Tuesday – 2nd Week of Lent – A

Let me give you a bit of background regarding Saint Katharine, who was born in 1858 into immense wealth in Philadelphia, for she was the daughter of the international banker Francis Anthony Drexel, in what would have been one of the most socially secure and culturally insulated lives imaginable in Gilded Age America. And yet what she saw in her youth changed her forever. She saw the systemic neglect of Native American communities. She saw the entrenched injustice suffered by African Americans in the post-Reconstruction United States, and the near-total absence of an educational infrastructure for both these communities. Her Lenten moment came when she recognized that these were not merely social problems, but in a very real way they were moral failures of a Christian nation. And so, after consulting with Pope Leo XIII in Rome, she famously begged him to send missionaries to serve Native Americans. And his response was very shocking as it was clarifying, because his response was a question to Saint Katharine: why don't you become a missionary?

Saint Katharine gave away her inheritance, which today would have been equivalent to hundreds of millions of dollars, and founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, where she established over sixty schools and founded, for example, what is today Xavier University of Louisiana, still the only historically black Catholic university in the United States. And all of this was not from surplus, but from her personal sacrifice. Now, what made her extraordinary in virtue and a beautiful model for our Lenten journey was not activism, not philanthropy, but penitential charity. Her sanctity was marked by three profoundly Lenten virtues: detachment, hiddenness, and Eucharistic reparation. She renounced not only her wealth, but her control over it, placing her inheritance under obedience to the Church for the sake of the Eucharistic mission. Though one of the wealthiest women in America, she chose religious life, endured racism, threats, even bombings of her institutions, and lived in increasing obscurity after a debilitating heart attack. Her entire congregation was founded to promote Eucharistic devotion, perpetual adoration, and the evangelization of the marginalized. Her works of justice flowed from the altar.

Now, how does this all fit into our Lenten journey? Especially this week, when we are preparing homilies on exile, repentance, and covenantal infidelity? Saint Katharine stands out as a modern example of what happens when repentance becomes structural, not just sorrow for sin, but a reordering of one's entire life. The prophet Daniel, for example, prays: “We have sinned, been wicked, and done evil” (Daniel 9:5). And Catherine answers: then let my life repair what has been broken. Lent asks not only what must I give up, but also whom has my comfort cost, and what would it look like to make restitution? Saint Katharine Drexel's greatness was this: she allowed her Lenten penance to become someone else's future.

Now, just a brief word about her collaboration with the former Saint John the Baptist Province of Friars in Cincinnati. Saint Katharine worked closely with the Saint John the Baptist Province, most notably at Saint Michael's Mission in the Navajo Nation, Arizona. This mission was entrusted to the Cincinnati Province of Franciscans in 1898, and it served the Navajo people in an extraordinarily remote region and had almost no educational infrastructure for indigenous Catholic children. So Mother Katharine personally financed the construction of schools there, sent the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament to staff them, and ensured that the mission had the educational support needed to stabilize the Catholic presence among the Navajo. The structure of apostolic life on that ground became parish life from the Franciscans, school staffing from the sisters, sacraments from the friars, literacy and education from the sisters, catechesis from the friars, but daily formation through the sisters, pastoral governance by the friars, institutional continuity by the sisters.

We are missionaries together, and we go out with the good news that God has never abandoned us and that we can make a difference, each and every one of us, during this Lenten season. Let me ask myself, how can I better help make somebody else's life a little bit easier? Help them find a little bit more direction, clarity, awareness of the goodness of God and how beautiful it is to build a relationship with him. May the Holy Spirit give us, through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, the wisdom, the knowledge, the strength, the fortitude, and the courage that we need to be a means of hope and God's love to others, as Saint Katharine Drexel was. Through her intercession, may Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. We go in peace praising and thanking the Lord for all that he has done. Amen.