Daily Reflection Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

How appropriate that the Scripture readings today fit the life of Mother Cabrini to a tee! Several years ago, in a talk about Mother Cabrini, one of her Sisters related a part of her foundresses’ life that I had never known. In the late nineteenth century, Mother Cabrini visited Pope Leo XIII to request that she and her small band of Sisters be given permission to travel to the Far Eastern countries to be missionaries among the people. In refusing this request, the pope directed the new foundress and her companions to travel to the United States where there were many Italians migrating. They needed the missionary zeal of the religious Sisters. In fact, Leo XIII’s words, “Go West,” are inscribed on the ceiling of the Cabrini Shrine in Manhattan

    Mother Cabrini and her Sisters obeyed the pope’s directive. However, this compliance came with sacrifice—not just the sacrifice of leaving their home country. This new found congregation of women were from northern Italy. The people that Pope Leo asked them to serve in the US were from southern Italy—and “never the ‘twain shall meet”: different dialogue, foods, customs, and economy. Yet, realizing the need to minister in another country with a foreign culture, the Sisters spent time in prayer and discernment to help erase their own prejudices. They traveled to the US and were confronted with barriers of all sorts. Yet, they cooperated with the grace and strength given by God.

    These Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart followed the wisdom given to us in today’s liturgical readings. Paul tells us “to be open to every good enterprise…to be peaceable, considerate, exercising all graciousness toward everyone.” Jesus, traveling through the foreign country of Samaria, encounters people suffering from leprosy. They were pariahs among the people. Not only does Jesus understand their plight, he also cures them of their disease. Now they can lead normal lives in society.

    Today’s Scripture readings, as well as the life of Mother Cabrini, have so much to teach us, to help us deepen our love for all people, and to erase bigotry and prejudice from our hearts. Mother Cabrini and her Sisters made their retreats according to Ignatius’s Exercises by learning and responding to the Spirit speaking within them. They converted their prejudices into appreciation of differences in personality and culture. They certainly followed Jesus described in today’s gospel reading.

“Diligence in small things made the saints what they are.

Those who conquer themselves in small matters

will often gain more than those

who were concerned with

overcoming themselves in great matters.”

                                                                              --Retreat Notes of 1894—Mother Cabrini