Petrie-Narcisse is a fruitful tree

29th August 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Fr. Jerome LeDoux
The Louisiana Weekly Columnist

After I had visited my Sister Aggie one more time before leaving Lake Charles for Fort Worth, Lou Ann Guillory wheeled her way toward me as I was walking to the exit of the Landmark of Lake Charles nursing home. It turned out to be an incredible encounter.

“Maybe you don’t remember me, father, but I was at a revival that you did here at Sacred Heart Church several years ago. You were walking down the aisle blessing us when something happened. I had a terrible pain right here,” she said, pointing toward her chest. “When you passed me, that awful pain went away immediately and never returned!

“I just had to stop you, tell you about it and thank you with all my heart. And I also want you to know I am a cousin of your deceased brother-in-law, Herman Sonnier, Jr.”

What an exclamation point as our 2011 Petrie-Narcisse family reunion came to a close! Such a footnote was a fitting way to bring closure to our gathering of kinfolk from Atlanta, Austin, Canton MI, Dallas, Fort Worth, Henderson NV, Lake Charles, Marietta, New York, Oakland, Orlando, Redwood City, San Antonio, San Francisco and Vallejo.

By her mentioning Herman, Lou Ann reminded me of numerous branches of related families initiated by Petrie-Narcisse, the prolific main trunk of our family tree.

Lawrence Sweet, the main reunion organizer, compiled a Petrie-Narcisse family history that traces the multiple branches of our family tree, including eerie, actual census records of the names and estimated dollar worth of some of our slave forebears.

My sister Aggie, Lawrence’s Lake Charles collaborator, backed that up with over a dozen large family scrapbooks full of photos, names and history. Bishop Perry’s brother James helped both Lawrence and Aggie from his perch in the hills of Oakland.

In this sacred bond attitude at the Saturday evening Mass at Sacred Heart Church, we counted our losses since our last family reunion and prayed for the dead as well as for ourselves the living. It is all part of life as we view the great-grands, grandchildren, children, teenagers, young adults, middle-agers, the aging, the matriarchs and patriarchs.

At the Dutch-treat concluding dinner of the family reunion, we decided, among other things, that our next reunion would be in the Bay Area of California in three years. In the zodiac sign of Aquarius, the August 13 full moon greeted us as we made our way out of Pat’s of Henderson Restaurant, a daunting seafood location for a vegan.

“It is so good to hear your voice! Your voice is always a healing to me!” said a friend from New Orleans the day after I returned to Fort Worth from the family reunion. That call confirmed what Lou Ann Guillory told me as I was about to leave Lake Charles.

It also confirmed another heartwarming incident that occurred at St. Matthias Church in New Orleans about 17 years ago. Again, the occasion was the healing segment of a revival and the beneficiary was a lady who held her silence until two years later.

“I have to tell you what happened to me during your revival at St. Matthias Church two years ago,” she said while visiting me at St. Augustine Church. “I could not hold in any longer how bad the condition of my heart was and how it threatened my very life.

“When you came along the aisle blessing everyone with holy water, my whole body moved as I felt something happening to my heart. I was afraid that I might be dying. Instead, my heart was undergoing a complete healing that amazed my doctor and me.”

Our mere presence, our nearness is a healing to others. Ask Lou Ann Guillory. So is the sound of our voice, the smile on our face, the look of care and love, the handshake and hug of sisterhood and brotherhood, the very bonding during a family reunion.

On the other hand, we must shun the dysfunction of Jesus’ relatives in Mark 3:21. They tried to rein him in while he was preach­ing and healing, because the crush of the crowd made it impossible for him and his apostles to eat. “When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind!’”

If it could happen among the relatives of Jesus, imagine what can happen to us.

As in any other family reunion around the world, there can be no doubt that the fervent prayer on everyone’s mind was that God would grant all of us good health in mind, body and soul, and that we would all be able to convene again in three years.

This article originally published in the August 29, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.