St. Katharine devoted her life to important work in the service of marginalized people. Her legacy includes the lives she touched in that work but also the many lives that continue to be blessed by the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament as they continued her mission. Additionally, it would be hard to even count the number of lives that might be impacted by everyone who learns about St. Katharine and takes her example to heart.
Truly, her example is an inspiration. Ruth Catherine Spain, a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament who helped to document St. Katharine’s case for canonization described her like this, “She was so selfless and so sacrificing and so considerate… Way back in 1891, she was a pioneer for the most downtrodden and the poorest of the poor. She didn’t have a prejudiced molecule in her body, never mind a bone. She believed that everyone was a child of God.” (found here, para 35)
According to Benedictine Father Paschal Baumann, archivist at Belmont Abbey in North Carolina, “We do Katharine Drexel a disservice if we view her only in terms of her money. She had a real social policy to go with it. She was working for the advancement of integration, and she made that so clearly a mission of the Church, not just a social policy.” (same source, para 37) And who better but the Church to do that kind of work with compassion and love.
Maybe that is a greater lesson from St. Katharine. We need to think about what God really expects of His Church and whether we are getting too comfortable abdicating some of that responsibility to other entities. According to a Pew Research Center report, there were 2.3 billion Christians in the world in 2015. That’s 31.2% of the population of the world and the largest religious group in the world.
If we all lived the life of service that Jesus called for us to live, how much could we do? Would there be a problem with hunger anymore? And imagine how contagious the Spirit would be when the rest of the world would see such work getting done!
Oh by the way, just a fun side note. Evidently, St. Katharine was part of the effort to get Congress to amend federal tax code so any organization that gives at least 90% of its income to charity is exempt from income taxes. Some people refer to it as “the Philadelphia Nun Loophole.” (found at this source again)
Dear Lord, we are inspired by the example of St. Katharine Drexel and the religious order that she founded. Let us learn from her and find ways in our own lives to honor her beautiful legacy. We know that, with Your grace, we could change the world! Please help us to be part of that positive change.