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.
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| Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini |
I do not recall ever reading a prayer for any other saint that invoked their intercession for the frustrated. Mother Cabrini is a good saint for the frustrated. Consider these frustrating times of her life.
1. Frances was the youngest of 13 children. No doubt she lived on hand-me-downs.
2. She wanted to become a missionary but to communities turned her down because of her poor health.
3. When she was 24, her Bishop and parish priest asked her to work with young girls at the House of Providence in another town. She, still wanting to become a religious, thought she would be there a short time, but she actually stayed for six years until the Bishop closed the institution.
4. While she was at this house, those in charge considered her an intruder and treated her with insults and disrespect. Here Frances learned the art of humility.
5. The Bishop told her, "You always wanted to be a missionary. I know of no such order for women. Why not begin one yourself?" This suggestion came to a quiet and backward young woman at a time when the anti-clericals were shutting down many religious works and suppressing entire religious orders. However, she agreed to look for a house.
6. Mother Cabrini's Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart began in an abandoned Franciscan monastery where she and seven other young women spent the first night with no light and said their prayers in the dark. Four beds, they dragged in clean piles of hay from the fields. On November 14, 1880 the first mass was offered in a room hastily converted into a chapel.
7. Money was often scarce as the Order grew with new recruits.
8. Mother Cabrini wanted to open a house in Rome, but she had no money.
9. She wanted an audience with the Pope, but was not able to get one. She was able to meet with the vicar who, when she said she had no money, told her to come back in a few years. She went to a nearby church and poured out her grief to the Lord in prayer. A few days later the Cardinal received her again and asked her if she wished to be obedient. When she agreed, he told her to open not one house but two in Rome.
10. Early in 1889, Pope Leo XIII called Mother Cabrini and told her that she would become a missionary. However, this was not to the East as she had wished but rather to America where she would help the poor Italian immigrants. She agreed to go with six other sisters.
11. Mother Cabrini was terrified of water, but she set sail.
12. Her first night in America was spent in the dingy boarding house where, exhausted from seasickness, the sisters set up all night in hard chairs for the beds were filthy and crawling with bugs.
13. When the sisters met with the Archbishop to be told where their house which had been promised to them was located, the Archbishop was embarrassed because the plans for the orphanage had fallen through and he had mailed a letter to Italy to tell the sisters not to come, but they had already left. He advised them to go back to Italy on the ship that had brought them over. Mother Cabrini told him no. The Holy Father had sent her here and she was going to stay.
14. She managed to open an orphanage and a school before she did return to Italy three months later.
15. Mother Cabrini, the woman terrified of water, crossed the ocean 25 times to make foundations in North, Central, and South America. These institutions helped the sick and the poor.
Mother Cabrini was able to endure these and other frustrations because of her peaceful interior prayer life. She never forgot that she was made for God alone, to do his will, and she wanted to be totally submissive to God. She wrote in her notes, "Tell me what You wish that I do and do with me as You will."
That attitude would help a great deal when we feel frustrated.
Mother Cabrini, pray for us and our frustrations.
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