Saturday, March 11, 2023

MY NEW FRIEND


I recently finished reading a captivating biography entitled Saint Katharine, the life of Katharine Drexel, by Cordelia Frances Biddle. I knew very little about Katharine Drexel before I read this book and I am now an enthusiastic a devotee of hers.

Let me borrow a paragraph or two from the introduction:


 "Katharine Drexel underwent an extraordinary transformation, from a pleasure loving young lady of privilege during the ¨gilded age¨ to a woman passionately committed to aiding and uplifting the poorest of the poor. Born in 1858, she inherited a fortune when her father died in 1885. Throughout the nation, newspaper headlines trumpeted the sum: his estate was worth $15.5 million. It was unthinkable for a woman to possess such staggering wealth. While her two affluent sisters followed the conventional route of marriage and the charitable activities accepted within their sphere, Kate shocked her family and friends by choosing a path of self-sacrifice and service, first, taking religious vows in the Roman Catholic Church, and then forming her own teaching order. Her cousins, ensconced in their sumptuous residences, considered her choice dangerously radical.


Katharine combated racial prejudice and fought the Ku Klux Klan as she traveled through the country establishing schools for African and native Americans. She considered Xavier university in New Orleans a crowning achievement, but of equal importance was her tireless work on behalf of the Navajo and Pueblo nations….


At a time when journeys to the Dakotas, Wyoming, Arizona, and New Mexico were fraught with peril because of the government´s repressive policies, she overcame bigotry, distrust and threats of murder. She died in 1955, having devoted her considerable energies to uplifting America’s forgotten peoples.”


The first part of the book is filled with details of her early life as a young socialite, a member of one of the wealthiest families in Philadelphia. There were trips to Europe and travel to fancy resorts, and all of the intrigues of high society personalities.


The second part describes her founding of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, and her many perilous trips to Indian reservations and poor Negro neighborhoods in the south, in spite of the threats and opposition that she encountered at every step until her death at the age of 97.


What most captivated me was the crucial and difficult period of what Biddle calls Katharine's "extraordinary transformation," the transition from a rich socialite to a very observant religious sister who practiced poverty that today would seem extreme. Just think about it: how do you change from that rich young socialite to that committed religious? The answer is one of the main points I got from the book, namely that she was able to hand things over to the Lord: from the craziness of leaving her former life to the craziness of founding schools on Indian reservations, or in locations where white neighbors despised what she was doing.


A second point that impressed me was Katharine's deep conviction that everything that she and her religious sisters were doing was God’s work and not hers. She was convinced that God was accomplishing his will through her faceless activity and relentless forging ahead in the face of every imaginable adversity.


This second point is an excellent one for me to reflect on during this year when our community is celebrating the 50th anniversary of our reopening Saint Benedict prep. (As an insider, I have always been convinced that whatever we may be accomplishing here is obviously not our own work but the Lord's.)


That first point, however, about leaving everything in God's hands, is something that I´m still working on, a grace that I hope the Lord will entrust to me someday. 


Meanwhile, I’ve begun praying to Saint Katharine to intercede for me on that one!



Saint Katharine, pray for us!



No comments:

Post a Comment