrene, and Padre Pedro immediately baptizes him and gives him the last rites before directing two of his assistants, black men he had brought as interpreters, to take him from the vessel to the nearest public hospital run by a group of Carmelite nuns.

The next thing Padre Pedro does is give the captives some water, as well as some bread and cheese he has brought with him. When he approaches a young woman cowering in a corner, she tries to move away from him defensively, her face full of fright, and utters something in terror in her native tongue. The black interpreter Padre Pedro has brought with him tells the priest that the woman has asked if he is the man who has come to eat her.

“No, little child,” Padre Pedro responds through the interpreter. “I have come to ease your pain, to quench your thirst with the living water.”

“What do you mean?” the black woman asks in her African language.

“I have come to baptize you in Christ. I know that the Middle Passage is horrible, that you have suffered greatly, more than any human being should suffer, but in a strange and inexplicable way, some good may come from this. Through your suffering, you may come to know the Lord who loves you and has suffered with you. And that is an inestimable bounty.”

The woman has no idea what the priest is saying, but her eyes are suddenly less afraid.

“Ask if she has ever heard of Jesus,” Padre Pedro tells his interpreter.

The woman responds that she has not.

“Jesus is the living God, the one who has created everything. He died for you on the Cross many centuries ago.”

Padre Pedro realizes she does not understand him. It is always a challenge to try to explain the Faith to recently arrived slaves. Indeed, Padre Pedro thinks, many Spanish Catholics fail to understand the Cross even after years of instruction, sometimes at the peril of their own souls.

“Ask her if she believes there is a spirit who has created everything,” he says to the interpreter.

“Yes,” the woman answers in Yoruba. “There are many spirits who have created the heavens and the earth, the animals and the humans.”

“Well, I am here to tell you there is only one spirit that has created all.” 

Padre Pedro turns to his interpreter. 

“Is there a word for God in her language?”

“Olorun,” the interpreter answers.

“Well, tell her that there is only one Olorun. That there are no other gods other than the One True God. And that He came to earth, became man, and was crucified for our sins.”

“There is no word for ‘crucified,’ in Yoruba,” responds the interpreter. “The closest word to ‘sin’ is ‘ese.’” 

“Tell her that Olorun was killed as a sacrifice to heal the ‘ese’ of every man and woman who turns to Him.”

“I don’t think she is going to understand that,” the interpreter tells the priest.

“So many men do not understand it,” replies Padre Pedro. “But tell her anyway. By dint of repetition, someday she shall understand. And hopefully she shall throw herself into the abyss of God’s Mercy when she does so.”

* * *
​

As Padre Pedro and his interpreters make their way through the throngs, they notice that one man is still in shackles, while all the rest have been rid of their chains in preparation to disembark. He is a very black man, young and muscular, with fury in his eyes.

“Why is this man still in shackles while the others are not?” Padre Pedro asks the captain of the ship.

“He rebelled in open sea,” the captain responds. “Attacked one of the sailors and then threw himself into the ocean. If our nets hadn’t caught him, he would not be here today. Then he refused to eat, wishing to commit suicide. But we opened his mouth with a speculum oris and the help of a thumbscrew and forced him to eat the yams we had for him. He is a very valuable slave, strong and healthy. We shall obtain a good sum for him at auction. We couldn’t let him just die.”

“I wish to speak with him,” Padre Pedro says.

Since the African captive also speaks Yoruba, the interpreter can help the priest communicate with him.

“What is your name?” the priest asks.

“Adesola,” responds the man. 

The interpreter tells the priest that the name means “a child crowned with wealth.”

“Tell him that I am here to help him, to ease his pain.”

Adesola laughs derisively. “You can do nothing for me,” he says in his native language. “I was born a prince, and I shall never be a slave. As soon as I am unshackled, as soon as I have the opportunity, I shall take my life.”

“Oh, Lord,” says the priest, suddenly alarmed. He realizes this man is in greater need of him than all the rest.

