A reading of the holy gospel according to Luke. Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of god was coming, Jesus said to them, the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, lo, here it is, or there. For behold, the kingdom of god is in the midst of you. Then Jesus said to his disciples, the days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the son of man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you, lo, there or lo, here.
Do not go. Do not follow them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the son of man be in his day. But first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation, and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
There is today in the liturgy, the prayers of this mass, in my opinion, a striking unity when we think of them in terms of mother Cabrini. And no doubt they were selected with something like that in mind. The first, reading over her life briefly, she died, you know, 1917 in Chicago. The first thing that strikes me about her life is how very little that she, on her own initiative, wanted to do that she did it. First of all, as a young girl, she felt she had a vocation, which was not an unusual situation, and she went to a convent school in Italy and wanted to join that religious order.
And they turned her down because her health was not good enough. So she became a teacher for a while. And then beyond any without any of her own thinking about it, a bishop who had a was running an orphanage asked her to come and help him out. It was it's just that coincidental. So she went because he asked her to do it.
And the upshot of that was that finally she was admitted to a religious order at the age of 23, which is and that's extraordinary in Italy, and you're talking about the end of the nineteenth century. So at the very advanced age of 23 or so, she managed to become a religious in an order she hadn't even known about when she wanted to be a nun when she finished high school, as we would call it. So there, she thought she was pretty well settled. Then the next thing happened was that Leo the thirteenth had to suggest to her that it might be a good idea, that's not the way it was put, to come to The United States because at this time, there was a large influx of Italian immigrants. I have a suspicion it was about the time they they were building the reservoir over North Capitol Street.
It may have been later, that's just a suspicion in my own mind. But anyway, here this was never crossed her mind that anything like this would take place. But then so she's asked to do it. So with six of her religious, she comes across the Atlantic Ocean, the turn of the century, a little long before that, or it was years before it, and sets about working with the poor immigrant, Italian immigrants. She had no dream that that her life would take these to this direction.
And by the time she died in 1917, you know, she left a religious congregation which numbered over 1,500 nuns and about 70 religious houses. Now when you look back, that's that's an accomplishment for someone who had no idea at all that she was ever going to do anything like it. So once again, as with mother with with mother Seaton and with so many saints, and remember this does not exhaust the number who actually did it, these are the people who we happen to know about. Remember there's a vast multitude of the anonymous whose memories even are forgotten. So we let's keep that in mind when we think of these who have become in one way or another notorious and notable.
You had the same sort of thing with the mother Satan, how her life, it was absolutely unthinkable. You couldn't have imagined her life if you'd have seen that young girl up in New York, a society bell, and how it all wound up. And it isn't wound up yet, you know, because as long as you have effects from a cause, the cause is operating. Now when we come back to some of the prayers here, especially the, responsorial prayers, Notice how there we it's said how god takes care of the poor, the stranger, the frustrated. How does he do it?
How does he do it? And so inviting the danger of being repetitious, I wanna tell you again that to me the story that illustrates this whole thing. That at the end of the first world war in Belgium, there was a chapel completely destroyed. And the first thing after the armistice was that the villagers wanted to restore their little home chapel, the chapel they dearly loved. And so they rebuilt it, and in so doing as is not uncommon in Europe they're used to rebuilding after being bombed to bits, they tried to use as much of the old material as they could, even to retry and to reconstruct the statues.
And, of course, the one of the important statues of this little church was a statue of our savior, Jesus Christ. And they managed to find all the pieces which they carefully put together, but they couldn't find the hands. So on the day of the reconsecration of this little chapel, here was this statue beautifully reconstructed as so many artists over there know how to do it and had no hands. But there was a little plaque under the statue which said under the statue of our blessed savior. Under it was this little plaque that said, I have no other hands than yours.
That to me you see, God doesn't work in such mysterious and well, that's not the word I want. Wonderful ways, you know, where we see his hand outstretched lovingly. Have you ever seen god's hand outstretched lovingly? I've never seen his hand at all. I have seen human hands.
And when you think of this, a woman like mother Cabrini today, who, again and the Newman comes to mind too, only difference between them, the two is everything he tried to do failed, and apparently everything she tried to do succeeded. But anyway, here's where the hand of God reaches out. The hand belonged to a woman named Frances Xavier Cabrini because Christ has no other hands than ours. God has no other hands than ours. We're his instruments.
The hand isn't the person, you know, but the the hand without the person isn't the hand either. And so in this the the prayers of this mass and you take this epistle today Philemon, it's one of the most human epistles that Paul wrote in my opinion. He seems to and here, he seems to be a man like you wouldn't mind meeting and having a smoke and a drink with. He he is he's a man, he's human, he has affection, and notice how calculating he is. At the end of that epistle, says, look, he says, take care of this young man and if he owes you anything, charge it up to me, But don't forget how much you owe me.
It's a very read that thing over again, that reading today. It's extremely human, full of human affections, emotions, understanding, sympathy, loyalty, and I would say street wisdom. You put this all together on a day like this when here we are honoring you know, mother Cabrini became a USA citizen, although she was she was an Italian born in Italy. So she's one of us and in a way that she is one of us as a contemporary. She was a very contemporary woman.
She saw the need of schools and hospitals and see what's happened to our work there. But in her day, there was a it was seemed to be a need. Of course, now we don't think there is a need for these things. She saw the need and moved in precisely as mother Ezekiel did. They were the hands of the handless savior.
Now you'll say this is just fine. Where do I fit in? Did you notice that oration? That is one of the most mundane orations I think I've ever read for this mass of mother Cabrini. Read it over again.
I you don't have that in your miscellent, I guess. But it's so it's so down to earth for us. And it in that oration that we use at the opening of this mass, what does it do? We pray to God that we will be like this with the people we meet. Not with the people we don't meet.
It's it's it's the easiest thing in the world to love people we don't meet. It's the people we do meet that it's hard to love times. So we pray in the opening prayer of this mass in adoration, which as I say, it reads almost like a program from a symphony concert or something. But anyway, it's there and we pray that we may be like mother Cabrini with the people we meet. And there's nothing more simple or or or opposite of our need than that.
That we bring our religion, that we bring the hands of the handless savior into our lives, the actual reality of our daily life daily lives. You see, this is the whole thing of that opus day business. The work of the lord, not tomorrow in another field or in another job or or or in a situation in which I don't find myself, but where I would be so heroic and saintly if I were only there. The point is you ain't there, you're here. You're here.
And that prayer of the mass, that opening prayer we can make our own to and notice how that prayer uses the present tense as regards mother Caprini, that she does intercede for us, that we will dispense the love of Christ with the people we meet. In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.