Mother Katharine Drexel

by Cheryl C. D. Hughes

  That O’Connor would arrange not one trip, but eventually two trips, to his Indian missions for the daughters of Francis Drexel indicates his deep concern for the welfare of the Indians and his firm belief that the Drexel women would be important to their spiritual and temporal salvation. Of the three Drexel women, Katharine showed the most interest in the plight of the Indians. After Francis Drexel, Katharine was the Drexel to whom Bishop O’Connor was closest. Their close relationship provided an opportunity for the bishop to formulate a plan for Catholic evangelization of the Indians, but it took years to finally come into shape. In the meantime, Bishop O’Connor encouraged her philanthropy to the Indians and was a careful spiritual adviser to her. He tested her one way and then another, and he took an interest in everything about her.

  He was concerned with her eating and sleeping habits, her toilette, even her amusements. He never seemed to restrict his concern to her spiritual life; rather, he realized the essential unity of her person in body and soul. A few days after he received her letter about convent rations, he wrote back:

  Do not undertake anything in the line of penance without consulting me or your confessor. With such as you, the devil usually changes himself into an angel of light, tempts them to undertake too much, so as to weary, and ultimately disgust them with self-denial. Let your motto, then, in such matter be: Festina lente [Make haste slowly]. Do nothing that would make you seem to disregard family usages. Two days on convent rations, is as much as you can bear at present. These rations in your case, should include soup at your evening meal. . . .

  Continue to receive Holy Communion three times a week, if you can do so without inconvenience to the family. Never refuse to go out with your sisters, when they are anxious that you should do so. Lead, as far as possible, an interior life. Think often of the presence of God, and of your angel guardian. Reflect on the relative emptiness of worldly things. Compared to the love and service of God, and the salvation of the soul, they are, indeed, “vanity of vanities.”

  Then, be utterly indifferent as to the state of life to which you may be called. Seek only to know God’s Will in this matter, wait, pray, and before long that Will, in one way or another, will be made known to you.18

  Exactly what penances she was planning is unknown, as her previous letter is missing from the collection. However, given her propensity toward scrupulosity and her view of herself as especially sinful, one can imagine what a sensitive and creative mind might develop. Here the bishop served as a reasonable counterbalance to her occasional extremes. In reminding her to make haste slowly, he wanted her to get outside of herself a little, to partake of the joys of family life, and above all, not to call attention to herself by exterior demonstrations of religiosity. He urged her to perfect her interior dispositions, rather than making more obvious, external privations and devotions that might call attention to herself; yet, she rebelled at such restrictions.

  She and her sisters made an enormous effort to comfort their father after the death of their mother and to run the household in the style and manner she had taught them. While Katharine might have been eager for outright approval from Bishop O’Connor for her choice of vocation, she was also not especially keen to break the remaining family circle as long as her father lived. Katharine was content to be an “old maid” for the time being. She was supported by the comfort of Bishop O’Connor, who wrote her later in August, “Every day since the receipt of your last letter, I have made a special commemoration for you at Mass. I shall continue to do so, till God’s Will in your regard is made clear to you, that is, as clear as can be expected in such matters. Whatever may be the issues of your investigations, it will be no slight consolation to you in the future, to have taken so much pains to learn the Will of your Divine Master in regard to the state of life you should embrace.”19

  While the daughters were concerned about their father’s well-being, he was concerned about them. Francis Drexel removed himself from active participation in the family business to devote himself more fully to Lise, Katharine, and Louise. He appears to have been unaware of Katharine’s great anxiety over her future vocation, and that, even in Europe, she relied on Bishop O’Connor for advice and fretted about her devotions and her vocation.

  And now your troublesome child has a few questions to ask. Would you consider it in accordance with the “festina lente” to devote one & a half hour each day or two hours, to prayers, rosary and a quarter [to] meditation? Or if I should wish to pray for a longer time would you consider it prudent to do so when I have the opportunity? . . . Also whilst traveling when I am forced to ask advice on any little point of direction to a confessor who does not know my soul can I afterwards submit the advice to you although given in the secrecy of the confessional?