“That would be the greatest of sins. Do you understand that?” 

Adesola laughs again. “Who are you to tell me how to lead my life? Don’t you see my life is no longer worth living?”

“You must not lapse into despair,” says the priest. 

Then he turns to his interpreter. “Is there a word for ‘despair’ in Yoruba?”

“There is a word for despair in every language,” replies the interpreter.

“Then tell him there is always hope. That hope in God is an antidote to despair.”

But Adesola makes a sign with his hand, as if to say the priest’s words are nonsense.

“If Olorun has let this happen to me,” says Adesola, “then I no longer believe in Olorun. The only choice is death.”

Padre Pedro suddenly hollers to the ship’s captain. “Come here, I need to speak to you!”

“What is it?” the captain asks. “Are you going to give me another speech? The man is still in shackles because he’s potentially violent.”

“That is not why I’m calling you,” says the priest. “I need to know how much it costs to purchase this captive. I want to take him with me.”

“The apostle to the slaves wants to buy a slave? Surely you surprise me, Padre Pedro. I thought you spent all your time railing against the institution of slavery. I thought you loved the blacks more than the whites themselves. Don’t you come to the port every time a slave ship arrives? Don’t you kiss their wounds?”

“Don’t worry about that,” flashes Padre Pedro. “What is your price?”

“For a slave as strong and young as this, I’d say five-hundred pesos.”

“Five-hundred pesos?” replies Padre Pedro incredulously. “It would take me months to collect such an amount.”

“I’m sorry, father,” the captain responds. “Maybe you can buy an older captive, if you need a servant. But this young buck will cost you quite a sum.”

“What if I pay you the amount a little at a time? I don’t know. I can collect alms. I know some devout Catholics who are rich. Maybe they will help me collect the money for you.”

“Why this insistence, father? There are plenty of slaves who are less costly.”
​
“None of them needs me as much as this one does. Don’t you see he is in danger of perdition?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” the captain answers. “You are imagining things.”

“Let me take him with me. I shall have the money for you within a week.”

“I don’t know, father. We’re talking about a great deal of money.”

“You have my pledge, as a man and as a priest. I shall pay you the full amount in seven days.”

“If you say so, father. But if you don’t come up with the money, I’ll have to send the appropriate authorities to reclaim the slave.”

“All right,” says the priest. 

Then he tells his interpreter to address Adesola.

“Tell him that I have purchased him. That I will treat him kindly and give him all the liberty he needs. And once I am sure of his eternal salvation, I shall set him free.”

The interpreter tells Adesola what the priest has said, and Adesola laughs again. “Even if you set me free, what future will I have? I was born a prince, and the most I can be in this land, even if you liberate me, is a wretched working man.”
​
A week later, Padre Pedro, true to his word, paid off the full amount that was due. Henceforth he would live in his own home with Adesola, who would at once be Padre Pedro’s slave and master. Not for nothing had Padre Pedro sworn, as soon as he was made a priest, that thereafter he would become the “slave to the slaves.”

* * *

“Prince Adesola.” Padre Pedro, speaking through his interpreter, addresses his new slave as soon as he enters the room where the black man is housed. The priest is bearing a large crucifix in one of his arms and a depiction of Heaven in the other. 

The black man is startled, not expecting his noble background to be recognized by the white man who has bought him.

“Yes,” Adesola answers. There is anger on his face. “What do you want?”

“I have come to teach you certain things,” Padre Pio responds. “But first I need to learn about you. You say that you are a prince.”

“A very powerful prince. My father commanded an army of more than a thousand men. And I did not live in a hut, as all you white men think. I lived in a palace. I bore a golden crown on my head, and I wielded a golden scepter. I had fifteen concubines.”

“How were you captured?”

“We lost a great battle, and I became a slave to our rivals, just like my father and mother. They sold us to the Spanish merchants. I do not know the fate of my parents. All I know is that they were not on the same ship that brought me here.”

