Monday of the 8th Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of Saint Katherine Drexel
March 3, 2014 8:30am
As I said at the beginning of
Mass, today the Church celebrates one of the few Americans in the calendar of
saints – Saint Katherine Drexel.
Katherine Drexel was born in
Philadelphia soon after the Civil War.
Her father was a very wealthy
international and banker.
And Katherine’s parents taught her
and her sisters to be generous and compassionate with their wealth.
A turning point in Katherine’s
life came when she and her family took a vacation to the western part of the
United States.
She saw Native Americans being
mistreated and living in great poverty.
She also witnessed the plight of
African Americans who were dehumanized by institutional racism.
As a result, Katherine became a
major benefactor to the Church’s missions in the south and west.
Then another turning point
happened when she met Pope Leo XIII in 1887.
In a private audience with the
Pope, she told him of the plight of the Native Americans and African Americans
and asked if he could recommend a missionary order to work with these people.
The Pope responded, “Why don’t you work with these people
yourself?”
So, in 1889, at the age of 30,
Katherine Drexel entered the Sisters of Mercy.
Two years later, she founded her
own religious community – the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
Mother Katherine Drexel used the
income from her father’s trust -- $350,000 a year in the early 1900s – to build
over 100 schools in the rural south and west, including Xavier University in
New Orleans.
She died in 1955, and it is
estimated that she had given over $21 million to help found churches, schools,
and hospitals across the United States.
Saint Katherine Drexel is a
wonderful example of doing what Jesus asks us to do in today’s gospel – to use
whatever God has given us, little or much, to bring the peace and mercy and
compassion of God to this earth.