  . . . I believe I am partially afraid of becoming again interested in what I have learned from experience to be transitory. I ardently hope I shall never all through life forget the truths which struck me so forcefully by Mamma’s death-bed. There, I could clearly solve the problems of life. Teach me, dear Father, to make it a way to heaven. Any one but you would think that I were morbid or sad in indulging such thoughts, and I should not tell them to any one else.20

  O’Connor responded: “You ask me if I consider an hour and a half or two hours sufficient time for you to devote to prayer each day. I think one and a half hours quite enough, whilst you are traveling. When you return, send me a list of your daily devotions, and I will overhaul it. In your case, somebody should do this.” Clearly, left to her own devices, Katharine would know no bounds to her spiritual exercises. He did not recommend any books of devotional reading until she returned from Europe. He recommended instead that she read novels or travel books and keep a journal of her impressions from her travels. “To read a good novel occasionally will not hurt you, and may help you, so you must not consider any indulgence of this kind opposed to the higher purposes you formed on the occasion referred to above [the grace and direction she gained from being with her mother through her illness and death].”

  Then begins a long passage on her vocation:

  And now, let me acquaint you with the conclusion I have reached in regard to your vocation. It is this, that you remain in the world, but make a vow of virginity for one year, to be renewed every year, with the permission of your director, till you or he think it well for you to omit it or make it perpetual. This, I think, is what is best for you to do now, and as far as I can see, in the immediate future. Your vocation to religion is not pronounced, and without a very decided vocation, one in your position should not enter it. On the other hand, your vocation to celibacy, and perhaps to a life of celibacy, is sufficiently evident to warrant or even require you to give it a trial. Should the future make known to you that God asks of you the practice of this virtue only for a time, nothing will prevent you from entering another state of life. Should you, on the other hand, feel obliged to remain the Sponsa Christi, to the end, you can do so, and make use of the liberty you will enjoy in the world to be of immense service to others, by deed, and example. Give this matter a few days’ consideration, and fervent prayer, and if you conclude to adopt the course I have recommended, you would do well to make your first vow at the next sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin you visit after the receipt of this note. At all events, let me know what you think of my view of the matter. Should you conclude to make the vow, all that is necessary for you to do is, to promise our Lord, in any form of words, or even mentally, to practice for love of Him, till that day and year, the holy virtue of chastity. You need not mention the matter even to your confessor.21

  It is curious that the bishop, while not forbidding her to mention his recommendation of a vow of virginity to her confessor, expressly discouraged her from talking about it with another cleric in a position to advise her. Bishop O’Connor’s letter caught up with her in Venice on November 16, 1883. She immediately followed his recommendation to make a vow of celibacy. Katharine made her first vow befo
re the Madonna of St. Mark’s, a painting of the Virgin piously attributed to St. Luke. Even though she submitted to her director’s advice, she was not very happy about her circumstances. She wrote back a strongly worded response:

  The outlook in the future to a life of perpetual celibacy is contrary to my present inclinations to the religious life. If, however, God calls me to remain in the world, to be exposed to its temptations, to be obliged to serve it, to remain in the world and yet not be of the world, to know how great is the beauty of God’s House, and yet to have duties which constantly withdraw from it, to feel that God has given graces, which to quote your own words “must be used under direction lest they lead from the path of prudence” and yet to be deprived of daily direction such as those in religion receive, to be looked down upon as an old maid — If all this is for God’s greater glory — I must drown inclination and say Fiat [Let it be done. Echoes the Virgin Mary’s response at the Annunciation]. Most likely I can, with God’s grace, do more for Him in the world.

  I shall reduce myself to an hour and a half prayers each day since you think it “quite sufficient whilst traveling.” But at the same time I am going to ask you whether there is to be no exception to the rule. . . .22

  She had mentioned to the bishop more than once her vain distaste of being thought of as an “old maid,” so it is easy to surmise that one of the things he detected in her desire for the religious life was a desire not to be pitied as an old maid, a single woman, for the rest of her life. It is true that she had had at least one suitor, but it is also clear that she did not seek the acquaintance and affection of young men. She was not averse to society, but it never had tremendous appeal for her either. Yet, in the discussions her mother used to carry on with her sister, Madame Bouvier, in the convent, about the relative merits of marriage versus the religious life, the merits of the unmarried state did not seem to be an issue, perhaps giving young Katharine the impression that it was a state to be avoided as not entirely desirable. Bishop O’Connor saw clearly that the desire to avoid one state was not reason enough to choose another, especially one as difficult as that of the religious woman. He wanted her to develop specific, positive, and personal reasons for desiring to enter the convent. The way she wrote of her “present inclinations to the religious life” (emphasis added) suggests that she might have other inclinations at some time in the future, making her present inclination appear somewhat tentative. On the other hand, she pushed her director to find exceptions to the rules she had asked for and which he had laid out for her benefit.

