Work in Progress: Father Price at Prayer

More work on this portrait of Father Price at prayer.

“Father Price was intensely active about the country, gathering the people together in farmhouses where he taught Christian doctrine, fortifying the faith of believers and correcting the misapprehensions of non-believers. No one was ever neglected. If a farmer was too busy to come to instructions, the priest would follow him out into the fields, walking up and down plow furrows, or standing by as rows of tobacco or corn were chopped down. Whatever leisure the missioner might have would be devoted to the sick, the afflicted, the aged, and no distance was too great for him to carry the consolation of God's word to the very poor.”

This passage reminds me of Bishop Ned Schlesinger. When I knew him as Father Ned and he was ministering in Newton Grove, an old haunt of Father Price’s, I was able to accompany him once or twice as he went out to check on his lambs who had not been to mass recently. I walked out into a field with him and watched him wave down a farmer on a plow and scold him in Father Ned’s kind and quiet way, that he was missed at church, and wanted there. The spirit of the Tarheel Apostle is alive and well in priests like Father (Bishop) Ned.