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“Why
not, my child, yourself become a missionary?”
Pope Leo XIII to Saint Katharine Drexel
The mass migrations of peoples who immigrated to the United States
in the 19th and early 20th centuries dramatically
changed American life and the Catholic Church in the United States.
These millions of peoples, principally from Ireland, Germany, Italy and
Poland, flocked to urban parishes where they preserved their native
languages and cultures as they began the process of entering into the
American melting pot and fulfilling the American Dream of a better life.
They were ministered to by many priests, sisters and brothers, notably
saints John Neumann and Mother Cabrini.
They started at the bottom of the economic
work ladder, worked hard and left greater opportunities for their
children. Eventually, they were amalgamated into American society. While
all of this was happening to the immigrants, many United States citizens
were left behind. Among them were the most neglected, the Indians and
the People of Color, those later called Native Americans and
African-Americans. God responded to their needs by calling to their aid
a young woman with no formal education or natural talent for business
administration. He called Katharine Drexel of Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.
Childhood
"There is no hope for her recovery,” said the doctor to Francis Drexel
about his wife, Hannah Jane, as he kept vigil at her bedside. She died
of complications from the birth of her second daughter, Katharine, on
December 30, 1858, the day after Katharine was baptized and a month
after her birth on November 26. Katharine was forever grateful to her
mother who lay down her life for the life of her daughter. Perhaps this
was Katharine’s inspiration for giving up her own life for the sake of
the neglected Indians and People of Color.
For the next 14 months, Katharine and her sister
Elizabeth lived with relatives. When their father remarried Emma
Bouvier, they returned to live with him and their stepmother in their
luxurious home on Walnut Street in Philadelphia. Katharine’s father was
a wealthy banker from a prominent family that established Drexel
Institute, a vocational school, and supported charities such as schools,
hospitals, orphanages and homes for the elderly. Both he and his new
wife were devoted Catholics. They built a special oratory in their city
home where the family gathered for daily prayer. In the summers, they
rented a country estate where the family enjoyed the wonders of nature
and the children learned the faith at their stepmother’s knee.
On October 2, 1863 Katharine’ stepsister, Louise, was
born. Mother, child and stepchildren always considered one another as
one family without any distinctions. Mother Emma conducted an “open
house” at her home. She welcomed all people of need regardless of race,
creed or national origin. She welcomed all who sought her help, provided
listening and counseling for them, supplied them with medicines and made
donations to cover their expenses. It was a home of charity where the
spiritual and corporal works of mercy were practiced. Mrs. Drexel became
known as "Mrs. Generous."
Later, a social worker was hired to help administer the
$20,000 that was distributed to the needy each year. The family also
hired a young woman, Johanna Ryan, as a nanny. She was too frail for the
convent but not for the three girls in her charge. She led the life of a
religious in the Drexel home and stayed with them for the rest of her
life.
Education
Mr. Drexel hired Mary Ann Cassidy as a governess for his daughters. She
home-schooled the three Drexel girls in the liberal arts. Miss Cassidy
selected some excellent teachers to help her. Mr. and Mrs. Drexel also
helped in the teaching that included literature, French, Latin, music
and the Catholic faith. Katharine’s education taught her how to think
logically, to write coherently, to converse in French and to appreciate
the arts and nature.
Katharine’s education also included national and
international “field trips” to appreciate history, geography and nature.
Katharine wrote her impressions of the White Mountains in New Hampshire,
“No sunset makes these peaks soft. They never melt into the heavens as
some mountains do. But they remind me in their might of eternity – the
time that was, the time that will be.”
Mrs. Drexel spent Sunday nights teaching her daughters
the lives of the saints. Katharine developed a devotion to them
especially to St. Francis of Assisi who renounced his family’s riches
and served the poor. Their devotion to the saints was a part of her
personal prayer life for her entire life.
