THE SAINTS IN A YEAR - ST KATHARINE DREXEL AND DREAMING BIG FOR OTHERS
- 23 hours ago
- 3 min read
Fr Billy Swan
The mission of the Church from the very beginning right up to the present day, is to unite people through love, justice and peace. In every culture and time, the Church presents a vision of unity in Christ that transcends differences along the lines of race, ethnicity, nationality or any other way that marks us as being different from others.
This challenge to unite people, is not something new. Even at Pentecost, there were different languages and nationalities who began to understand each other and to form a community with the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the course of history, God raised up many great saints who were filled with that same Spirit and who were outstanding examples of Christians who dedicated themselves to the integration of peoples into a family where each was an equally beloved child of God. On 3rd March each year, the Church celebrates one such saint. Her name is Katharine Drexel.
Katharine was born in Philadelphia to a rich banking family in 1858. Despite her comfortable upbringing, she had a sharp social conscience that was informed by her Catholic faith. After her father’s death, she inherited millions from his estate. But relaxing in luxury was never going to be Katharine’s destiny.
In 1891, at the age of 33, she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament - an order dedicated to missionary work among Indians and African Americans, animated by the unifying power of the Eucharist. It was a response to a dire social need where hundreds of thousands of indigenous Americans were destitute as were African Americans in the aftermath of slavery and following the end of the American Civil War in 1865. With the money she inherited, she opened schools and universities, churches, convents and monasteries.
Like any good leader, she realised she could not do all this on her own and so she gathered a community around her. By the time she died in 1955, there were more than 500 Sisters teaching in 63 schools throughout the United States, each providing the education that enabled people to escape from poverty. A fundamental principle of the ethos in the schools she founded was the dignity and equality of every human being, regardless of colour and race. She felt a compassionate urgency to help change racial attitudes in the United States that divided people so tragically during the Civil War. She died of pneumonia on 3rd March 1955 and was canonised a saint on 1st October 2000.
Katharine Drexel is an example of someone who was wealthy but not blind, unlike the rich man in the Gospel parable of Lazarus. In his case, the rich man’s wealth blinded him to the needs of his brother outside his door. For Katharine Drexel, she knew that her wealth came with great responsibility and what she did with that wealth would determine her eternal destiny. Nothing less was at stake. Thankfully, she found room in her heart to improve the lives of thousands, and having the means to do it, this is exactly what she did.
For young people who dream of a promising future, she invites them to make room in those dreams for others and to live not just for themselves, but for a cause beyond the self and for people less fortunate.
In our time of pluralism in Ireland, Katharine makes us attentive to the sin and scourge of racism and how it can be overcome. She is an example of someone who faced the same challenges of integration in her schools as teachers in Ireland face today. She is someone whose life unites both a devout Catholic faith and a commitment to social justice and how love of God brings us to serve those that God loves.
Finally, Katharine represents the thousands of religious women who gave selflessly of themselves for years in the field of education and social integration and whose faith gave them the vision and zeal to bring people together in peace. I leave the last word to St Katharine herself who said
“If we wish to serve God and love our neighbour well, we must manifest our joy in the service we render to Him and them. Let us open wide our hearts. It is joy which invites us. Press forward and fear nothing”.