Feast Day: March 3rd
I recently came across an article that included several pictures of saints when they were kids. It had the famous pictures of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, curly hair and impish grin smiling back at us, and the shepherd children of Fatima, Jacinta scowling at the camera with her hand on hip. You will find it well worth your while to check out the other less famous but just as delightful photos at https://www.churchpop.com/photos-12-saints-children/ (or hit the qr code).
But I would like to focus on one particular photo this week, of St. Katherine Drexel at the age of 7. It was probably taken in the summer of 1866, with Catherine’s older sister, Elizabeth, being a few years older than her and her younger (half) sister Louise being only 3. Catherine (her birth name, it would change to Katherine when she took her religious name), was the second girl of her parents Francis and Hannah, but her mother would pass away just 5 weeks after she was born. Her father remarried Emma Bouvier, a Catholic, in 1860, and they lived a pious, if privileged life. Kittie, as she was called, enjoyed the best schools and countless trips around America and Europe and was widely thought to be the prettiest of the girls, each of them set to inherit the millions that their father, a Philadelphia banker, had amassed (equivalent to hundreds of millions of dollars today, the fortune begun when Catherine’s grandfather had entered into a partnership with John Pierpoint [J.P.] Morgan).
But their family would also give tremendous amounts of money to the poor, Emma being widely known around Philadelphia as “lady bountiful”, taking her girls out on walks around the city to find those who were too timid to come asking for help. Francis was of the same mind – helping his wife distribute food, clothing, and rent-assistance to all who needed it – and would leave a tenth of his fortune to charities upon his death in 1885, with the rest of it going to provide for his daughters and their children, and reverting to charitable institutions if they did not use it. He would pray for 30 minutes every evening, leaving an indelible mark of prayerfulness and godliness on his daughters.
But those were the remote influences on Catherine’s vocation. It was one of those family-trips, this time out west, that was the occasion for an utterly unexpected call from God. It was one year before her father would die, and the 20-something year old Catherine was moved by the plight of the Native Americans she saw there. All those moments aiding the poor around Philadelphia, and the poverty of so many different minorities she had seen in their travels all came back to her mind. The Lord was calling her to do something for them. After the death of her father, Catherine and her sisters gave a large donation to the St. Francis Mission of South Dakota’s Rosebud Reservation, but the nagging thought that she should do more for them remained in her heart. Again, the extraordinary prosperity of her family ended up opening another door on the path God had in mind for her: the girls went on a trip to Europe in 1887 and met with Pope St. Leo XIII, author of the magnificent encyclical, Rerum Novarum, in which he lambasted the conditions in factories of the industrial revolution, calling Christians everywhere to uphold the dignity of their workers and grant a wage sufficient for their families.
Now, our wealthy Catherine approaches him, and asks the wizened Pope to send missionaries to these suffering poor in America. Presumably she could finance the entire operation, and possibly it was this idea that she proposed to the Holy Father, but instead he looked at her and said “Why not, my child, yourself become a missionary?” Why not, indeed!? Katherine tried to entertain the idea, but wrote in her journal “I do not know how I could bear the privations of poverty of the religious life. I have never been deprived of luxuries.” It was not necessarily a selfish thought, but a practical one. Could she commit to such a hard life, living it with joy, despite having never experienced anything of the sort? Could she give up not just the fortune, but all the comforts that she had always had to follow this call? Would she?
– Fr. Dominic will return to Katherine’s story, her discernment to come, and the glories accomplished through her, next week. In the meantime, perhaps all of us would find it a powerful prayer to look back on a picture of ourselves as a child of 7, recalling the graces that God has given to us in the years since. Think of the ways you have followed His plan, but also ways that you haven’t followed Him fully. Consider how much love God had for you as a kid, and has for you now, and has given to you every single year between then and now. God has never been annoyed with you, no matter where on life’s journey you were at. He only ever showers us with love and affection, though always calls us to more faithfully follow after Him.