Second Reading from the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours for November 13, Memorial of Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin (celebrated in the dioceses of the United States)
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini was born in Lombardy, Italy, in 1850. At Codogno, Italy, in the diocese of Lodi, she founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in 1880. In 1887 she established many schools, hospitals and orphanages. With the encouragement of Pope Leo XIII, she set out for the United States in 1889, where, for the next twenty-eight years, she established many schools, hospitals and orphanages. Her missionary zeal also led her to South America where she founded schools in Argentina, Brazil and Nicaragua. Mother Cabrini died in Chicago on December 22, 1917, and on July 7, 1946 she became the first United States citizen to be canonized.
From a homily at the Canonization of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini by Pope Pius XII
(July 7, 1946)
A humble woman who lived a virtuous life
Inspired by the grace of God, we join the saints in honoring the holy virgin Frances Xavier Cabrini. She was a humble woman who became outstanding not because she was famous, or rich or powerful, but because she lived a virtuous life. From the tender years of her youth, she kept her innocence as white as a lily and preserved it carefully with the thorns of penitence; as the years progressed, she was moved by a certain instinct and a supernatural zeal to dedicate her whole life to the service and greater glory of God.
She welcomed delinquent youths into safe homes and taught them to live upright and holy lives. She consoled those who were in prison and recalled to them the hope of eternal life. She encouraged prisoners to reform themselves and to live honest lives.
She comforted the sick and the infirm in the hospitals and diligently cared for them. She extended a friendly and helping hand especially to immigrants and offered them necessary shelter and relief, for having left their homeland behind, they were wandering about in a foreign land with no place to turn for help. Because of their condition she saw that they were in danger of deserting the practice of Christian virtues and their Catholic faith.
Where did she acquire all that strength and the inexhaustible energy by which she was able to perform so many good works and to surmount so many difficulties involving material things, travel and men?
Undoubtedly she accomplished all this through the faith which was always so vibrant and alive in her heart; through the divine love which burned within her; and, finally, through constant prayer by which she was so closely united with God from whom she humbly asked and obtained whatever her human weakness could not obtain.
In the face of the endless cares and anxieties of life, she never let anything turn her aside from striving and aiming to please God and to work for his glory for which nothing, aided by God's grace, seemed too laborious, or difficult, or beyond human strength.
Responsory: Matthew 25:35, 40
I was hungry and you gave me food;
I was thirsty and you gave me drink;
I was homeless and you took me in.
--Now I tell you this:
When you did these things for the most neglected of my brothers,
you did them for me.
This is what I command:
Love one another as I have loved you.
--Now I tell you this:
When you did these things for the most neglected of my brothers,
you did them for me.
Prayer
God our Father,
you called Frances Xavier Cabrini from Italy
to serve the immigrants of America.
By her example teach us concern for the stranger,
the sick, and the frustrated.
By her prayers help us to see Christ
in all the men and women we meet.
Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Let us praise the Lord.
--And give him thanks.
Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
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