On June 3, 1870, at the age of 11, Katharine received
her First Communion. She was a private person and said nothing about
that day until 50 years later. In 1920, she wrote in some retreat notes,
“I remember my First Communion. Jesus made me shed my tears because of
His greatness in stooping and coming to me, mite that I was.
In June of 1871, the family moved to St. Michael’s
House, their new summer estate in the Pennsylvania countryside. Mrs.
Drexel supervised the construction of a family oratory and she and her
daughters started a “Sunday School” of the Catholic faith for the
children of the employees of the estate. Within a few years, 50 children
attended the Drexel Sunday School.
Archbishop Wood and the local pastor, Father James
O’Connor, blessed the family oratory. Afterwards they discussed
President Grant’s plan to provide a Christian education for the Indians.
This planted a seed for Katharine’s vocation at the age of 13. Father
O’Connor became Katharine’s life-long spiritual director and Bishop of
Omaha, Nebraska where he served the Indians.
In the Spring of 1878, Katharine ended her home
schooling. She made her debut into Philadelphia society on January 1,
1879. Her “coming out” was the social event of the year that was
attended by all the prominent people of Philadelphia. However, Katharine
humbly referred to it in a letter to Bishop O’Connor. She wrote, “I
attended a little party the other night where I made my debut.” The good
Bishop reminded her that she had a Christian responsibility to follow
the good example of her parents who witnessed to Christ in the social
setting of the rich where He was often ignored.
Redemptive Suffering
In 1879, Katharine’s’ mother contracted malignant cancer and suffered
intensely for the next three years. Katharine nursed her and did her
best to relieve her pain. At one point, Katharine’s mother offered her
suffering to redeem any that her husband might suffer. She told him, “O
Frank, how I pray that when your time comes, you will be spared all this
and now I offer this pain I suffer for you.” As the whole family
gathered around her suffering mother, Katharine blurted out, “If
anything happens to Mamma, I’m going to enter a convent!”
Mrs. Drexel died on January 29, 1883. Philadelphia poet
Eleanor Donnelley wrote this eulogy in her memory,
No golden shrine all gem-bespent
Fame o’er
your ashes rears.
Behold the
poor – your monument!
Your epitaph
– their tears!
The Vocational Seed Sprouts
Katharine later said that the suffering of her mother made her realize
the gravity of original sin that brought suffering and death into the
world. The seed of her vocation began to sprout. She wanted to dedicate
her life to God and resolved to do her part to relieve the suffering of
others.
After her mother’s death, the family made a trip to the
West. Katharine noted the abject and degrading state of the Indians who
lived on reservations that were the result of broken promises from the
United States government. Her awareness of this painful situation
signaled the beginning of a lifetime of personal and financial
commitment to support numerous missions and missionaries in the United
States for the Catholic education of Indians and Blacks. At the same
time, Katharine was becoming increasingly convinced that God was calling
her to give herself totally to Him. She felt attracted to the
contemplative life in order to contribute with prayer and penance to
the expansion of the missions.
Throughout 1883 and 1884, Katharine struggled to discern her vocation.
During a European tour in 1884, she wrote to Bishop O’Connor about the
emptiness of a worldly life. She wrote,
Like the little girl who wept when she found that her doll was stuffed
with sawdust and her drum was hollow, I, too, have made a horrifying
discovery. . . . I have ripped both the doll and the drum open and the
fact lies plainly and in all its glaring reality before me: All, all,
all (there is no exception) is passing away and will pass away
It was difficult to get spiritual direction from Bishop
O’Connor only through correspondence with him. Providentially, he came
from Omaha to Philadelphia to attend the installation of the new Bishop,
Patrick Ryan. Katharine poured out her soul to him and confided her
discernment to join a contemplative order of nuns. “Please tell me what
I should do – enter now or wait?” she asked him.
He wrote, “You are doing more for the Indians now, than
any religious, or even any religious community has ever done, or
perhaps, ever could do for them in this country. Think, pray, wait.”
