Mother Cabrini: God’s mercy in action

Fortify me with the grace of Your Holy Spirit and give Your peace to my soul that I may be free from all needless anxiety and worry. Help me to desire always that which is pleasing and acceptable to You so that Your will may be my will.

By Maria V. Gallagher

I will never forget when I first learned about the woman popularly known as Mother Cabrini (feast day: Nov. 13).

My beloved father, the son of Italian immigrants, had just died, and I was beside myself with sorrow. I was writing an article about immigration from a Catholic perspective, and I stumbled upon Mother Cabrini’s incredible story. I learned that her feast day was Nov. 13 — the same day that my dad had passed away. I also discovered that a key part of her ministry had been performing acts of mercy for the Italians who had settled in New York City. 

Saint of the streets
As a result, in Mother Cabrini, I found a friend, a patroness, and someone to turn to in a moment of searing grief. As I had loved my father, so did this saint of the streets love the immigrants who had turned to her with outstretched hands and wounded hearts. 

Her own journey to the United States had been a curious one, since the Italian woman with a huge heart had had her sights set on China. Her childhood dream had been to serve as a missionary in the Far East, but a wise pontiff, Pope Leo XIII, advised her to head west. Her obedience to the Holy Father’s directive resulted in an astounding feat: the founding of more than five dozen facilities, including hospitals, schools, and homes for children.

Mother Cabrini began life as Maria Francesca Cabrini July 15, 1850, in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano in Lombardy, Italy. Educated by a religious order of sisters known as the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, she earned high marks and graduated with a certificate in teaching. 

Knowing that she wanted to dedicate her life to God, she applied to join a religious order but was denied entrance because of her medical problems.

Care for the poor
Still, she persisted and made her religious vows in 1877, when she assumed the habit and earned the name Mother Cabrini. She helped found the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for the poor. 

Yet, the woman who would come to be known as St. Frances Xavier Cabrini possessed a sense of adventure that led her to voyage to the U.S. in March of 1889. There, she and her ministry blossomed, eventually leading to outposts of mercy in not only New York, but Colorado and Illinois as well. 

In a prayer that she composed, which is quoted on Colorado’s Mother Cabrini Shrine website, we hear this remarkable woman’s devotion to God’s will: 

Fortify me with the grace of Your Holy Spirit and give Your peace to my soul that I may be free from all needless anxiety and worry. Help me to desire always that which is pleasing and acceptable to You so that Your will may be my will.

Merciful deeds
We can find some commonality between Mother Cabrini and that great Apostle of Mercy, St. Faustina. Both of these holy women knew the power of merciful deeds to transform hearts and save lives.

In St. Faustina’s Diary, we hear the Lord stressing the importance of those same corporal works of mercy that formed the basis of Mother Cabrini’s ministry:

"I demand from you deeds of mercy, which are to arise out of love for Me. You are to show mercy to your neighbors always and everywhere. You must not shrink from this or try to excuse or absolve yourself from it." (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 742)

Mother Cabrini was also a conduit of love for the poor and marginalized, embodying the type of love mentioned by Faustina in her Diary: 

"Great love can change small things into great ones, and it is only love which lends value to our actions." (Diary, 303)

By the time of her death in 1917, Mother Cabrini had spent more than three decades engaging in a labor of love for vulnerable populations in the U.S. A patron saint of immigrants, she serves as a model of mercy, demonstrating how to welcome the strangers in our midst. 

May we recognize, as Mother Cabrini did, the vast love that God has for us and, in turn, shower that love upon others. 

Mother Cabrini, pray for us!
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