  In his next letter, he relented on the rules for one hour and a half of daily devotion, but raised more specific questions concerning her vocation.

  An occasional spiritual “spree” is as admissable [sic] in one who follows a cautious “rule of life,” as is an occasional big dinner in one of abstemious habit. But let the spree be only occasional. The examination for confession, or the preparation for communion need not count in the hour and a half, but neither of these exercises should exceed a quarter of an hour. Better the examination were even less. When at some sanctuary, then, of course, you can go on a spree, but it should be a moderate one and not give scandal. [He does not want her to worry or alarm her sisters and her father.]

  You say: “The outlook in the future to a life of perpetual celibacy is contrary to my present inclinations to the religious life.” You must not look at your obligation in this matter as perpetual. It is only temporary, lasting from year to year, and ending entirely, and before God, whenever the year closes. I have recommended this course as a tentative measure, since, as I told you, I do not consider your vocation to the religious state sufficiently pronounced. It may become so in no long time. In this, as in most other matters, development is the order of God’s works.

  And what has made me hesitate about your vocation is that in your own examination on this subject, you told me you felt it would be hard for you to pass your days, and every hour of each day, with women, and, if I do not forget, under the rule of a woman — in a word, to endure the kind of society to which religious vows would consign you. A natural repugnance of this kind, if really felt and lasting, would be an insuperable objection to your becoming a nun. All the other requisites of a vocation you have, at present, as far as I can see, but this dislike for the human or natural side of the religious life, whilst it lasts, would make it highly imprudent for you to enter it. Your yearly vow, may obtain for you the grace to overcome it. But even if it do not, it will enable you to measure your strength in regard to a virtue to which you are so much inclined, and which can be practiced in the world, no less than in religion. And, then, should you find that in this matter you have overestimated your resolution and your power, you will be free to adopt the course that reason will suggest. It is no new thing for the voluntary Sponsa Christi to be found in the world, though not of it, benefiting, encouraging, and edifying those who are exposed to its dangers and its hardships. And I really think, dear Child, that you are one of those to whom God gives this hard, but glorious, and most meritorious vocation. Thus far, you have had everything to tempt you to take a very different course, but you have not taken it. God has given you almost every earthly good, but you have counted them as loss compared with the love of Christ. And this has not been the result of surrounding controlling circumstances, but of your own free choice, made and sustained by the grace that has been given you. In this view of your case, however, I may be mistaken. When I see you, which I hope will be soon, we can discuss the matter more nearly, and in detail. In the meantime, have God alone in view in this whole affair. Do not trouble yourself about what the world may think of any course you may feel called on to take. God’s holy will should overrule all considerations of this kind.23

  Perhaps he was trying to appeal to her vanity and to challenge her when he wrote of the vocation to the single state: “It is no new thing for the voluntary Sponsa Christi to be found in the world, though not of it, benefiting, encouraging, and edifying those who are exposed to its dangers and its hardships. And I really think, dear Child, that you are one of those to whom God gives this hard, but glorious, and most meritorious vocation” (emphasis added). At the same time, he tried to alleviate her fears about the nature of her vow to celibacy by pointing out that it was but an annual vow; it would not be perpetual unless by her own free will she chose it to be so.

  Crisis in Discernment

  The next letter recalls in a heartbreaking manner the lesson learned from her mother that all not pertaining to God is vanity and will be swept away. It tells of the lessons learned by anyone who travels to ancient lands. It brings to mind the bitter, hard lessons of childhood about the nature of reality:

