January 7

André Bessette, François Fénelon, Zora Neal Hurston, and Orthodox Christmas

Author

David Barnhart
January 07, 2026

Mockingbird on New Year’s Day, 2006. Own photo.

For Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, today, January 7, marks the Baptism of the Lord. For Coptic and Orthodox Christians, who use the Julian calendar, today is Christmas.

In Canada, today is a feast day for André Bessette, Roman Catholic lay brother of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, who died on January 6, 1937. He had been a sickly child, and became an orphan at the age of twelve. He bounced from job to job, and eventually became a porter at Collège Notre-Dame in Quebec. Because of his devotion to St. Joseph and his care of the sick, he became a popular figure at the college, and many sick people came to him for prayer and credited him for miraculous cures. His own history with illness made him especially compassionate for the sick. When he died, more than a million people came to his viewing. 

Today marks the death, in 1715, of François Fénelon, French Catholic archbishop and author. His writings emphasize human rights, and made him an enemy of King Louis XIV. 

Today is the birthday, ion 1891, of Zora Neal Hurston, author and folklorist of Black culture. She was part of the Harlem Renaissance and wrote of the complex interplay of theology, personal story, and Black culture. 

Reflection

Zora Neal Hurston wrote: 

Gods always behave like the people who make them.

and

I accept this idea of democracy. I am all for trying it out. It must be a good thing if everybody praises it like that. If our government has been willing to go to war and sacrifice billions of dollars and millions of men for the idea I think that I ought to give the thing a trial.

The only thing that keeps me from pitching head long into this thing is the presence of numerous Jim Crow laws on the statute books of the nation. I am crazy about the idea of Democracy. I want to see how it feels.

François Fénelon wrote: 

“All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.”

Prayer: God, our universal siblinghood is hidden from our consciousness by a thousand labels and policies. Help us to see how truly related we are to all other Beings. Amen.