Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Catechist, Saint
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Servant of God Nicholas Black Elk (1863—1950) is popularly celebrated for his fascinating spiritual life. How could one man, one deeply spiritual man, serve as both a traditional Oglala Lakota medicine man and a Roman Catholic catechist and mystic? How did these two spiritual and cultural identities enrich his prayer life? How did his commitment to God, understood through his Lakota and Catholic communities, shape his understanding of how to be in the world?
To fully understand the depth of Black Elk’s life-long spiritual quest requires a deep appreciation of his life story. He witnessed devastation on the battlefields of Little Bighorn and the Massacre at Wounded Knee, but also extravagance while performing for Queen Victoria as a member of “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show. Widowed by his first wife, he remarried and raised eight children. Black Elk’s spiritual visions granted him wisdom and healing insight beginning in his childhood, but he grew progressively physically blind in his adult years. These stories, and countless more, offer insight into this extraordinary man whose cause for canonization is now underway at the Vatican.
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- Title: Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Catechist, Saint
- Author: Jon M. Sweeney
- Series: People of God
- Publisher: Liturgical Press
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Oglala Indians; Shamans; Missionaries; Mystics; Catechists; Christian biography; Lakota Indians
- ISBNs: 9780814644416, 0814644414
- Resource ID: LLS:NCHLSBLCKCTCSNT
- Resource Type: text.monograph.biography
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-11-21T19:38:47Z
Jon M. Sweeney is an independent scholar and one of religion's most respected writers. He is an author of popular history, spirituality, biography, poetry, fiction for young readers, and memoir. He is married to Michal Woll, has four children, and lives in Milwaukee.
Jon has been interviewed on CBS News, WGN-TV, Fox News, and CBS Saturday Morning, and by publications online ranging from CNN to Romper. He’s a practicing Catholic who also prays regularly with his wife, a congregational rabbi. He loves the church, the synagogue, and other aspects of organized religion. Sweeney is also co-director, with Rabbi Woll, of The Lux Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Sacred Heart Seminary.
His popular history The Pope Who Quit: A True Medieval Tale of Mystery, Death, and Salvation was optioned by HBO. He's the author of forty other books, including The Complete Francis of Assisi; Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Catechist, Saint; and St. Francis of Assisi, with a foreword by Richard Rohr.
Jon became the editor of Living City Magazine in April 2023.