A Land of Immigrants

Francesca Cabrini was born into a well-to-do family in Italy in 1850.

As a young woman she tried to enter different religious orders.

But she was not accepted because of her poor health.

So, she became a teacher.

But she still felt the strong call to life as a religious.

So in 1880 she started her own order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.

Seven years later, she went to Rome to seek the blessings of Pope Leo XIII.

She wanted to do missionary work in China.

But the pope told her to instead go to America and help the Italian immigrants.

So, Mother Cabrini left immediately for New York with five sisters.

Using her experience, she began founding schools and orphanages.

She had no experience with hospitals.

But because of the great need, she began setting them up too.

She traveled west and opened more schools and orphanages and hospitals.

From New York to Chicago to Seattle, and in between.

In 1909 she became a US citizen.

But her missionary work wasn’t limited to the US.

She traveled and worked constantly—all around the world.

She founded institutions in seven states.

And in Italy, Spain, England, France, Brazil, Nicaragua and Argentina.

By the time of her death, at age 67,

She had founded 67 schools, orphanages and hospitals.

Her death came just before Christmas in 1917.

Though she was ill, she traveled from Seattle to Chicago,

To attend to some business at the hospital she’d founded there.

She died there in her room, serving as always, preparing candy for the local children.

I’m sure that, just like us, Mother Cabrini had heard the words of today’s Gospel.

No doubt, she heard them many times in her 67 years.

And despite her devotion to the Sacred Heart,

Despite her dedicated service to the poor and her great achievements,

I wonder if she ever came to feel that she had finally become a profitable servant.

That she had done more than she was obliged to do.

The Church thought so.

She was canonized in 1946 as our first US-citizen saint.

The servant of immigrants, an immigrant herself, she's now the patron saint of immigrants.

Each of us has been given much; and so, much is expected from us.

Should we ever feel that we’ve done more than we’re obliged to do?

Tuesday 32nd Week in Ordinary Time

Lk 17:7-10                                   Read this Scripture @usccb.org