Mother Katharine Drexel

by Cheryl C. D. Hughes

  Holiness

  What type of person is called to the special vocation of the missionary? In his encyclical Redemptoris Missio, the pope wrote, “The call to mission derives, of its nature, from the call to holiness. A missionary is really such only if he commits himself to the way of holiness: ‘holiness must be called the fundamental presupposition and an irreplaceable condition for everyone fulfilling the mission of salvation in the Church.’ ”88 The missionary is to be marked by obedience to the Holy Spirit, and must have a chaste, intimate communion with Christ, for “we cannot understand or carry out the mission unless we refer it to Christ as the one who is sent to evangelize.”89 The missionary is to embrace poverty, in spirit and in actuality. “The missionary is required to ‘renounce himself and everything that up to this point he considered as his own, and to make himself everything to everyone.’ This he does by a poverty that sets him free for the Gospel, overcoming attachment to people and things about him, so that he may become a brother to those to whom he is sent and thus bring them Christ the Savior.”90 The missionary must be a person of charity. If she is to proclaim the love of God to others and to convince them of their own loveliness, she must first show genuine love herself. The pope wrote that the missionary is to be a “contemplative in action” who must be able to say with the apostle John, “that which we have looked upon . . . concerning the word of life . . . we have also proclaimed to you” (1 John 1:1-3).91 The missionary finally “is a person of the Beatitudes . . . poverty, meekness, acceptance of suffering and persecution, the desire for justice and peace, charity. . . . By living out the Beatitudes, the missionary experiences and shows concretely that the Kingdom of God has already come, and that he has accepted it. The characteristic of every authentic missionary is the inner joy that comes with faith. In a world tormented and oppressed by so many problems, a world tempted by pessimism, the one who proclaims the ‘Good News’ must be a person who has found true hope in Christ.”92

  In her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and in the fourth vow to be a mother to the Native American and African American peoples, Katharine lived her life being receptive to the Holy Spirit and in hope of the world to come. After a series of heart attacks when she could no longer be a “contemplative in action,” she gave up her position as superior general and retired to two rooms of the second floor of the motherhouse to spend the rest of her days in quiet suffering and prayer. She wrote of her pain from a Christian’s perspective: “My nature is terrified by the bitter sufferings of crucifixion, by the bloody furrows which my sins have traced on the Sacred Body of Jesus. Sufferings exhaust me; sometimes I can no longer endure them when my heart is afflicted; and yet I could not suffer too much in order to prepare myself for such a blessing as Holy Communion.”93 In awareness of her own mortality, she wrote, “Let us contemplate Jesus Our Lord on His last journey. He bids me follow Him. There is no other way to heaven.”94 Her original desire upon entering the convent had been to join a contemplative order, and she would spend the last twenty years of her life in contemplation. Mass was celebrated for her daily in her room, except for Sundays and holy days. When she was able to get about by herself or in a wheelchair, she spent most of her time in the tribune, a small balcony overlooking the sanctuary of the chapel below. In her last years when she was completely bedridden, the Blessed Sacrament was in her room twenty-four hours a day. The sisters reported that she slept very little and prayed continuously. Her face was turned to heaven through Calvary. Like Pope John Paul II, she was not afraid: “In Holy Communion the life of God in a particular way is imparted to my soul. It is there that God becomes the soul of my soul, to do, to suffer, all for love of Him who died for me, and If Thou art for me, if Thou art within me, what can I fear, O my God?”95 Her contemplation of God brought her into a complete unitive and loving relationship with him so that there was nothing for her to fear, not even death. As she wrote in one of her meditations, “My dying is eternal life with Christ.”96

  Great throngs of the public came to Katharine Drexel’s wake; police were required to direct traffic. The sisters held back the mourners who wanted to touch the body. However, they would make relics of religious articles for people by touching them gently to her body. One man held up a book to be touched to her body, and another held up his child, saying, “Take a look at the nun, son. Some day you can say that you looked upon a saint.”97 At her concelebrated funeral mass with 250 prelates, priests, and brothers participating, Joseph McShea, archbishop of Philadelphia, gave the homily.

