Saint Katharine Drexel
“If we wish to serve God and love our neighbor 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.” - Saint Katharine Drexel
This time last year two men with opposite impacts on the world were in the news. Only a few days apart, Dr. Paul Farmer died unexpectedly at 62 years of age. The same week President Vladimir Putin decided to commence an “absurd and cruel war” in Ukraine, as Pope Francis aptly described it.
Mr. Putin is well known, in the news frequently since his coming to power back in 1999. Paul Farmer is less known. He was one of the founders of Partners in Health, an organization based on the belief that modern health care can and should be available to everyone, everywhere in the world. The belief arose from working in collaboration with people in communities without the type of care that is standard in affluent countries. Dr. Farmer summed up the belief that underlines this work: “The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”
Partners in Health brings people together to build up medical institutions in places throughout the world without access to modern medical care. Paul Farmer and his partners are effective because they bring openness and humility to the communities they encounter. This encourages, and even requires, working with others, getting buy-in and engaging in back and forth. Step by step, person by person, the effort builds up something good, true and beautiful.
But it is so much easier to destroy than to build up. Forces that destroy stir up and harness fear, hate, jealousy, ignorance and distance to energize people. Far from fostering encounters that could lead to understanding and connections, destroying divides, imposes and does not listen to any voices outside its own echo chamber.
Clearly, Mr. Putin is able to do that in the authoritarian Russia he has helped shape. Beginning last February, in this one conflict, millions of lives have been disrupted, hundreds of thousands have died, billions of dollars—and rubles—that could have been directed to improving the lot of humanity, have been wasted creating or mitigating this tragedy.
Mother Drexel (right) with Navajos; courtesy and copyright the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
Pope Francis often notes that when we bridge differences and make contact with people different from us, the poor and people on the margins of our world, our hearts grow larger. It is important to remember the many efforts to build up good in this world. The loud and disruptive negative can overshadow the good.
The same season as these one-year anniversaries, the Church Year highlights another outstanding Christian who can inspire us. Saint Katharine Drexel came from a very wealthy family in Philadelphia. Despite their status, her family served the needy out of their home each week. The Drexels had a close family friend who was a bishop in a Western territory. Through him, the family encountered Native Americans and learned about their experience as conquered peoples who were pushed to the margins to make way for the young republic’s westward expansion.
With this background shaping her vocation, Katharine founded a group of women, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, to reach out to Native Americans and African Americans. The sisters shared the faith of Christ, building schools and parishes. Pictures of Mother Drexel in full, formal Victorian Era nun’s habit next to a group of Native Americans or Black Americans illustrate vividly that these were people from very different worlds encountering one another.
Our world has a long way to go before the joy of the Lord crowds out all fears and smallness of heart and everyone sees everyone else as sister or brother of the one God above. In unmistakable ways, Saint Katharine Drexel and Paul Farmer demonstrate the power of faith in action that each one of us is a part of. This Lent let us be sure to renew our hearts by keeping company with sisters and brothers who share the joy of Christ in their open hearts.
Father Mike McCue, OSFS
Chaplain, Our Lady of Lourdes Virtua Hospital
Camden, NJ