“Well, I want to teach you about another prince, the Prince of Peace. He was also the son of a great Father, the creator of all things.”

“I’m not interested in your faith. I once had my own. But all the divine spirits have failed me. Please just leave me alone. Or order me to do what you want. I am your captive after all.”

“My purpose is not to enslave you. My mission is to convert you. That is why I purchased you at such great cost.”

“You can’t get inside my head!” Adesola replies angrily. “You have bought my body, but my mind is another matter.”

“The Lord Christ died for you, for the African as well as the European. I promise you that if you receive Him in Baptism, your load will be less heavy. He’ll help you bear the pain of living in exile in a strange land, far from your principality.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying, that someone died for me. Who could you be talking about? Many men died for me in battle, but we were defeated. The only respite for me is death.”

“No, no, and then again no!” 

Padre Pedro is suddenly animated. He shows Adesola the picture of Heaven and tells him that if he is faithful and courageous, he will arrive there and have more riches than any earthly prince, that his suffering in Cartagena will be a long-lost memory.

“I’m going to take my life, whether you want me to or not. I don’t see why you really care. To you, I am just another black man, even if you address me as ‘prince.’ Let me jump into a river, and forget about me.” 

“I understand your despair,” responds the priest. “But there will soon come a time when things will be better. I promise you that, Prince Adesola. God is always with you, even when no one else is.”

“God! God! You talk about your white God! I have never seen Him. He certainly wasn’t with me on that ship that traversed the seas and brought me to the land of the white man. He wasn’t there when many of my men died of dehydration, when they were beaten, when so many of our women were taken violently by white sailors. How do you expect me to believe in a beneficent God when all I’ve seen is horror?”

Padre Pedro does not fail to recognize that Adesola is a man of great intelligence. The priest thinks that will present him with certain obstacles, but perhaps also with opportunities. Having dealt with heretics, Muslims and pagan slaves, he knows the most intelligent are the most difficult to convert, but that once they are converted, their zeal is all the greater.

“What if I were to tell you that your life on earth is but a breath? That your monstrous suffering on that ship for three months is like a grain of sand in the immensity of time? I just want you to think about it. And let me leave this crucifix with you and place it on the wall above your bed. I want you to contemplate it, to think about the sheer brutality of the crucifixion of our gentle God. That is what the Christ was willing to endure for you and for me, for the salvation of all men, black and white alike.”

“Are you saying this dead man nailed to the wood is the white man’s God?”

“No, that’s not what I am saying. I’m saying He is the God of all.” 

“I still think it would be better if I were dead,” responds the black man.
​
“I shall return tomorrow, Prince Adesola.”

* * *

The months pass. Padre Pedro continues to visit Adesola every day in his bedroom, trying to teach him things of God. Adesola’s intelligence never ceases to astonish the zealous priest. In half a year, Adesola has learned how to converse in Spanish almost fluently and can even argue about complicated philosophical questions. He still believes his end must be suicide but has lost some of his bottomless rancor when he speaks to Padre Pedro.

The slave’s arguments in favor of killing himself have become more logical than visceral. Since he believes there is no God and no afterlife, and human life is full of sorrow, why not hang himself from a rope or throw himself from a cliff into the sea? After all, he will never be a prince again, never lord over the masses, so why continue with the charade? He was not born to be a servant.

Padre Pedro surmises that Adesola’s greatest sin is pride. The Catalan priest fully understands that pride is what prevents the former prince from accepting Jesus because the only way to accept Jesus is through humility. And Padre Pedro has never been as flummoxed in his efforts to convert a slave as in his attempt to convert Prince Adesola.

With the passage of time, Padre Pedro realizes that his recalcitrant slave has grown to admire him and hopes that will allow him to make inroads into his soul. Adesola knows that whenever a slave ship docks into the harbor of Cartagena, Padre Pedro is always ready to welcome the Africans, bringing them biscuits, beef jerky, cheese, ham, tobacco, and sometimes a bit of brandy. The African prince also realizes that Padre Pedro has baptized thousands upon thousands of slaves into the Catholic faith, sometimes right there on the boat when they arrive and often during his many visits to the Africans in the slave quarters where they are forcefully domiciled. It is not a secret that rather than sleeping in the mansions of the slave owners, Padre Pedro sleeps in the huts of his beloved black men when he goes to the plantations to inspect how they are being treated.

