Racial Justice: Lessons from Saint Katharine Drexel
If we wish to serve God and love our neighbor well, we must manifest our joy in the service we render to him and them. Let us open wide our hearts. It is joy which invites us. Press forward and fear nothing. — St. Katharine Drexel
March 3 is the feast day of one of my absolute favorite saints: Katharine Drexel. Kathrine was born in 1858 to wealthy parents, who taught her the importance of both private spirituality and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. However, by 1885, both her father and her stepmother had passed, leaving St. Katharine with a large personal fortune. While on a trip to the Western United States, St. Katharine witnessed the incredible poverty and suffering of the Indigenous communities living on reservations and she became thoroughly determined to help them. She used her wealth to fund schools and provide necessities for those in need, as well as finding priests to minister to them.
In 1887, St. Katharine had an audience with Pope Leo XIII, hoping to convince him to send missionaries to help with her schools. Much to her dismay, the Pope told her that she should be their missionary. She broke down in tears, knowing that what she heard was God’s voice. After conversation with her spiritual director, she entered a religious order in Pittsburgh, and once she had completed her novitiate, she founded her own order: the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, whose mission would be to care for the Indians and Blacks whom she found in great need. St. Katharine spent the rest of her life in service, continuing to found schools, the most notable of which is Xavier University, the United States’ only Catholic historically-Black college or university (a local connection: St. Katharine helped to fund St. Benedict the Moor School in St. Augustine, FL). Beyond the personal charity of her order, Katharine also sought systemic change. She was a vocal supporter of civil rights legislation and anti-lynching laws, often fighting tooth-and-nail to get around Jim Crow legislation to further her mission. Following a long life of prayer and service, St. Katharine died at age 96 in 1955, was beatified in 1988, and canonized in 2000 as the first American-born saint.
As one might suppose, St. Katharine is the patron saint of racial justice, something of critical importance in our present day, but also too often of conflict and frustration. She is a wonderful model for each of us, and I want to emphasize three points in particular. In the first of these, and perhaps most importantly, she reminds us of the fact that racism is not simply a political issue or a social one (though it is both), but first a theological one. The U.S. Bishops’ letter Open Wide Our Hearts, titled appropriately taken from St. Katharine’s words quoted above, gives us a succinct summary of the evil of racism:
Racism occurs because a person ignores the fundamental truth that, because all humans share a common origin, they are all brothers and sisters, all equally made in the image of God.
As Christians, our above-all duty is to love as Christ loves, seeing the imprint of God in each person. Like abortion and euthanasia, racism is an issue of life and human dignity and a violation of justice, and also like these two, it is intrinsically wrong — evil in itself, no qualifiers needed. There can be no justification for racism both personal and institutional, which many have, with good reason, called America’s “original sin.” Its long legacy persists today across many facets of American society, the example par excellence of the Catechism’s notion of social sin, an ingrained injustice as a result of personal sin, through which subsequent sin becomes easier. In everything we do, we are compelled by Jesus to seek the path of love, to do good and to avoid evil — racism and prejudice are no different.
Secondly, at the heart of St. Katharine’s life and work was her willingness to listen, both to the call of God and to the suffering of those around her. As we look out at the world today, so much of the violence and destruction as a result of racial injustice comes from people who believe that the truth they have to speak will not be heard any other way, who feel robbed of their very dignity and personhood. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in 1967,
Let me say as I’ve always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. … But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.
(As an aside, one of my biggest pet peeves is the misrepresentation of Reverend Dr. King, whether by ignoring the deep theological basis for his activism or by whitewashing his legacy into something all people can feel unchallenged by — reading his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is one way to get past both of these errors.) While violence of any kind is always supremely destructive — at the core of the Gospel is the radical message of peace and nonviolence — it does not entirely destroy the truth it so easily conceals. So many of our Black, Indigenous, Latino, Middle Eastern, and Asian brothers and sisters have been subject to various forms of prejudice and discrimination. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who is Black, recently shared his own experiences in a TV interview. Central to the Church’s teaching is the Preferential Option for the Poor and Vulnerable —because Jesus who suffered on the Cross was poor and on the margins of society, we most see the face of Jesus in those with us who are also poor and on the margins, and we are commanded by our faith to care for them. We must let the suffering of others touch us and move us to compassion, which quite literally means “to suffer with.” It is our responsibility to do as St. Katharine does: recognize others in their suffering, listen to them, and walk with them as Jesus does.
Finally, St. Katharine is the perfect example of the “two feet” of Catholic Social Teaching, charitable works and social justice. In her ministry, she directly cared for people by the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, most notably in her work for education, but she also sought to work for broader change in a society that persistently valued some lives less than others. These same challenges persist today, as not everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. St. Katharine’s work is a lesson to all of us — societal change is possible, but only by first beginning on the ground in personal service, starting by transforming our hearts in prayer. Reversed, we learn that transformed hearts are a beginning, but are not enough. Change must also take place in the way we organize our communities, rooted firmly in the love of Jesus. Together, with God’s help, we can make a real and lasting impact on the lives of others.
A clean heart create for me, God;
renew within me a steadfast spirit — Psalm 51:12
As the center of our Lenten observance is the call to renewal, to continual conversion and transformation of heart. In the coming weeks, may we all allow the grace of God to grow in our hearts, to open our eyes to the suffering of Christ among us, and to challenge us in loving as Jesus loves — until his last breath.
