St. Katharine Drexel & Her Lenten Messages


Katharine, the second daughter of Francis Anthony and Hannah Langstroth, was born on November 26, 1858. Katharine’s mother, Hannah, passed away about one month after her birth.

A few years later, Katharine’s father, a wealthy and prominent banker and philanthropist, married Emma Bouvier – a distant aunt to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onasis. Emma was a deeply religious woman. Three years later, Emma gave birth to her own child, a third daughter whom they named Louise. The deeply religious couple taught their children that wealth was meant to be shared with others, particularly the poor.

The three siblings – Elizabeth, Katharine and Louise were inseparable. They traveled out west together where they encountered Native American Indians who lived on reservations and learned of their plight. These travels instilled within Katharine the desire to alleviate the sufferings of the Indians along with the oppressed among the Black people.

When she visited Pope Leo XIII in Rome, Katharine asked him to send missionaries to the Indian missions that she as a lay person was financing. He surprised by responding, “Why don’t you go? Why don’t you become one?”

As a teenager, Katharine had considered convent life, but in a letter to Bishop James O’Connor, stated that: she couldn’t bear separation from her family, she hated community life and the thought of living with “old-maidish” dispositions, did not like to be alone, and could not part with luxuries. At that time, the Bishop discouraged her from entering the convent.

As time passed, Katharine became more and more convinced that she should become a religious. It was a battle that was to last for several years. She once again wrote the Bishop, stating that she wanted to give herself completely to the Lord, adding, “The world cannot give me peace.” Thus, Katharine made the decision to give herself totally to God by her service to Black and Native Americans. On February 12, 1891, Katharine took vows as a religious, founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.

St. Katharine established many ministries, founding schools for Black and Native Americans, including, Xavier University, the only predominately Black Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States.

In 1935, Katharine suffered a severe heart attack and spent the next twenty years of her life in prayer until her death on March 3, 1955.

Messages from St. Katharine Drexel


“The patient and humble endurance of the cross – whatever nature it may be – is the highest work we have to do.”

Living for the Bridegroom
*

“And here is the passive way – to be filled unto the fullness of God. The passive way – I abandon myself to it, not in a multiplicity of trials, extraordinary penances accomplished, practices of great works – but in peaceful abandonment to the tenderness of Jesus, which I must try to imitate, and by being in constant union with his meek and humble heart.

What likeness is there between me and my Mother? Do I try to be like her, in her love for Jesus? In her devotion for the cause for which he died – the salvation of souls – in her absolute submission to the will of God, in her patient suffering? Holy Mary, Mother of God and my Mother, too, let me stand at the foot of the cross with you, to learn its lesson and to learn to be like the Mother of Sorrows. Amen.

*Taken from the Magnificat, March, 2006 issue

Comments

  1. Dear Mrs. Heimann,
    I enjoy your blog.

    Here is a correction of a spelling error that many people make.
    You wrote, "... the only predominately Black Catholic ...".
    It should be "predominantly." There is no such word as "predominately."

    Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There’s been a lot of scholarly argument about the relative merits of these two words down the years, most of it directed at the linked adjectives, predominate and predominant. Some usage writers have condemned the former as illiterate, arguing that it can only be a verb, never an adjective. History is against all such critics, because predominate as an adjective first appeared as far back as 1591, and is actually older than the verb. The spelling of the adverb as predominately is about a hundred years older than the predominantly form. Predominantly and its related adjective are now much the more common forms, though that doesn’t make the other pair wrong, just less often preferred alternatives.

    God bless you,
    Jean

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jean,

    This is a beautiful and inspiring post. It moved me to pray to Our Lady of Sorrows.

    Thank you so much!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like St. Katharine -- she certainly had spunk and a big heart.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You taught me something, Mrs. H.

    I checked the "Columbia Guide to Standard American English," to verify what you told me. It states:

    Predominant and predominate are exact synonyms, meaning “having authority over, superior. most noticeable, most important,” but predominant is by far the more frequently used. Similarly, the two adverbs are synonyms, predominantly the much more widely used.

    I noticed that you wrote,
    The spelling of the adverb as predominately is about a hundred years older than the predominantly form.

    The logical question then came to me, "Why, then, did someone bother 'coining' the word that now predominates [pun intended]?"

    I think that the answer may be, "It's easier to say and it sounds better, because there are many other oft-used adverbs that end in '-antly.'" In fact, it sounds so natural (and the older word, so unnatural) to me that I thought that the older word didn't exist!

    ReplyDelete

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