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Saint Katharine Drexel
(1858 - 1955)
The Feast Day of Saint Katharine Drexel, patroness
of our region, is observed on March 3rd. She was canonized in Rome by the Holy Father Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000.
A recent Forbes magazine article offers wealthy readers ways to avoid ruining their children: make them do unpaid
chores, say "no" to expensive gifts such as cars, and steer them to summer jobs that open their eyes as to how poorer folk
live.
Good advice -- but rich, late-nineteenth century American Catholics Francis and Emma (Bouvier) Drexel took a
different approach with their kids. (Francis had infant and toddler daughters at his first wife's death and a third girl with
Emma, his second wife, who reared the other children as her own.)
The three Drexel sisters were raised with every
advantage, from grand private European "tours" to formal "coming out" parties. But if they did not deprive their girls, the
deeply devout parents also modeled a clear philosophy of the purpose and place of money by their own lives.
Three
afternoons a week, the Drexel daughters saw the doors of their splendid Philadelphia home open to anyone in need. On behalf
of the family, as they grew older the girls helped Emma distribute huge sums each year in clothing, medicine or rent money.
They saw their mother was no dupe, investigating to weed out con artists while she wholeheartedly -- and personally -- assisted
the truly needy.
Seven days a week it was God, not money, the girls saw as the object of their parent's devotion.
When Emma designed the family mansion she included a beautiful little chapel -- for use, not show. Nightly, the Drexels gathered
for prayer, and the Rosary was part of each day.
Francis Drexel's family knew, too, that despite his immersion in
the world of finance, when the powerful one-time partner of J. Pierpont Morgan came home each night, it was not money that
occupied his mind. As soon as he had greeted his loved ones, Francis secluded himself for half an hour's prayer.
When
Emma died in 1883 after painful cancer, her daughters did not read in obituaries of their mother's society galas or chic lifestyle.
Instead, the press reported Emma's "cheering visits" to "the poor, the sick, the unemployed, the dying" and noted that "few
women ever secured so many jobs" for the unemployed.
One paper said, "The families she . . . aided can be numbered
in the hundreds, some of them supported entirely by her in time of need." Emma's girls saw, too, the stream of poor who passed
by her coffin, weeping for one who had done them so much good.
Two years later, in 1885, their father died. Francis
left $15 million, one-tenth to go at once to charity and the rest to be distributed to the same worthy institutions after
his girls' deaths, leaving them only the (admittedly ample) interest income to divide among them during their lives.
The
Drexel girls did not rush to lawyers to get at more of the money. Instead, they concentrated on using what they had to follow
their parents in service to others.
Elizabeth, the oldest, helped many orphans and founded St. Francis de Sales' Industrial
School in Pennsylvania, where orphans could learn a trade before facing life on their own. The youngest, Louise, began charities
to black Americans that culminated in her establishment of St. Emma's Industrial and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, where
young black men could combine liberal arts studies with vocational schooling.
Best known of the three heiresses is
the middle girl, Katharine. Katharine spent all of her money on works for America's Indians and blacks. But for her, even
giving her wealth was not enough; she also gave herself, becoming a nun -- foundress of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
Katharine died at age ninety-six in 1955. For ten years she had been the lone income beneficiary of her father's will.
Although her own foundations -- Xavier University for blacks in New Orleans, Indian schools in the West and her order's uncompleted
mother-house -- needed money as much or more than the charities named long years before in her dad's will, she never sought
to break that document. On her death those groups took all, leaving Katharine's works to the providence of God. But the middle
Drexel girl had long faced that prospect serenely. After all, it was in God, not money, her parents had raised their children
to trust.
Ever loving God, You called Saint Katharine Drexel to share
the message of the Gospel and the life of
the Eucharist
with the poor and oppressed among
Native and African American peoples.
Through her intercession,
may we grow in
the faith and love that will enable us to be united
as brothers and sisters in You.
We pray
this through Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Amen.
To report a favor received, or to get more information, contact:
The
Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament
1663 Bristol Pike
Bensalem, PA 19020-8502
Phone 215-244-9900
E-mail:
sbs@libertynet.org
Web site: http://www.katharinedrexel.org/
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