And Adesola also knows that Padre Pedro administers Confession to hundreds of Africans in church every week and angrily reproves any slave owner who tries to force slave men and women to couple merely to produce more slaves. Padre Pedro demands that African men and women unite in Christian marriage only and is not shy about telling the slaves that to do anything differently is a great sin. But despite all this, the proud Adesola refuses to believe the teachings of the man he has grown to admire and in secret continues to plot his suicide.

At times, he has held a knife in his left hand and been tempted to do what Padre Pedro calls the unforgiveable but at the last moment has resisted the strong temptation. Other times he has thought of simply walking into the sea and giving up. The truth is that he has never forgotten his beloved Africa, the dances about a campfire, the sound of the drums beating in unison, the days of hunting for boars in the tropical jungle. And everything he remembers fills him with a deep melancholy that he cannot shake. In the morning, he wakes up sad and in the evening falls asleep just as sad. The only thing that breaks up the monotony of his depression is the work which Padre Pedro has asked him to perform in the fields – not because you are a slave, the priest has told him, but because work is good for the state of your soul.

Padre Pedro has often heard Adesola’s arguments against the divinity of the Christ in other men, mostly disbelieving Spaniards, Dutchmen and Englishmen, but never in the mouth of an African. Perhaps, thinks the priest, Adesola’s intelligence is what will lead to his perdition. How could an all-powerful and all-loving God allow the existence of evil? inquires the princely Adesola. How could a man who is God Himself suffer the humiliation of the Cross?

Padre Pedro tries to answer the questions with arguments both simple and complex, but they never satisfy the young African. Padre Pedro thinks Adesola is stubborn and proud, but he chalks up his radical unbelief to his relentless despair. He is in a strange land, without kinsmen or friends, condemned to duties far beneath his intelligence. Perhaps, thinks the priest, the best thing for Adesola would be to find a woman to marry and raise a family of his own, but to accept the sacrament of marriage, he would first have to be baptized. And the gallant Prince Adesola steadfastly refuses to do so. 
​
Since Padre Pedro fails to persuade Adesola through reason and logic, he turns, as ever, to relentless prayer.

* * *

What truly begins to soften Adesola’s heart is when Padre Pedro brings Carlitos to sleep in his own bed in the Jesuit novitiate. Indeed, the African prince finds the priest’s conduct astonishing, as do most of the other priests and novices who live in the same home. In fact, many of the other priests violently protest, clamoring that Padre Pedro’s excessive zeal is endangering them all, as there is a possibility of contagion. But Padre Pedro will have nothing of it. Not only does he put Carlitos in his bed, but the priest sleeps on the floor every night, never ceasing to pray for his recovery.

Carlitos’ condition is gruesome. He has pink bloody pustules all over his black face, almost completely covering his eyes such that the man is nearly blind, and he is constantly drooling, the saliva falling from his lips that are also preternaturally swollen. He has bloody ulcers all over his arms, indeed all over his body, and he can barely walk.

Adesola was present when Carlitos first arrived, with Padre Pedro trying to lift him along, and Adesola was enlisted by the priest to help him carry his fellow black man into the priest’s room. The African prince’s first reaction was a deep revulsion, the instinct to vomit, and yet Padre Pedro’s heroic charity was a better lesson to Adesola than the priest’s endless sermons about how the true Christian must carry Christ’s Cross. For the first time, Adesola had a glimmer of understanding of the priest’s lectures, when the priest had told him that in helping bear the Cross ourselves or those of others, we are serving Christ himself. There was a frisson of recognition in Adesola’s soul: perhaps in helping carry Carlitos, he was helping the disfigured black man carry his own Cross, just like Simon of Cyrene had helped the Christ carry His Cross during His ascent to Calvary.    

