by Mary E. Johnson
Third Sunday in Lent 2025
Ex 3:1-15
Ps 63:1-8
1 Cor 10:1-13
Lk 13:1-9
Welcome to this Racial Reconciliation Sunday where we remember Saint Katharine Drexel.
On Ash Wednesday our Rector, Jered stated that he wasn’t feeling very
“Lenty” in light of current events and the emotional/spiritual toll they are taking. His comment threw me into a time machine – back to my childhood in parochial school. As children, Lent felt heavy and dark. Despite the efforts of our teachers to portray the season as an opportunity for growing closer to God, we focused on sacrifice, required deprivation, reluctant self-denial, expected self-examination (which rarely resulted in pleasant outcome).
How do you help young minds grasp the concepts of reconciliation, confession, repentance, penance. It can all seem a bit punishing.
I clearly remember my first confession. As you all know, 7 years of age is the age of reason – the age when all 7-year olds know the difference between right and wrong. Actually, I know some 70-somethings that still struggle with those concepts. The Sisters prepared us for our first confession over the course of several weeks in the second grade. They taught us about the concept of sin, about our conscience, about the importance of tending to our souls, about reconciliation – with God, with others, with ourselves. And, of course, the Sisters instructed us about the mechanics of confession: where to go and what to say. We had rehearsals during which we would enter the confessional, kneel down, and practice the script we had been taught.
I remember a class on sin. What is a sin? According to the catechism, sin is an offense against God, reason, truth and conscience. That was kind of a lot for a 7 year old to grasp.
To help us better understand sin, the Sisters gave us a list of sample sins – examples that a 7-year old might understand: I disobeyed my mom. I punched my brother. I did not clean my room. I took the Lord’s name in vain. And there were several other options.
On the big day it was finally my turn to enter the confessional. Now some of you probably know that those little rooms on the sides of older Roman churches were built for adults. So by the time I knelt down in the confessional I could just barely see over the top of the kneeler. For those of you who have never been in a confessional, there is a screen between the penitent and the priest. I heard the door on the priest’s side of the screen open. It was my cue to start speaking. “Bless me father for I have sinned. This is my first confession.”
I had carried my list of sample sins into the confessional with me. I was worried about freezing up and not remembering what to say. And now was the moment in my first confession when I was to tell the priest my sins and how many times I had committed them. My mind went blank. I looked at my list. “I had impure thoughts 11 times.”
Today’s readings offer ample encouragement to repent. So what does repentance look like? Sack cloth and ashes? Beating of the breast? Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. What if repentance meant more than a return to a morally upright life, expressions of regret and remorse, or a 180-degree turnaround?
Repentance also means a change of heart – opening ourselves to a new way of seeing things, adopting a different perspective. Repentance means setting ego aside.
God called out to Moses and challenged him to think of himself as one who is called. Moses had to repent of his old image of himself – incapable and unworthy – in order to answer God’s call to bring the Israelites out of their misery.
Paul encouraged the church at Corinth to acknowledge their precarious position as a new body of believers , to turn away from their fears and to truly believe in God’s faithfulness at a frightening and uncertain time. He told them, “God is faithful and will not let you be tested beyond your strength.” – powerful words to hear what you are facing the unknown.
In Luke, the very fate of the fig tree lies in its ability to become fruitful. How often we need to be reminded of our potential – to repent of the sense of self that says, “I can’t.” “I am not worthy.” “I am not capable.”
True repentance involves a deep, internal transformation in our attitudes and desires. Repentance signifies a fundamental shift in our perspective and priorities towards a more authentic life.
Enter Saint Katharine Drexel.
Katharine Mary Drexel was born in 1858 into one of the first families of Philadelphia. Think vast wealth. Think Drexel and Morgan, later JP Morgan. Think Downton Abbey with real money. Saint Katharine’s family floated a $60 million loan to the US Treasury during the Civil War. Upon her father’s death she inherited $21 million which is nearly a billion dollars in today’s currency.
At first glance a description of Saint Katharine’s life would look something like this: Rich, white heiress – a woman of privilege – throws money at a problem.
In fact, Saint Katharine Drexel did use her vast wealth in ministry. But she also underwent an extraordinary personal and spiritual transformation from a pleasure-loving young woman of privilege during the Gilded Age to a woman passionately committed to aiding and uplifting the poor, the marginalized, the discounted. A change of heart if you will. She wasn’t interested only in funding solutions. She felt called to be in relationship with those she served.
Not only did Katharine feel called to religious life – a call she rigorously resisted and a call her extended family rejected – but she founded her own religious community because none of the religious orders of the day were engaged in the ministry to which she felt called. The order was called The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People – now The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
Over the course of her ministry Saint Katharine refused to accept the given and combatted racial prejudice. She fought the Ku Klux Klan as she traveled around the country establishing schools for African and Native American children. She believed that the genocide of our nation’s indigenous people and the abasement of African Americans would not cease until there was parity in educational opportunities. To that end she established over 60 schools, many of which served their local communities for decades.