  First and foremost, in youth and old age, in health and in sickness, with friend and with strangers, the beloved soul of Mother Katharine was activated, inspired, and impelled by an insatiable love of God and a complete subjection to His adorable Will. Hers was not a humanitarianism that stoops where love should begin. She was not a mere social reformer, educator, or philanthropist striving to better the conditions of her fellow man while permitting him to ignore God. Hers was a love primarily of God, practiced with her whole heart, her whole soul and her whole mind. . . .

  It was this same love of God that inspired her to place herself and her religious family under the protective mantle of Jesus, ever living, ever loving and ever nourishing the souls of men in the ineffable Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Nor is it unfitting to mention that her last years of venerable old age, when a mind fatigued and exhausted had lost the resilience and perception of youth, she awakened each morning with a renewed brightness of spirit when witnessing the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in Holy Communion.98

  The day after her death, an editorial in the Catholic Standard and Times stated: “One of the most remarkable women in the history of America was called home to God yesterday. The priests and people of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia have been proud to claim her as their own, and yet she belonged truly to all America, but especially to the forgotten people of America — our Indians and Negroes. Reverend Mother Katharine Drexel belonged to Philadelphia and to America, but one cannot help seeing in the story of her life that she belonged to God.”99 One who belongs to God is a saint. According to the memoirs of Sister Mary Gabriella, SBS, one of the mourners at Katharine’s wake brought his entire family, stating, “We came to look upon a saint. She surely was a saint to live the life she did.”100

  Sainthood: Past and Present

  After years of wending its way through the Vatican bureaucracy, Katharine Drexel’s cause for sainthood eventually came to the desk of Pope John Paul II. One of the most visible expressions of the pope’s continuous call to universal holiness had been the great number of saints and blesseds he recognized. In Catholic belief, it is not the pope, but God, who creates saints. The Church, in the person of the pope, simply recognizes that which God has done. While many more anonymous saints than named individuals have been “raised to the altar,” it is the named and officially canonized saints that are held up for veneration and emulation. Everyone is called to be holy, to be a saint. One must be a saint to enter heaven. Official sainthood in no way conflicts with the idea of universal holiness. Recognized saints are in themselves models and beacons of holiness. By their examples, they inspire holiness in others. Vatican II recognized the great plurality in the forms of holiness, and following the council, Pope John Paul II went out of his way to canonize a large number and variety of saints. To recognize saints of the Church is a way of teaching the faithful what individuals can do in response to the divine call and divine grace. One reason the pope was able to canonize and beatify so many people is that he greatly changed and streamlined the canonization process.

  Aside from the apostles, John the Baptist, and Mary the mother of Jesus, who were universally recognized as saints in the early church, the first saints were the martyrs of the Roman persecutions. St. Stephen, whose martyrdom was overseen by Saul of Tarsus, was the church’s first recorded martyr. Martyrs were considered perfect Christians because they had made the ultimate an
d supreme sacrifice of their lives out of love for God. Their martyr deaths were acts of perfect kenosis, as they emptied themselves of life to be joined to God in heaven.101 From the earliest times, their bones were treated with special reverence and their places of interment became the foci of public prayer and veneration. These earliest martyrs were spontaneously accepted by their friends, neighbors, and acquaintances as saints. Their prayers and intercessions were sought first by those who knew them personally and later by those who knew them only by reputation. Altars were built at their tombs.102

  As time went on, the phenomenon of veneration was extended to other Christians, called confessors of the faith, who had not died a martyr’s death but had defended and suffered for the faith. After having admitted their Christian faith to the Roman officials, St. Macrina and her husband were forced from their home and into the forests for seven years to escape the Christian persecutions of the early fourth century in Asia Minor. While in the forest, she and her husband and children lived on wild plants, tree bark, and small game. Among her grandchildren, to whom she passed on the Christian faith, are the saints Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, and Macrina the Younger. St. Macrina is an example of a confessor of the faith, though St. Martin of Tours is a better-known confessor. Eventually, the veneration and reverence paid the martyrs and the confessors spread to those deceased who had a reputation for having lived exemplary Christian lives, often in great austerity and penitence.

