December 22

Spiritual Bouquet: We shall be like to Him, for we shall see Him as He is. I St. John 3:2

SAINT FRANCES XAVIER CABRINI
Foundress
(1850-1917)

Dear to the hearts of American Catholics in many regions of the United States, Saint Frances Cabrini, foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, patroness of immigrants, was the first citizen of the United States to be canonized. Born in Lombardy, Italy, the youngest of thirteen children, she was fired with missionary zeal as a little girl, through family reading of the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith. She gave up sweets because she would also be without them in China, where she aspired to go.

She earned a teacher’s certificate and applied to two Orders having missionary houses, but was rejected for reasons of health. Reluctantly, at the request of her bishop, she tried to save an orphanage and make of its staff a religious community, but after six hard years the work collapsed. And Frances, by then thirty years old, initiated her own missionary community with seven of her associates from the orphanage. Bishop Scalabrini suggested they work with Italian immigrants, especially in the United States, as the Congregation of Saint Charles which he had founded was doing; but Mother Cabrini’s heart was set on China. She asked counsel of Pope Leo XIII. “Go not to the East,” he told her, “but to the West.”

Founding schools, hospitals and charitable works of every kind, she would cross the ocean thirty times, bringing bands of young Italian Sisters to North and South America. Her amusing community letter, during her second trip to New York, gives a typical picture of these missionary voyages: “This morning all the Sisters woke up very ill. Some of them thought they were going to die... Those who trusted my words rose and tried to eat, and presently were looking quite well. The others who thought death was at hand stayed in their rooms awaiting it...”

Her letters are filled with the practical motherly instruction of a foundress who knew she was loved and imitated by her Sisters. “When you are corrected do not justify yourself. Remain silent and practice virtue, whether you are right or wrong, otherwise we may dream of perfection but will never attain it.” (Oct. 17-20, 1892) “Love is not loved, my daughters! Love is not loved!” (Aug. 21, 1890) “Renounce yourselves entirely if you wish to enjoy peace... She who is not holy will make no one holy.” (Oct. 17, 1892)

Explaining why she did not accompany some Sisters on a boat excursion she wrote, “I admit my weakness, I am afraid of the sea. And if there is no very holy motive in view, I have no courage to go where I fear danger, unless sent by obedience. For then, of course, one’s movements are blessed by God.”

Mother Cabrini died at sixty-seven, suddenly and alone in one of her Chicago hospitals, while preparing Christmas presents for 500 children.

Source: Lives of the Saints: Daily Readings, by Augustine Kalberer, O.S.B. (Franciscan Herald Press: Chicago, 1975).

SAINT ISCHYRION
Martyr in Alexandria
(† ca. 250)

Ischyrion was a subordinate officer serving under a magistrate in Egypt. His master commanded him to offer sacrifice to the idols, and because he refused to commit that sacrilege, reproached him in the most abusive and threatening language. Giving way to passion and superstition, the commanding officer at length worked himself up to such a degree of frenzy as to run a stake into the entrails of the meek servant of Christ, who by his patient constancy attained to the glory of martyrdom.

Reflection: It is not a man’s terrestrial condition, but his virtue that can make him truly great and truly happy. However lowly a person’s station or circumstances may be, the road to both greatness and happiness is open to him; and there is not a servant or slave whom God will not sustain, if he is fired with the laudable ambition of arriving at the summit of Christian perfection. (Rev. Alban Butler)

Source: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints and other sources, by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).