Saint Katharine Drexel-A Woman Of The 19th And 20th Century

American Cathlic's Saint of the Day

March 3, 2005

St. Katharine Drexel

(1858-1955)

If your father is an international banker and you ride in a private railroad car, you are not likely to be drawn into a life of voluntary poverty. But if your mother opens your home to the poor three days each week and your father spends half an hour each evening in prayer, it is not impossible that you will devote your life to the poor and give away millions of dollars. Katharine Drexel did that.

She was born in Philadelphia in 1858. She had an excellent education and traveled widely. As a rich girl, she had a grand debut into society. But when she nursed her stepmother through a three-year terminal illness, she saw that all the Drexel money could not buy safety from pain or death, and her life took a profound turn.

She had always been interested in the plight of the Indians, having been appalled by reading Helen Hunt Jackson’s A Century of Dishonor. While on a European tour, she met Pope Leo XIII and asked him to send more missionaries to Wyoming for her friend Bishop James O’Connor. The pope replied, “Why don’t you become a missionary?” His answer shocked her into considering new possibilities.

Back home, she visited the Dakotas, met the Sioux leader Red Cloud and began her systematic aid to Indian missions.

She could easily have married. But after much discussion with Bishop O’Connor, she wrote in 1889, “The feast of St. Joseph brought me the grace to give the remainder of my life to the Indians and the Colored.” Newspaper headlines screamed “Gives Up Seven Million!”

After three and a half years of training, she and her first band of nuns (Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored) opened a boarding school in Santa Fe. A string of foundations followed. By 1942 she had a system of black Catholic schools in 13 states, plus 40 mission centers and 23 rural schools. Segregationists harassed her work, even burning a school in Pennsylvania. In all, she established 50 missions for Indians in 16 states.

Two saints met when she was advised by Mother Cabrini about the “politics” of getting her Order’s Rule approved in Rome. Her crowning achievement was the founding of Xavier University in New Orleans, the first university in the United States for blacks.

At 77, she suffered a heart attack and was forced to retire. Apparently her life was over. But now came almost 20 years of quiet, intense prayer from a small room overlooking the sanctuary. Small notebooks and slips of paper record her various prayers, ceaseless aspirations and meditation. She died at 96 and was canonized in 2000

Comment:

Saints have always said the same thing: Pray, be humble, accept the cross, love and forgive. But it is good to hear these things in the American idiom from one who, for instance, had her ears pierced as a teenager, who resolved to have “no cake, no preserves,” who wore a watch, was interviewed by the press, traveled by train and could concern herself with the proper size of pipe for a new mission. These are obvious reminders that holiness can be lived in today’s culture as well as in that of Jerusalem or Rome.

Quote:

“The patient and humble endurance of the cross—whatever nature it may be—is the highest work we have to do.” “Oh, how far I am at 84 years of age from being an image of Jesus in his sacred life on earth!” (Saint Katharine Drexel)

Saint Katharine Drexel, virgin

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

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.