  Popular, but strictly local, cults sprang up quite spontaneously and unofficially to venerate the saints. There were no official proceedings to declare a person a saint in the early church. The people, recognizing the apparent holiness of a deceased person, simply began to pray to him or her for intercessory favors. Answered prayers, cures, and apparent miracles spread the popularity of the local saint. The faithful began to come from farther away to pray to the saint. Bishops helped to promote the popularity of local saints and to encourage pilgrimage to their shrines. Pilgrimages to the shrines of the saints became a major economic force in medieval Europe, for communities and churches depended on the money brought in by visiting pilgrims. One did not need the entire saint’s body before which to pray. Soon bones, skulls, and other relics began to circulate throughout the Christian world. Saints became widely known for their exemplary Christian lives and for their thaumaturgic powers. The cult of saints remains an important element of Roman Catholic spiritual life. The Church has always stressed the difference between latria, worship due Christ alone, and doulia, veneration due the saints. This has been a point of no little confusion down through the years. Strictly speaking, the saints are not worshiped; they are venerated. Worship is for God alone.

  A saint was first a saint by the belief of the people, but over time it became the practice for a person’s sainthood to be officially recognized and approved by the local bishop. Officially recognized saints’ names were placed on a canon, or a list, to be read out during various liturgies of the Church. There were many such lists down through the centuries. It was not until after the Protestant Reformation that the Catholic Church developed a complete canon of saints for the universal church. However, long before the Reformation, Catholic bishops were beginning to formalize the process of canonization.

  Some bishops required a vita, a written account of a proposed saint’s life and works, before recognition of sainthood. Others questioned eyewitnesses or examined miracle stories. By the end of the tenth century, a movement had arisen to reserve to the pope in Rome the naming of important saints. The first written record of a papal canonization is from 993, when Pope John XV recognized Archbishop Udalricus (d. 973) of Augsburg as a saint during a Lateran synod of cardinals and bishops. St. Udalricus was credited not only with personal holiness, but also with saving southern Germany from the Magyars. Pope Alexander III (1159-1181) decreed that no saint was to be venerated in the Church without pontifical approval. However, the Church was not so centrally governed in medieval Europe as it is today. In 1234, Pope Gregory IX published a series of laws for the universal church that asserted, among other things, papal control over the process of saint-making throughout the Church. It was a papal prerogative that would have to be asserted over and over again. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V created the Congregation for Rites, which had the charge of preparing documents on persons to be considered by the pope for canonization and beatification.103

  It was not until the bull of Pope Urban VIII in 1634 that the canonization process became firmly fixed and placed in the exclusive hands of the Vatican. Canonization became a juridical process, rather than the spontaneous voice of the people proclaiming a saint. Lawyers within the Congregation of Rites would put cases for beatification and canonization before judges. Witnesses would be examined, and the Promoter of the Faith, the so-called Devil’s Advocate, would argue against the case for the cause of sainthood. Until Pope John Paul II reformed the process of making saints, the Church followed the eighteenth-century norms established by Pope Benedict XIV, who had been a canon lawyer in the Congregation for Rites before becoming pope. The process was modified somewhat and formally included in the 1917 Code of Canon Law and continued until 1982. In all cases, then as now, the decision of the pope as to who becomes a saint is binding on the Church.