Katharine found this direction hard to follow. She
replied, “As far as I can read my heart, I am not happy in the world.
There is a void in my heart that only God can fill. Can God obtain full
possession of my heart while I live in the world?”
The Inheritance
Katharine’s father died on February 16, 1885.
Katharine and her sisters inherited the income from a Trust Estate of 14
million dollars, a huge amount of money in 1885. The daughters followed
their parents’ example and supported various charities. Soon after,
Katharine received a visit from Bishop Martin Marty, who served the
Indians in the Dakota Territory and Father Joseph Stephan, who worked
with the Catholic Indian Bureau. They told her about their work and the
needs of the Indians on the Rosebud Reservation. This was the beginning
of Katharine’s financial support of the needs of American Indians.
The Drexel sisters became very close and called
themselves “The All Three.” In the summer of 1886, they sailed to
Europe. During their time in Europe, Katharine received frequent letters
from Father Stephan concerning the plight of the Indians and his
accounting of how he spent her donations. Bishop O’Connor also wrote to
her concerning his dream to build and staff a mission school for the
Indians. Katharine sought help from European monasteries to send priests
to help them but none would make such a commitment. So, she decided to
ask the Pope.
On January 27, 1887, Katharine had an audience with
Pope Leo XIII. She describes the audience in her diary. “Kneeling at his
feet, my girlish fancy thought that surely God’s Vicar would not refuse
me. So, I pleaded for missionary priests for Bishop O’Connor’s Indians.
To my astonishment His Holiness responded, “Why not, my child, yourself
become a missionary?”
Years later, she told her sisters that once she left
the Holy Father, she could not get away from the Vatican fast enough.
Once outside she sobbed and sobbed. She was initially frightened at the
implications of the Pope’s words. But slowly, after prayer and spiritual
direction, she accepted his advise and gave up the idea of a
contemplative vocation.
To the West
Upon their return from Europe, the Drexel sisters received letters from
Bishop O’Connor and Father Stephan. They invited them to come and see
for themselves the Indian missions that they were helping to support so
that they could learn about their successes and difficulties. This trip
would not be as easy as the European tour. The Indian missions had no
luxury hotels or gourmet meals.
They visited the Dakota Territory missions where
schools and convents were being built through their generosity. The next
summer they visited missions in Wisconsin and Minnesota. They learned
that the missions did not need just money, they needed people who were
willing to serve them. Many of the missionary orders were not able to
make permanent commitment to serve them and only stayed for short
periods. What was needed was an order that would work exclusively with
the Indians. Pope Leo XIII’s question kept nagging at Katharine.
The Vocation Blooms
Katharine and Bishop O’Connor, her spiritual director, corresponded
about her vocation for years. At first, he advised that she should
remain in the world as a good example of a philanthropic woman and take
an annual vow of virginity. Then he advised her to live as a religious
in the world by simplifying her lifestyle and adopting the prayer life
of a religious. He felt that her health precluded a full religious life
but she followed their diet successfully.
In November of 1888, she wrote him, “Are you afraid to
give me to Jesus Christ? . . . It appears to me, Reverend Father, that I
an not obliged to submit my judgment to yours, as I have been doing for
two years, for I feel so sad in doing it because the world cannot give
me peace, so restless because my heart is not rested in God.”
He answered her, “I have come to regard it as certain
that Our Lord has chosen you for Himself, but, for reasons with which
you are familiar, I was inclined to think He wished you to love and
serve Him not as His spouse, but in society. This letter of yours, and
your bearing under the long and severe tests to which I subjected you,
as well as your entire restoration to health, and the many spiritual
dangers that surround you, make me withdraw all opposition to your
entering religion.”
Now the question became whether to enter an existing
order or to found a new one. Katharine lacked self-confidence in her
ability to found and direct a new religious order but none of the
existing ones satisfied her criteria. She wanted to receive daily
Communion that was unusual at that time for missionary orders. She
wanted to serve the Indians and Colored People. Archbishop John Ireland
of St. Paul, Minnesota said, “It is just the thing we need. It’s a great
and indispensable work. Miss Drexel is just the person to do it.”
