We celebrate our country’s Independence Day on July 4th. We remember how in 1776, the Second Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence, effectively establishing the United States of America. Lest we forget, we also are called to remember and celebrate the people who formed the US into the country that it is today, including American Catholic saints.
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, S.C. (Considered founder of the Catholic School system in the US). At the age of 19, she fell in love and married the wealthy, handsome William Magee Seton. The two had a very happy marriage, raising five children. Ten years after, William's business and health both failed, and Elizabeth was left a poor widow with five children to raise alone. Her love for the Eucharist led her to convert to Catholicism and founded the first order of religious women in America, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. She was able to still raise her children, as well as live the life of a sister and found several schools. She became the co-founder of the first free Catholic School in America.
St. John Neumann, C.Ss.R. (Founded the first diocesan Catholic school system in US). He learned pretty quickly what it meant to follow God's will with your whole heart and soul. He was certain that he was called to be a priest, but when the time came for ordination, the bishop fell ill and the ordination was cancelled. It was never rescheduled, because there was an over-abundance of priests in Europe. Knowing he was meant to be a priest, John traveled from Bohemia to New York City to be ordained. He was one of only 36 priests, serving 200,000 Catholics: his ‘parish’ stretched from Lake Ontario throughout Pennsylvania. The schools he founded grew from only two to one hundred.
St. Katharine Drexel, S.B.S. (Founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People). When she asked Pope Leo XIII to send more missionaries to Wyoming, he asked her, "Why don't you become a missionary?" As a young, wealthy, educated girl from Philadelphia, this was hardly the expected lifestyle for young Katharine. But raised in a devout family with a deep sympathy for the poor, Katharine gave up everything to become a missionary to the Indians and African Americans. She founded schools in thirteen states for African Americans, forty mission centers and twentythree rural schools. She also established fifty missions for Indians in sixteen different states. She died at the age of ninety-six and was canonized in the year 2000.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, M.S.C. (Patron Saint of the Immigrants). She was born into a family of thirteen children. Due to health reasons, her first request to join a religious community was refused, but she was finally able to take her vows in 1877. Soon after being named prioress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, she was urged by Pope Leo XIII to become a missionary in the United States. In 35 years, she founded 6 institutions for the poor, the abandoned, the uneducated and the sick, and organized schools and adult education classes for formation in the Catholic Faith. She died of malaria in her own Columbus Hospital in Chicago in 1917. She was the first United States Citizen to be canonized.
We only have grateful hearts for the many men and women who made it possible for us to celebrate today. Happy 4th to all of you!