Haiti: The God of Tough Places, the Lord of Burnt Men
As a priest and a physician, Richard Frechette has known the body, heart, and soul of people in the most anguishing of circumstances. He has carried out his double ministry over the past twenty-five years in settings of extreme poverty, violence, social upheaval, and natural disasters. This personal experience of tough realities has been at once a descent into chaos and an ascent into compassion, never more so than in his work in Haiti.\ The reflections in this volume are less about Haiti...
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As a priest and a physician, Richard Frechette has known the body, heart, and soul of many people in the most anguishing of circumstances, when they faced the biggest challenges to their life and the meaning of it. To make the situation more dramatic, he has carried out his double ministry over the past twenty-five years in settings of extreme poverty, violence, social upheaval, and natural disasters. The backdrop of his profound encounters with other people has often been the crucible. This personal experience of tough realities has been at once a descent into chaos and an ascent into compassion.The reflections in this volume are less about Haiti than they are about real-life incidents that happened there, during a particular time in history. In a fuller sense, these reflections shed light on what happens in any place, at any time, to people of any race or class, who live out an assault on their human dignity. Whenever the dignity of human beings is marred, the human spirit finds itself in threatened conditions, and seeks desperately to preserve what is human about it. It is amazing how the human spirit finds light and hope in the most despairing darkness. This is the unfailing light of God's grace, ever present and faithful, fiercely persistent in trying to renew the face of the earth and the pilgrim human heart.Grounded in space and time, and yet speaking of universal concerns, these essays show how the ancient human scourges of poverty, ignorance, illness, and violence desecrate humanity and weaken the spirit. Yet Frechette shows that from these ashes many people, with the help of God, valiantly rise. This is a stunning work that crosses all conventional barriers between the personal and the political, between degradation by others and elevation by selves.
Introduction 11 The God ofTough Places 52 The Lord of Burnt Men 133 The Transfiguration of Barnabas 154 A Tale of Two Tragedies 195 On the End of the World (and Other Chances to Renew the Face of the Earth) 276 The Tiny Mustard Seed and the Ferocious Gates of Hell 357 The Deceased Pope and the Risen Christ 418 The Children of Cain ... and Other "All Souls" to Be 479 Jonah under the Withered Tree 5310 The Presentation ofthe Lord...and the Art of Un-Kidnapping (A Celebration of Light) 5911 Good Fridays, Bad Choices-Voodoo and the Passion of Christ 6512 To Eulogize a Saint: The Life and Death of Fr. William Bryce Wasson 7113 Keeping Sabbath 7514 The Thirteenth Day of Christmas 9115 Crown of Thorns 9716 Last Supper in the Shadows 10117 Fr. Bill Wasson Remembered. for Forever and a Day 10518 Assumption into Earth (On the Burial of Hundreds of Destitute Dead) 10919 St. Nicholas and the Antichrist 11320 The Land of Milk and Honey 119Conclusion 123
\ From the PublisherAfter reading HAITI, Oscar-winning writer-director Paul Haggis says of author Fr. Rich Frechette: "He is a man who does daily battle with cynicism and hatred that threatens to overwhelm his faith in mankind, and somehow draws lessons so surprising that they threaten to make an old atheist, like myself, believe in God." "Mother Teresa never sought fame—she was content to simply care for the sick and indigent without notice or fanfare. While she was unique in many ways, she was not the first, or the last, of great Catholic heroes who are blessed with incredible humility. Father Richard Frechette is cut from the same cloth... Haiti: The God of Tough Places, the Lord of Burnt Men is a riveting volume that requires a strong stomach. But the rewards, especially for Catholics, make the struggle worthwhile.... What energizes him [Father Rick] is the Haitian people—they never give up. Surrounded by horror stories, many of which are their own, they possess a will to live that would astound most of us in the developed nations." –William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, in Catalyst\ \
