“Did You See the Big Man?”

That the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways cannot be doubted. Sometimes He speaks to us in a still, small voice; other times He is not so subtle. One day in 1963, He appeared to a young boy in a little town in Ghana, West Africa, in a most unusual way.

I first met my friend, Father Jacob Tardie Adomako, when he spoke at a local Catholic church during a mission trip. Blessed with a deep, gravelly voice and a warm, engaging personality, Father Jacob had come to the United States to speak about the growing Catholic Church in Ghana, and to convey a message about the universality of the Church. His was an inspiring talk of how the Church was growing and prospering in a hot, dusty diocese in which half the congregations in his large parish did not even have church buildings and the faithful traveled for miles to meet on the bare ground, in the open to attend mass. 

When he spoke of the fact that, for a few thousand dollars they could build a church in his parish, my thoughts turned to the stained glass windows in our own Cathedral, each insured for over a million dollars, and how American Catholics sat in air conditioned comfort every weekend. What we spend on a new air conditioner would build an entire church for a congregation in Ghana. I felt a little guilty that fellow Catholics in Africa still sit on the ground in the savanna grass, listening to overworked priests who must travel many miles in order to minister to several scattered congregations.

After his speech, I spoke with Father Jacob and was immediately impressed by his personal magnetism, his love of God and the Church. It was apparent that the Holy Spirit was working through him in a powerful way. We became friends and talked privately several times thereafter. Since his return to Africa we have corresponded about his life in Ghana, a church we had hoped to build together in his home town, and matters of faith.

Eventually the question “What led you to the priesthood?” came up. I ask this of all my friends who are priests, because the answers are many, varied, and interesting. I am convinced that the Spirit calls his servants in divers ways. To some He reveals himself in a whisper; to others in a gentle nudge. Others are brought to the faith by serendipitous events. I knew this from personal experience. But I was not prepared for the answer that Father Jacob gave me. It astounds me still.

During one hot, dusty day in Hwereso, Ghana, a group of young Catholic students, led by their teacher, filed into a small church to attend mass presided over by the white priest. The mass started like any other, until it came time to consecrate the Host and the Precious Blood. As the priest lifted the Host above his head, the little boy witnessed something remarkable. Above the priest appeared a tall man in a dazzling, resplendent white robe, surrounded by a shimmering gold aura. The young boy must certainly have rubbed his eyes and shaken his head at the sight. When the Host was lowered, the man disappeared. Moments later, the priest lifted the cup. Once again, the tall man in a dazzling, resplendent white robe outlined with a shimmering gold aura appeared above the priest. Again the little boy watched in amazement. Surely others had seen it. When the cup was lowered, the man disappeared, never to be seen again. At the end of the mass the children filed out of the church and walked back to school. The young boy, anxious to talk to someone about what he had seen, approached his teacher. “Did you see the Big Man?” he asked the teacher timidly, hoping for reassurance. “What do you mean--the priest?” the teacher asked. “No, the Big Man above the priest,” he replied, “did you see him?” She had not seen the Big Man. Neither apparently had anyone else.

To her credit, the teacher did not dismiss the story as childish fantasy; rather, she took the boy to the priest. There was something unsettling and inherently credible in the sincerity and the confusion on the face of the young boy. When they approached the priest in his office, the teacher asked the child to relate to the priest what he just told her. 

The boy repeated the story. Rather than responding with skepticism, the priest--to his eternal credit--discerned that something powerful had happened here. “You will be a priest some day,” the priest said to the young boy who had seen the Big Man. The boy took it in silently and tried to contemplate what had just happened. After school, the young boy ran home to tell his parents the story. “I am going to be a priest,” he told his father. “No, son,” the father replied, “there are no black priests. There are only white priests.”

During the next couple decades, the young boy attended various schools, worked, and followed a circuitous route--as many of us do--to his ultimate destination. Yet the Holy Spirit makes crooked lines straight. During the entire time, the young boy never forgot about the Big Man or the words of the priest who foretold that he--a young, black boy from Ghana--would be a priest one day. There was something powerful in that vision and something insightful in the words which the priest spoke that day. 

The Holy Spirit, it seems, had important plans for the only child who saw the Big Man that day. That young boy, Jacob Tardie Adomako, Father Jacob, did indeed grow up to become a priest. And Father Jacob celebrated his twenty-year anniversary as a faithful and dedicated servant of God, in the very same church where the Big Man first appeared to him.