Just to provide a little more context – During most of Saint Katharine’s ministry nearly 20 of our United States maintained laws that prohibited the teaching of African American children by white teachers. During this same period 15 of our United States made no financial provision for the education of Native American children on government-mandated reservations.
It was in this milieu that Katharine toiled. At a time when journeys to the Dakota Territory, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico were fraught with peril because of the government’s repressive policies, Saint Katharine and her Sisters persisted despite bigotry, distrust and threats of murder. The Sisters were sometimes referred to as N-Nuns.
Saint Katharine was not only a charismatic leader. She was also a businesswoman. It was common for her to purchase property under an assumed name. If her real name appeared on any official documents as the purchaser of real estate she would suddenly face multiple hurdles in an effort to prevent her from establishing schools for African American children. According to Katharine’s biographer, Cordelia Biddle, “They did not want the negroes instructed and to know more than their children, of whom 1/15 could read.”
But Saint Katharine’s biggest challenge was not the establishment of schools – which were largely funded by her own wealth – but their staffing. There were no teachers. It wasn’t until 1894 when the first Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament took their final vows and were sent out to teach that the schools finally began to be staffed.
Today two of the schools established by Saint Katharine Drexel remain and are thriving: one on the Navajo Reservation in AZ and the other in New Orleans.
Saint Katharine’s biographer states, “At the turn of the 19th century there were no schools on reservation land which made it impossible for Native Americans to succeed in a white man’s world. This kept the Navajo in a perpetual state of serfdom on largely uninhabitable terrain.”
The Treaty of 1886 mandated that Native children be educated between the ages of 6 and 16 in government-sanctioned schools. As many of you know, this ill-conceived plan meant taking children from their families and forcing them to assimilate. Cultural and spiritual scars from this experience remain with many tribal people to this day.
Saint Katharine had different ideas about education. Saint Michael Indian School in Arizona was founded by her in 1902 with an enrollment of 76 students. According to current school President, Dot Teso, St. Michael’s now serves 340 students, grades pre-K – 12th. The school is Navajo-led and it’s curriculum includes study of the history, culture, customs and language of the Navajo people. Some families drive 50 miles every day to bring their kids to the school.
Xavier University of LA was established by Katharine Drexel in 1915. Xavier is America’s only Catholic, HBCU and is nationally recognized in STEM education and health sciences. Xavier has produced more African American students who graduate from medical school than any other HBCU.
I learned from Sister Stephanie Henry, the current President of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, that Xavier is preparing to open it’s own medical school.
At the time of her death in 1955 at the age of 96, Saint Katharine had established 63 schools for African and Native American children along with 50 missions on tribal land in 16 states. The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament were 500 strong.
I want to take a moment to dispel the myth that sainthood = perfection.
From Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2022 we read, “In the saints we are not dealing with absolutes of perfection but human lives, in all their diversity, open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. Many a holy life, when carefully examined, will reveal flaws or the bias of a particular moment in history.”
Saint Katharine was, as we are, human. She was a perfectionist and helf herself and others to mercilessly high standards. And she had her critics. In her book, Katharine Drexel and the Sisters Who Shared Her Vision, author, Margaret McGuinness refers to Saint Katharine’s record on race as “complicated.” Did Saint Katharine and the Sisters enable racial segregation by following the policies of the Southern Bishops who did not integrate Catholic schools?
Likewise, it should be noted that, like other women’s religious orders of the day, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament did not welcome women of color into their community for the first 60 years of its existence.
We must be encouraged to realize that the saints, like us, are first and foremost, imperfect and remember Christ’s words to Saint Paul – My grace will be sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
Having said all of this about Saint Katharine Drexel and her commitment, her courage, her tireless efforts and boundless generosity, – these are not, I believe, the reasons why she was canonized in the year 2000 by Pope John Paul II.
Saint Katharine is considered blessed because she chose to look beyond what was, to bang the drum for parity and equality, to continually walk toward the need and to act on her belief that God values and loves everyone without ceasing. She is considered blessed because she chose to walk a path that was long, arduous, unknown, and dangerous. She chose to believe God just as Moses did when the voice from the burning bush said, “I will be with you.”
So I offer this brief meditation by Franciscan priest and author, Richard Rohr. He says,
We don’t come to God by doing it right.
Please believe me on this.
We come to God by doing it wrong.
Any guide of souls knows this to be true.
If we come to God by being perfect,
no one is going to come to God.
Our failures open our hearts of stone
and move our rigid mind space
toward understanding and patience.
It’s in doing it wrong, making mistakes,
being rejected and experiencing pain
that we are led to total reliance on God.
All I know at this point in my journey
is that God has let me do just about
everything wrong,
so I can fully experience how God
can do everything
so utterly right.
Saint Katharine Drexel, pray for us. Amen.