Soon Adesola learned the full story. Padre Pedro, as often, was visiting a plantation to make sure that the blacks were treated well, administering Confession, and performing marriage ceremonies for those slaves who were living in sinful union. When he approached one of the huts, the slave owner told him to avoid it, for it housed a man with a pestilent disease that might be spread to others. This only served to pique Padre Pedro’s curiosity, and he decided to enter the sick man’s abode. What he found there was astonishing: a black man covered in his own blood, seemingly with no hope of remission. Apparently the slave master and the other slaves had left him there to die, without even administering the last sacraments to him. Padre Pedro asked the man if he wanted to go through with his Confession, and the dying man nodded in agreement. 

“What is your name?” the priest asked.

“They call me Carlitos,” the man answered, speaking with great difficulty.

“Tell me your sins that they may be forgiven.”

“Oh, father,” Carlitos answered, still struggling. “I have had many concubines throughout my life, more than I can remember. I had a lawful wife, bless her soul, but I was not faithful to her. And despite being a slave, I had a great pride. I thought I was the strongest and most handsome of them all. And now look at me! A monster who frightens all the others!”

“Not in the eyes of God,” Padre Pedro responded. “In the Lord’s mind your sins are far uglier than your bloody pustules. But now you have confessed them, and they are entirely forgotten.”

The priest immediately asked to speak with the slave’s owner, a man who seemed otherwise kind but had no idea what to do with the diseased African.

“What are your plans for him?” Padre Pedro asked.

“To let him die,” the slave master responded. “I even called a physician from Cartagena, and he told me there is no hope of recovery. And I don’t want the other slaves getting sick. So I’ve decided to simply let the Lord take him.”

“Carlitos will not die of this disease,” Padre Pedro replied, surprising the slave owner. “Of that you can be assured.”

“I don’t know how you can say that. The physician who gave his diagnosis is one of the best in Nueva Granada.”

“Well, I tell you it will not happen. Come, have your men take him into the wagon. I shall take him with me to the Jesuit quarters.”    

* * *

Padre Pedro asks Adesola to help care for Carlitos while the priest goes to the port to welcome the slaves arriving in slave ships. Padre Pedro is not only thinking of alleviating the suffering of the disfigured slave, but also of mending the soul of the proud prince. He knows that acts of goodness, just like acts of concupiscence, can become a habit when repeated and that acts of charity are pleasant in the eyes of the Lord and can even overcome the power of sin.
 
At first, Adesola balks at the request. “How can you give me such a task, knowing the man might be contagious?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” the priest answers. “If God wants you to fall ill, it will happen even if you are a thousand leagues far from the diseased. And if God wants you to remain healthy, it will happen even if you kiss Carlitos’ bloody sores with your own lips.”

“I don’t know,” answers Adesola, shaking his head.
​
“It is an order,” Padre Pedro responds. “But not from myself, your human master, but from Him who is the Master of us all.”

At first, the task is extremely difficult. Adesola wipes the bloody pustules on Carlitos’ face and arms with a white rag and feels he is about to retch. Then he does what he finds to be the most challenging: cleaning and replacing Carlitos’ soiled underpants. A prince! he thinks. A prince and now I am performing the lowliest of duties! But soon he overcomes the initial revulsion and learns to tend to Carlitos with kindness. He is surprised to learn that Carlitos comes from the same region of Africa as he and that he is fluent in Yoruba. He learns that Carlitos has two sons and a daughter, but that they were left in Cuba many years before. The African prince remembers words Padre Pedro has told him again and again as he thinks of Carlitos’ plight. 

“When we have nothing left but God,” the priest had taught him, “we discover that God is enough.” 