That settled it. Katharine decided to found her own
order. She wrote in humility, “The responsibility of such a call almost
crushes me, because I am so infinitely poor in the virtues necessary.”
However, she overcame her self-doubts and lack of self-confidence and
her family’s objections and entered the Sisters of Mercy Convent in
Pittsburgh on May 7, 1889 to begin her training in religious life. Her
uncle Anthony begged her with tears in his eyes to stay. He said, “It is
little short of a tragedy for you to do this. Stay with us who love
you.” However, she became Sister Katharine in honor of her patron, St.
Catherine of Siena.
Archbishop Ryan received Sister Katharine as a novice
and prophetically spoke directly to her, “In His Name, I invite you into
this sanctuary. Thousands of Indians and the colored races unite their
voices with mine in crying out to you, ‘Come we have waited for you. God
is sending you. Come!’ ”
He reconciled her vow of poverty and her fortune by
saying, “You can retain the possession and the administration, but you
have to promise in case of my requiring it, that you would renounce your
possessions.”
After Bishop O’Connor died Katharine’s self-doubts
returned but Archbishop Ryan re-assured her. He said, “We have both lost
a good friend whose heart was gentle. But now please tell me, will it
help you if I promise to be your father-in-Christ and share the burden
with you so that you can come to me when you need help? Then do you
think you can stay?” Sister Katharine knelt, kissed his ring and said in
a strong voice, “I will stay, your grace.”
Sister Katharine and her postulants began construction
of a new motherhouse while they lived in the convent in Pittsburgh and
prepared for the foundation of her new missionary order. The objective
of the congregation founded by Sister Katharine was to carry Christ
present in the Eucharist to the Indians and Blacks, particularly through
Catholic education and social assistance.
Sister Katharine always found in the Eucharist the
source of her love for the poor and the oppressed and the inspiration to
combat the effects of racism. The Eucharist was at the heart of her
spirituality. Her love and devotion to Jesus was expressed in the union
of adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament with active service for the
good of others, giving herself and everything she possessed.
"The spirit of the Eucharist consists in the donation
of one's own being," she wrote. In order to point out the central
nucleus of the charism of the congregation she founded, she wrote to her
Sisters, "Get up after receiving Holy Communion and go find Him in the
people . . . . Everything you do for the people, you do for Him."
Archbishop Ryan and Cardinal James Gibbons, Archbishop
of Baltimore, paid the new congregation a visit. The Cardinal blessed
them and said, “Your work is a truly apostolic one. Be apostles and
carry the glad tidings of the Gospel to those neglected races, for
‘beautiful are the feet that carry the Gospel to heathen lands.’ ” This
was their Great Commission as apostles for social justice to the Indians
and Colored People.
On February 12, 1891, Sister Mary Katharine Drexel was
professed as the first Sister of the new missionary congregation, The
Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Negroes (later changed
to Colored People). Today they are known simply as the Sisters of the
Blessed Sacrament. Sister Katharine became Mother Katharine and made her
vow before Archbishop Ryan.
She said, “I do vow and promise to God, for five years
from this date, poverty, chastity and obedience, and to be a mother and
servant of the Indians and the colored people; nor shall I undertake any
work which may lead to the neglect or abandonment of the Indians and the
colored races.”
The Work Begins
The new order opened their novitiate at the Drexel summer home near
Torresdale while their motherhouse was being built in Cornwells Heights,
in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. Mother Katharine left Pittsburgh with four
novices, one postulant and a 10-year-old Black girl. Here they received
a strong foundation in religious life before they began their missionary
work. Soon a cottage was build to house homeless children.
