November 13th is the feast day of St. Francesca Saverio Cabrini, usually just called Mother Cabrini. Mother Cabrini is the patron Saint of immigrants. I’m not going to go super in depth into her life, but she felt called by God to become a nun, and felt that it was her purpose to go to America to help the poor and oppressed.
One of the most remarkable aspects of her story is that she came to America as a mission. There’s a fairly strong bias among Americans to see America as the greatest country in the world. She did not. She knew fully well the horrors of poverty and discrimination that most Italians that had immigrated to America were facing, and was moved to leave her country to help those most in need.
When she came to this country, there was a feeling of disgust for most immigrants (Italians in particular), and most people did not even want to let them in the country, let alone help them. She took it upon herself to leave a fairly comfortable life in Italy, to come to America with six other women, to help these people. She named her order the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in honor of the Love that called her to serve.
Although she came to help Italian immigrants, her love and kindness quickly extended to the multitudes of individuals living in abject poverty. She managed to open orphanages, schools to teach literacy and English as a second language, as well as simple skills people could use to find work; she founded hospitals and medical centers, and offered medicine and care for free to those who could not afford it.
She took it upon herself to do these things, against popular opinion, because she knew that it was the right thing to do.
I think we need to look to the life of Mother Cabrini for our own times. These stories are not isolated events removed from our modern times. On a personal level, her story brings to mind my own family who immigrated to America from Italy.
On one side of my family, I’m descended from what today would be called “undocumented workers” or "illegal immigrants" who were hired and moved here by a private company, to work in the coal mines in Pennsylvania due partly to their skills of having worked in the sulfur mines in Sicily, but mostly because they were cheap labor, and they could be paid far less than American workers, these individuals, my family members, did not become citizens, yet lived the rest of their lives here and had children who were born Americans.
On the other side, my great grandfather was sent to America for asylum by his parents when he was 15 years old, so he wouldn’t be drafted into the increasingly nationalist army, while he did communicate with his family throughout his life, he never saw them in person again. If he came here today, aged 15, and without a parent, he would be in a cage.
I think of these things, and I see so many similar stories today: immigrants coming to work here for a better life, refugees fleeing war torn countries, sending their children away knowing very well they might never see them again, just in the hopes that they might survive.
These are the people that Mother Cabrini came to help; the time and people may have changed, but Mother Cabrini's mission remains the same. We need to consider being more like Mother Cabrini who opened her heart to be transformed by love; it allowed her to see all people as her brothers and sisters, in need of kindness and help.
"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."
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