Saint Katharine Drexel

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indigenous people, missions, St. Katherine Drexel, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St. Katharine Drexel. The Franciscan Media reflection on this second saint to be born in the United States (Philadelphia) is rather fanciful and very engaging. She was born in 1858 and lived for 97 years, in spite of suffering a heart attack at age 77, so one could consider her “a modern saint,” the second American to be canonized by the Church. Here is what the reflection on her life tells us:

Saints have always said the same thing. Pray, be humble, accept the cross, love and forgive. But it is good to hear these things in the American idiom from one who, for instance, had her ears pierced as teenager, who resolved to have “no cake, no preserves,” who wore a watch, was interviewed by the press, traveled by train and could concern herself with the proper size of pipe for a new mission. There are obvious reminders that happiness can be lived in today’s culture as well as that of Jerusalem or Rome.

This modern girl with money had a heart on fire “with the plight of people of color and Native Americans (Indians) after reading the book entitled A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson.” She founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored and “by 1942 she had a system of black Catholic schools in 13 states for black students, 40 mission centers and 23 rural schools, although segregationists harassed her work, even burning a school in Pennsylvania.” (franciscanmedia.org) At present, Mother Drexel is credited with establishing 145 missions, 50 schools for African Americans and 12 schools for Native Americans and Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically black Catholic college in the United States. (Wikipedia)

Let us be thankful today for Mother Katharine Drexel and those who have followed her example of care for native peoples and people of color in the United States and elsewhere. “That all may be one!”

Indigenous Peoples Day

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Chief Seattle, discrimination, humanity, immigrants, indigenous people, spirituality, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

In the United States, today has been traditionally celebrated (since 1892) as Columbus Day. This title was adopted as such at a time when Italian immigrants were vilified and faced religious and ethnic discrimination, notably in the year after a mass lynching of 11 Italian Americans by a mob in New Orleans. Over the years there has been a rising of challenge, not for the representation of the people who came to the United States searching for safety and acceptance in their new home but about the man, Christopher Columbus, who led the expedition to this “New World” but who, ironically, had never set foot in this country; Columbus anchored in the Bahamas! (npr.org)

In a growing trend, over 100 cities, towns and counties in 10 states across the country including this year the D.C. Council of the nation’s capital, are celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In 1992, speaking about the growing shift, Loni Hancock, then mayor of Berkeley, California (the first U.S. City to switch), said the following:

“I think that to fully understand and take responsibility for who we are as a people in this land made it very important to be clear about who was here and reflect on what happened in our history after that, in terms of the displacement and oftentimes genocide of those people. How that might have reflected a general discounting of the history and the humanity of non-white people of many kinds in this country and to take responsibility for our history.” (npr.org)

May this trend continue to take hold across our land as we open ourselves to the deep spirituality of our Native brothers and sisters in the manner of Chief Seattle who said:

“All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man…the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports…” and “Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”