Bishops from New Orleans, the Oklahoma territory, North
Carolina and Cheyenne came to the new community. They described their
missionary work and needs and sought Mother’s help. Mother made an
arduous trip to St. Stephen Mission in Wyoming. She found that the lay
schoolteachers had left because there were no funds to pay them. The
students had no teachers and Mother wanted this to be her first mission.
However, Archbishop Ryan insisted on further spiritual and missionary
training before he would allow the new order to begin its missionary
work. A disappointed Mother obeyed.
The groundbreaking for the motherhouse was marred by a bomb scare.
However, the work went on and in December of 1892, the sisters moved in
with 15 orphan children in the nearby Holy Providence School.
In 1893, two missionary Bishops visited on behalf of
St. Catherine School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Drexel family had paid
for the construction of the school but the lay teachers had left because
the work was too demanding for them. Mother Katharine pleaded their case
to Archbishop Ryan who finally agreed to permit the new congregation to
begin its first mission and take over the school.
The Mission
Over the next 42 years, Mother Katharine made
many missionary journeys, established many missions, schools and
convents and made many visitations to supervise them. She traveled by
train, boat and car from one end of the country to the other in a flurry
of apostolic activity.
St. Catherine’s School.
In 1894, Mother Katherine and Sister Mary Evangelist took the train to
New Mexico and received an enthusiastic welcome from Archbishop Chapelle
at the train station in Lamy. He shouted, “Thank God, thank God, my
prayer has been answered. You are coming to take care of St. Catherine’s
School.” The sisters found the school in excellent condition and the
Indian parents willing to send their children. They returned and decided
to send nine sisters with Mother Evangelist as superior. On June 18,
1894, the new congregation had its first departure service for the new
missionaries to St. Catherine’s School.
St. Francis de Sales High School.
In the Fall of 1899, Mother opened a new high school for girls, St.
Francis de Sales High School, located near Rock Castle, Virginia. Like
the groundbreaking for the motherhouse, this opening was marred by arson
that destroyed the new barn. However, the school opened and served as an
industrial and normal school to educate poor Black girls. In addition,
the Sisters made home visitations to help their families with food,
clothing and firewood. The school became a cultural center with concerts
and lectures. Mission stations were established where the Sisters taught
catechism. This school became the model for the others to follow.
St. Michael’s Mission.
In 1896 Mother Katharine donated the money to purchase about 200 acres
of land near Gallup, New Mexico at the edge of a Navajo Indian
reservation. The Franciscan Fathers staffed the mission. It was a
difficult mission as the Indians distrusted the Whites. Later, Mother
visited the mission, named it St. Michael’s, bought additional land and
built a new school and convent.
Immaculate Mother Academy.
In 1904, Mother Katharine agreed to purchase a house in Nashville,
Tennessee for a school for poor Black girls. When the owner of the house
and his neighbors learned of this plan, they objected. The owner wrote
to the newspaper and offered to rescind the deal. Mother answered his
letter.
She wrote, “The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, who
have purchased the property, are religious, of the same race as
yourself. We will always endeavor in every way to be neighborly to any
White neighbors in the vicinity; we have every reason to hope we may
receive from our White neighbors the cordial courtesy for which Southern
people are so justly noted.”
The school opened and flourished. Mother continued to
overcome opposition and built and staffed more schools in Atlanta and
Macon, Georgia; St. Louis, Missouri; Cincinnati, Ohio and Harlem, New
York.
Xavier University.
Mother Katherine had supported Archbishop Francis Janssens of New
Orleans ever since his visit as her first supplicant in 1891. Over the
years through the Drexel Trust Fund, she had helped him build and
support churches, schools and missions for the poor Blacks of Louisiana.
There was a great need to educate Blacks because Louisiana provided no
teachers to educate them and there were no Black teachers for them.
In 1913, New Orleans Archbishop James Blenk asked
Mother to realize his dream to establish a high school and a teacher’s
college for Blacks on the same site. He hoped that the high school
graduates would form the student body for the college and those
graduates could then teach the poor Blacks at the elementary school
level.