  Dear Father, I shall try to correspond with the graces you obtain for me. I deeply appreciate all your goodness to me and by reason of the confidence with which it inspires me I am going to take the liberty of occupying this evening a little of your time. Do please be patient with all the egos it will be necessary to use in opening my whole heart to you. It is a very sorrowful heart because like the little girl who wept when she found that her doll was stuffed with sawdust and her drum was hollow, I too have made a horrifying discovery and my discovery like hers is true. I have ripped both the doll and the drum open and the fact lies plainly and in all its glaring reality before me: All, all, all (there is no exception) is passing away and will pass away. European travel brings vividly before the mind how cities have risen and fallen, and risen and fallen; and the same of empires and kingdoms and nations. And the billions and billions who lived their common everyday life in these nations and kingdoms and empires and cities where are they? The ashes of the kings and mighty of this earth are mingled with the dust of the meanest slave. The handsome sculptured sepulchres, the exquisitely finished Etruscan vases, the tombs of Egyptian mummies are exposed in museums, the dust of the great which these sepulchres and vases were intended to preserve are scattered to the winds unless perhaps with the exception
of the mummy whose face grins from without his winding-sheet upon every idle eye who chooses to gaze within the gilded case once so reverently respected. Day succeeds day and when, as Byron so beautifully expressed it, when the heavens grow red in the western sky “the day joins the past eternity.” How long before the sun and moon, and stars continue to give forth light? Who can tell? Of one thing we are sure. In God’s own time — then shall come the Son of Man in great power and majesty to render to each according to his works. The reward and punishment for these will not pass away, nor does the day — Eternity — then open before us. An eternity of happiness infinite, or an eternity of misery infinite. The question alone important to me and the solution of which depends upon how I have spent my life and the state of my soul at the moment of death. Infinite misery or infinite happiness! There is no half and half, either one or the other. And this question for me is to be decided at most in seventy years, seventy short years compared to eternity, seventy long years of time. God grant that the time or trial and probation and exile may not last for seventy years longer! — And 93 years after my death my body will be a bony, grinning skeleton like that of the deceased who lay on the bones and skulls of the Capuchin convent in Rome. On this bony arm was tied a tag with “died 1774.” — This is ripping open the doll and discovering it to be made of saw-dust! A melancholy grin, frightening grin, disillusionizer! — All is stuffed with saw-dust. . . .

  And now to return to the little girl, what was the consequence of her finding out that her doll was stuffed with saw-dust? She says, “she does not want to play with dolls anymore.” Once being fully convinced that dolls are not flesh and blood she asks herself seriously what is the good of fondling that which in reality is a bag of ugly sawdust. Now dear Father, that is my case. I am disgusted with the world. God in His mercy has opened my eyes to the fact of the vanitas vanitatis, and as He has made me see the vile stark emptiness of this earth I look to Him — the God of Love — in hope. He will not leave me to despair because of the dreariness of all the joys which cannot satisfy my heart. . . . I hope that God may place me in a state of life where I can best know Him, love Him, serve Him for whom alone I am created. I am ambitious. I desire to become the disciple of Our Lord Jesus Christ. What am I to do now — what am I to do in the future? — In today’s meditation my text chanced to be “Why asketh thou Me,” concerning the doctrine of Jesus and His disciples. “Ask them who have heard what I have spoken unto them: behold they know what things I have said.” And therefore, what course should I now adopt to become a disciple, please instruct me, dear Father? Do you wish me to try any line of mortification in order to see for what God gives me strength. If so, tell me and I shall endeavor. Or if I fail it will be either through self-confidence and want of confidence in God, or because God wishes me to fail. I have no longer any dislike of spending my life in the society of religious women or under the rule of a woman, if God gives me the grace to see His Will in her commands. With me it is, I think, impossible to like men except with my inferior nature mingled with passions which must be kept under. Of course, I do not include in my fear of men, those who are consecrated to God and who are His representatives on earth. The following, however, is where I do find difficulty; but with the aid of God cannot this be overcome? I have a vigorous, remarkable appetite and if you should decide that I have a religious vocation, or even if I were to remain in the world as a disciple of Christ, this would, it appears to me, be an impediment unless conquered. I am not a gourmet because I am a gourmande [sic]. Nature does not like to be hungry which it must if cut down to convent rations. Now twice every week, according to your directions, I do try and with the help of God’s Grace I have always succeeded in bringing myself down to, or near to the portion of a religious. Also on the other days I follow your advice and abstain from the one dish I most like. At least I do this at lunch and dinner; at breakfast as we only serve bread and butter and eggs, I dock off butter, although that is what I least care for. Sometimes too I doubt whether I abstain from the dish I most desire, and once or twice forgot myself and partook of the favorite viand, and was obliged to substitute another. — So far, for my confession! And now for a difficulty. . . . Three times my loving sisters have observed and commented on the smallness of appetite on some occasions. They are quiet now; tell me. . . . Also whilst I am in the world shall I dress tidily, neatly and carefully, having an idea to the becoming, or shall I do the reverse?