Saint Katharine Drexel, virgin
Optional Memorial
March 3rd
Saint Katharine Drexel
Photographer unknown
Collect:
Ever-loving God, You called Saint Katharine Drexel
to teach the message of the Gospel and to bring the life of the Eucharist
to the African American and Native American peoples.
By her prayers and example, enable us to work for justice among the poor and the oppressed,
and keep us undivided in love in the eucharistic community of Your Church.
Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(Readings are from the Common of Virgins or of Holy Women.)
On October 1, 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized Katharine Drexel, an American heiress who devoted her life (and her considerable fortune) to establishing missions, schools and homes for black and Indian children in this country. She was beatified November 20, 1988
Katharine was born in Philadelphia November 26, l858, barely three years before the outbreak of the Civil War. So deeply divided was the country over the issue of slavery, with all its heavy moral, ethical, cultural, economic and emotional considerations (not unlike those which attend the abortion issue today), that the young nation was forced to undergo this terrible war to determine whether any nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" could "long endure", as President Lincoln so concisely expressed it at Gettysburg.
Katharine Drexel grew to maturity in the shadow of the agony of that great war and its aftermath of bitterness and confusion. Although the war to abolish slavery was won and the union of the States preserved, deep and lasting damage had been done. Not only were many thousands of lives destroyed, not only was a culture virtually demolished, but even those who had been "liberated" -- the emancipated slaves -- were subject to continued humiliation and brutal poverty.
Katharine's wealthy and socially prominent family were deeply religious Catholics who conducted a Sunday school for black children in their home. Her parents' example of devotion to their faith and to the needs of others had an indelible formative effect on Katharine. At the age of thirty-three, she founded a separate order of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament which was entirely devoted to the active care of blacks and Indians. She spent the rest of her long life tirelessly and courageously evangelizing and educating these "poorest of the poor". She died Marcn 3, 1955.
Like Saint Philippine Duchesne, who preceded her in work with the Indians of America (and who was canonized in 1988), and like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Saint Katharine's example shows us that the path to holiness can be found in our willing response to Christ's voice heard in the cries of the most lowly and needy of His people.
Through the strength of their faith and their valiant perseverence in spite of conflict and hardships; through their vigorous and unselfish consecration of all their womanly energies and talents and gifts to serving others; through their whole-hearted obedience to God's will for them, all these women have carried the Light of Christ into the darkest corners of the Earth. They have given strength to the weak with the love and the prayers of their "maternal hearts"; they have sheltered and comforted the forsaken in the warm embrace of their "maternal arms."
Excerpt from Valiant Women, Vigorous Faith, by Helen Hull Hitchcock