In 1915, Archbishop Blenk purchased the vacant
buildings of the closed Southern University outside New Orleans for
Xavier Academy High School. Mother Katharine sent Sisters to staff their
largest mission with integrated lay teachers. Soon the new Blessed
Sacrament parish was established at the site. The school grew very
quickly with large enrollments.
In 1916, a 12th grade was established.
In 1918, a two-year normal school was established and soon its graduates
staffed the rural schools. In 1925, Xavier was established as a College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences and conferred its first degrees in 1928.
Xavier was the only predominantly Black Catholic institution of higher
learning in the United States. Archbishop Blenk’s dream was finally
realized.
Mother Katharine established Xavier University
because at the time no Catholic
university of the South was prepared to accept Black students. Xavier,
like Mother’s other foundations, offered the opportunity to cement the
greatest cohesion possible among students. All of them were considered
by her to be children of God, independent of their race or color. In
addition, she had the practical objective to give life and enterprising
activity that in turn would favor the rise of united and balanced
families to insure the spread and consolidation of the Catholic faith.
Louisiana Schools.
Within a few short years, Mother Katharine established six parish
schools in New Orleans and schools in six other rural towns. Then she
journeyed throughout southern Louisiana and saw the poverty and
deplorable state of education there. In the mid 1920s, she paid for the
erection of 24 new schools that were supervised by Xavier University
with teachers paid by the Drexel Trust Fund.
Speaking Engagements.
Mother witnessed much racial hatred, bigotry and discrimination against
Blacks. In one such incident in Beaumont, Texas, her Sisters went to
attend Mass at their parish church and were confronted with a sign, “We
want an end to services here. We will not stand idly by, while White
priests consort with nigger wenches in the face of our families.
Suppress it in one week or flogging and tar and feathers will follow.”
She resolved to speak publicly for the Blacks who had no voice. She
spoke directly to Catholics about their own prejudice against Blacks.
She pleaded not for money for them but for simple justice that they be
treated equally. She implored the newspapers to be more objective and
not to slant the news against Blacks.
The Contemplative Life
In the Fall of 1935, after a series of visitations, Mother Katharine
suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage in St. Louis. She was advised to
change her lifestyle, end her visitations and curtail her activities.
With great reluctance, she agreed and returned to the motherhouse. She
was confined to a life of prayer, penance and writing in her wheelchair.
Her wheelchair and writing evidenced her penitential poverty. The
wheelchair was a makeshift thing consisting of a pupil’s desk fastened
to wheels. She wrote letters giving guidelines for her sisters on scraps
of paper with pencils that she sharpened down to the eraser. She said,
“Whatever we can save can be used to help others.”
By God’s providence, Mother Katharine had become the
contemplative nun that she always wanted to be. She prayed in the chapel
for hours, interceding for the order and its needs and the needs of
those who they served. She prayed for peace throughout World War II. She
suffered from physical ailments. She lived like this for the next 15
years. For the last five years of her life, she was confined to her bed.
On the morning of March 3, 1955, she suddenly opened her eyes, looked
straight ahead, closed them again, gave a sigh and breathed her last at
the age of 96.
Her body lay in state at the motherhouse for two days.
Hundreds came to mourn her loss. One of them was a former student in
Rock Castle who said, “We came to look upon a saint. She surely was a
saint to live the way she did.”
Mother Katharine’s friend, Helen Grace Smith, stood by
her coffin and said, “Her love of personal poverty made her oblivious to
comfort of any kind. She went long distances, in all kinds of
conveyances, and often walking when there was no other way, and she went
simple, silent and unknown.”
Bishop Joseph McShea preached the funeral sermon. He
said, “She was activated, inspired and impelled by an insatiable love of
God. Hers was not a humanitarianism that stops where true love should
begin. She was not a mere social reformer, educator or philanthropist
striving to better the condition of her fellow man while permitting him
to ignore God. She was a true missionary with a contemplative heart.”