And slowly, gradually, Adesola’s thoughts of suicide begin to recede from his mind. He has found a purpose, even though he will not admit it even to himself. In tending to Carlitos’ extreme pain, he starts to forget his own. Yet that does not mean he is willing to be baptized and embrace the God of the white man, the God of the cruel Spanish usurper who has destroyed his life. Even though Padre Pedro is insistent, sometimes speaking to him with kindness, at other times with an obstinate anger, Adesola simply does not believe and resists the entreaties of the Catalan Jesuit priest.

“Why would God allow Carlitos’ pain?” Adesola asks Padre Pedro, thinking the priest will be unable to come up with a rational answer.

“To help you share it,” the priest responds, as if it went without saying. “To help you get closer to Him, even if you don’t understand.”

One night, Carlitos’ condition suddenly takes a turn for the worse. Padre Pedro is at his bedside, as is Adesola. The truth is Adesola has grown to love Carlitos, with whom he has shared so many memories about their distant Africa. He no longer sees caring for the man’s monstrous disease as an imposition of his master, but as something he would do willingly, even if no one required it. So as the man vomits, Adesola softly wipes his face with a kerchief even as his own body is covered in the verdant puke. Carlitos is given to fits of coughing, and he is coughing blood.

“Will he die tonight?” Adesola asks the priest.

“No, he will not,” Padre Pedro responds. “Never forget the Great Physician’s skill.”

Adesola and Padre Pedro spend the whole night tending to the beleaguered Carlitos. The man has a high fever, and he is sweating profusely, so much so that it seems his shirt has been seeped in water.

“I thirst,” the sick black man whispers.

Adesola takes a sponge dipped in water and presses it to Carlitos’ lips.

“Is there nothing else we can do?” Adesola asks the priest. “He is suffering so!”

“You can pray, Prince Adesola,” the priest says in a soft voice. “Pray to Jesus in Heaven and to His Blessed Mother. That should alleviate not only Carlitos’ suffering, but also your own.”

“You know I don’t believe. Don’t use this moment of pain to try to convert me!”

“You shall be converted in God’s good time. I think you are resisting because of your pride, but the seed has already been planted. Because charity causes joy, it is the most contagious of virtues.”

The sun rises, and the lambent light falls upon Carlitos’ face. The worst is over, his fever has broken, and he has ceased to vomit. In a fortnight, he shall be healed completely. Adesola collapses on a chair and falls asleep while the tireless priest continues to pray for the two black men with whom he has shared the night.

* * *
​

Adesola resists conversion, resists the urge to pray. The power of Padre Pedro’s example is so great that the African prince often thinks of turning to Jesus on the crucifix above his bed to ask for some special favor. And Adesola has heard the rumor that Padre Pedro has even told the noblewomen of Cartagena, who complained that the Jesuit was filling the churches with smelly Negroes, that the blacks were closer to Christ than they were, for Christ’s Mercy is closest to those who suffer. But Adesola will not bow to the God of the white man, no matter what Padre Pedro says and does for the black man! Weren’t his brothers placed in chains by those who followed the same God? Weren’t they considered property in the religion of the white man? Didn’t he himself belong to Padre Pedro?

And yet the urge persists. Adesola has learned something in carrying for the desperately ill Carlitos, that there can be something redemptive in suffering, that it is not devoid of meaning as he once thought. Adesola’s depression lifted rather than worsened after Carlitos was put under his care, and his thoughts of suicide are far behind him. No longer does he dream of throwing himself into the ocean or of swallowing the bitter poison. By nursing Carlitos back to health, he has learned that life is precious. Perhaps, he thinks, it is as Padre Pedro says. Perhaps the Christ was tortured on the Cross to carry all our suffering. But he quickly puts away such thoughts and lets himself fall asleep in the comfortable bed Padre Pedro has procured for him.