  Before 1917, fifty years had to elapse between a person’s death and when that person’s cause for canonization could be heard. During that time, initiators began the preliminary investigations and tried to interest the local bishop in the cause. After the appointed time, a petition was put to the bishop to begin his investigation and find out if there was enough evidence of holiness to proceed. If so, the bishop certified to Rome that there was no present cult of veneration for the proposed saint. The bishop concurrently collected the writings of the individual and secured for them a nihil obstat, certifying that nothing heretical was contained within them.104 All the documents and testimony were collected at the local level and then sent to the Vatican in a dossier. The cause for the individual was then assigned to a postulator. A defense attorney, who argued on behalf of the candidate, aided the postulator. The petitioners paid the postulator and the defense attorney, unless it was a pro bono cause.105 The lawyer for the cause exchanged briefs with the Promoter of the Faith (the Devil’s Advocate) until differences between them were resolved. This process could take years, even decades or centuries. Eventually all the material was gathered together into a positio.106 The positio had to be read and accepted by all the appropriate people in the Congregation for Rites.

  Next, purported miracles were rigorously examined as the Church looked for divine signs that could confirm its judgment concerning a particular candidate. It is the miracles that define the saint. This means that without miracles, canonization will not occur. A holy life, service to the Church, devotion to God, and proper motivation were, and are, important, but they are insufficient criteria upon which to base canonization. Prior to the reform of the process by Pope John Paul II, two miracles were required for beatification and two more for canonization. First, a panel of medical doctors had to find that the cure did not occur and could not have occurred naturally. Then, a panel of theologians studied the cures to ascertain whether or not they were, in fact, the result of the intercession of the proposed candidate. If the answers were all in the affirmative, the pope met with the cardinals of the Congregation to decide whether or not to go forward with the beatification or canonization of the candidate. Beatification identifies the individual as “Blessed” and is the last step before canonization.

  While the meeting between the Congregation and the pope may be pro forma, it also addresses real questions, often political. Pope Paul VI (1963-1978) delayed the canonization of the martyrs of the Spanish Civil War so as not to appear to favor the Franco regime and the Spanish government. He also delayed the cause for the canonization of the Mexican martyrs of the 1920 Cristero rebellion to avoid provoking further persecutions by the anticlerical Mexican government of his day. The 120 Chinese
martyrs canonized with Katharine Drexel caused the Chinese government to protest to the Vatican. The Beijing Foreign Affairs Ministry complained that the canonization would “have a grave negative impact on the process of normalization of the relations between the Vatican and Beijing,” which had been broken off in 1951. A bishop of the state-controlled so-called Patriotic Catholic Church in China also condemned the canonizations, especially since they took place on the fifty-first anniversary of the birth of the People’s Republic: “To choose today’s date to canonize those so-called saints is a clear insult and humiliation. Today is a great holiday that celebrates the liberation of the Chinese nation from the invader and from the violent robbery of the imperialists and colonialists.”107 One can be sure that the significance of the date was not lost on the pope or the Vatican officials who planned the ceremony.

  The recent beatification (1987) and canonization (1998) of Edith Stein, Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, caused quite a controversy and tension in Catholic-Jewish relations. Many Jewish people were insulted that the Catholic Church would co-opt one of their own and proclaim her a Christian saint. Pope John Paul did not ignore Edith Stein’s Jewish heritage. Rather, he addressed it directly as an honor:

  Today we greet in profound honor and holy joy a daughter of the Jewish people, rich in wisdom and courage, among these blessed men and women. Having grown up in the strict tradition of Israel, and having lived a life of virtue and self-denial in a religious order, she demonstrated her heroic character on the way to the extermination camp. United with our crucified Lord, she gave her life for genuine peace and for the people. . . . For Edith Stein, baptism as a Christian was by no means a break with her Jewish heritage. Quite on the contrary she said: “I had given up my practice of the Jewish religion as a girl of fourteen. My return to God made me feel Jewish again.” She was always mindful of the fact that she was related to Christ not only in a spiritual sense, but also in blood terms. . . . She died as a daughter of Israel for the glory of the Most Holy Name and at the same time as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, literally, blessed by the Cross.108