Six pallbearers carried out her coffin. Fittingly, two
were White, two were Black and two were Indians. Her coffin was interred
in a crypt underneath the chapel at the motherhouse in Bensalem,
Pennsylvania.
Fruits
Jesus said, “When much has been given a man, much will be required of
him. More will be asked of a man to whom more has been entrusted.” (Lk
12:48). Mother Drexel had been given much, much was required of her,
more was asked of her and she gave it all.
In her lifetime, she spent millions of dollars from the
income of the Drexel Trust Fund and used it to establish 60 missions to
care for the education of Native and African Americans. She founded 49
convents for her Sisters, set up training courses for catechists and
teachers, established 12 schools for Indians and nearly 100
schools in rural areas and inner cities of the South to educate Blacks,
particularly Xavier University.
At the time of Mother Drexel’s death, there were more
than 500 Sisters teaching in 63 schools in the United States. Soon after
her death, the American Civil Rights Movement began.
Intercessor of Miracles
In 1974, 14 year-old Robert Gutherman was deaf in his right ear from a
bone-dissolving infection. The doctors had given up hope. His mother
resigned herself to his permanent deafness. However, she prayed for an
end to his terrible pain and suffering from the infection. She called
the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament at their motherhouse near the
Gutherman’s home in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.
The Sisters recommended that they all pray for Mother Drexel’s
intercession. One night, Robert also prayed to Mother Drexel while he
was alone in his hospital bed. When he awoke in the morning, the pain
was gone and his hearing was restored to normal. His doctor examined him
and said, “I can’t believe what I am seeing.” The Church adjudged the
healing as a miracle. As a result, Mother Drexel was beatified and
declared “Blessed” by Pope John Paul II on November 20, 1988.
In 1992, Amy Wall, also of Bensalem, was born with
nerve deafness. Her mother heard about the miracle of Robert Gutherman
and asked her family and friends to pray for Mother Drexel’s
intercession. They went to the Sister’s motherhouse, borrowed a relic of
Mother Drexel and touched it to Amy’s ears. Her pre-school teacher
noticed a change in her hearing. She was tested and had normal hearing
in both ears. The Church adjudged the healing as a miracle. As a result,
Mother Drexel was canonized and declared “Saint” by Pope John Paul II on
October 1, 2000.
In his canonization Mass homily, the Holy Father said,
Mother Katharine Drexel was born into wealth in
Philadelphia. But from her parents she learned that her family
possessions were not for them alone but were meant to be shared with the
less fortunate.
Later, she understood that more was needed. With great
courage and confidence in God’s grace, she chose to give not just her
fortune but her whole life totally to the Lord. May her example help
young people in particular to appreciate that no greater treasure can be
found in this world than in following Christ with an undivided heart and
in using generously the gifts we have received for the service of others
and for the building of a more just and peaceful world. . . .
Her apostolate bore fruit in the establishment of many
schools for Native Americans and Blacks, and served to raise awareness
of the continuing need, even in our own day, to fight racism in all its
manifestations.
When the Mass was over, a reporter asked one
of the Navajos from Arizona, why Mother Drexel had become a saint. He
simply said, “When nobody else did, she loved us.”
Opening Prayer for the Mass in Commemoration of Saint Katharine Drexel
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.
OTHER ARTICLES BY DAN LYNCH
Bibliography
Duffy, Sister Consuela, S.B.S. Katharine Drexel: A Biography.
Bensalem, PA; Mother Katharine Drexel Guild, 1966.
McSheffery, Rev. Daniel F.M. St. Katharine Drexel, Pioneer for Human
Rights. Totowa, NJ; Resurrection Press, 2002.
Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament
1663 Bristol Pike, Bensalem, PA 19020
Phone: 215-244-9900 •
Website: http://www.katharinedrexel.org/summary.html
Email:
kathdrexel@aol.com
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