The following morning, as he is working with slaves owned by other Jesuits, he looks up at the immense blue sky above, at the endless fields before him, at the beauty of his fellow Africans, and feels a sudden revelation. Yes, there is a God, he is sure of it this time. Who else could have created all this splendor? As he works, he is delighted by the strength of his own arms, at the steadiness of the machete, at everything he can perceive through his five senses. He breathes in the air and is invigorated, takes a drink from his canteen, and his thirst is quenched. He wants to cry out in joy to his fellow slaves that the Lord is risen! But then, like Peter on the waters, he begins to doubt. Even if there is a God, that does not prove the existence of the God of the white man. The beauty of nature is not necessarily evidence that Christ died and on the third day was resurrected. So he continues to work, works himself into exhaustion, for his thoughts have filled him with awe and dread at the same time.

That night, he returns to his room in the Jesuit quarters. He looks up at the Christ above his bed, bearded, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed. Surely that is not the God of the African! But as he begins to fall asleep, he hears a voice speaking to him in Yoruba. The voice addresses him as “omo,” meaning “son” in Adesola’s native language. 

“Omo,” the voice repeats, “why do you resist letting me enter into your heart? Don’t you know I thirst for you?”

Suddenly Adesola looks up at the crucifix and notices something has changed. The face of the Christ has turned into that of a black man, with dark skin, thick lips, and woolly hair.

“Oh, why, oh why,” the voice demands, “why must you refuse me, the living water?”

And then Adesola sees a bright light, a light that almost blinds him, emanating from the face of the suffering black man on the crucifix.

“Lord, is it you?” Adesola asks.

“Emi ni,” answers the Christ, meaning I am. “Don’t worry about the color of my skin. Isn’t it enough for you to know you are made in My image and likeness?”

“I’m a sinful man,” Adesola replies. “Why would you deign to appear before me?”

“I have appeared to you many times, my lowly son, but you did not recognize me. In the face of Padre Pedro, in that of Carlitos, in that of your fellow slaves, and in the face of the white man who did not scourge you.”

“I was blind,” Adesola answers. “Truly I did not see you.”  

“Go and get baptized, confess your sins, and pledge your life to Me. I do not promise you an easy life. I promise you a life full of difficulty and sometimes sorrow. But if you steadfastly believe, if you adhere to My Commandments, I shall open the very gates of Heaven for you!”

“Fiat,” says Adesola in the Yoruba language. Jeki o sele! Let it be!

* * *

Padre Pedro is on his deathbed. Adesola has come to pay his last respects, accompanied by his wife Carmen, his son Joaquin, and his daughter Sofia.
​
“Thank you for coming,” the old priest says in a weak voice. “I have never forgotten you, Prince Adesola.”

“I’m not a prince,” replies Adesola. “The only Prince is in Heaven with His Father and the Holy Spirit. I’m but a simple foreman working on a quarry.”

“Do you enjoy your work?” the old priest asks.

“I do,” Adesola responds. “Sometimes it’s difficult for me to lead the other black men who work with me, but the Lord grants me the wisdom to do so. And I have even been able to enroll my children in a special school for Negroes run by the Carmelite nuns. So I can’t complain.”

“Never complain,” Padre Pedro commands. “Just pray!”  

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Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American Catholic writer of Peruvian and Ecuadorian descent. Before he turned to writing, he practised law for a number of years. He is Jesuit-educated, and many of his stories have to do with the lives of saints, told through a modern lens. His wife Rosa is a schoolteacher, his son Joaquin teaches English in China and his daughter Sofia is a social worker. For many years, he was an agnostic, but he has returned to the faith. Mr. Piedrahita holds a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Sandro's other work on Foreshadow:
The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, August 2022)
The Crucifixion of St. Peter (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, August 2022)
​A World for Abimael Jones (Part 1 of 2); Fiction, March 2023)
A World for Abimael Jones (Part 2 of 2); Fiction, March 2023)
A Jew and Her Cross (Part 1 of 2; Fiction, April 2023)
A Jew and Her Cross (Part 2 of 2; Fiction, April 2023)
God Alone Suffices (Fiction, June 2023)
Salvifici Dolores​ (Fiction, July 2023)
That Person Whom You Know (Fiction, September 2023)