A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Our lord it's not the right one. Jesus said to his disciples, as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the son of man. They ate and drank. They took husbands and wives and married right up to the day that Noah entered the ark.
And when the flood came, it destroyed them all. It was much the same of the days of Lot. They ate and drank. They bought. They sold.
They carried on their business. They built and they planted. But on the day that Lot left Sodom, fire and brimstone rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be like that on the day that the son of man is revealed. On that day, if a man is on the rooftop and his belongings are in the house, He should not come down to get them, neither should the man in the field return home.
Remember Lot's wife. Whoever tries to spare his life will lose it. Whoever seems to forfeit it will keep it. I tell you, on that night, there will be two men in one bed. One will be taken, the other left.
Two women will be grinding grain together. One will be taken, the other left. And then they asked him, the disciples asked him, where, lord? And he answered, wherever the carcass is, there will the vultures be. And this is the gospel of the lord.
You can easily see why we have that today. We're coming to the end of the liturgical year, and the theme gets stronger all the time about the end of the world, about our the day of reckoning for all of us. But I I wanna talk to speak a few words about second to mother Seaton, mother Cabrini, mother Frances Xavier Cabrini of New York. But that's not where she was born. That's where she flourished.
She came out of Lumberty, was born as the thirteenth child. They had small families in those days, you understand. She was born in 1850 in Lumberty, the thirteenth of 13 children, children, the the last last one. One. Now the one thing I have stressed, I do it every year.
I welcome. I love the opportunity to talk about mother Seaton because even the the sparsest recollection you have of that good woman's life, the more you're convinced of the hand of god running the show. He is the boss man. Now most I would say almost always, when we're faced with a situation, we we don't understand it. We don't see why it's happened.
We think it's the end of the earth, the end of the world, above all my end. And yet yet within a few years, when you look back, the plan is there as clear as day. You know the story of mother. See, let's talk about mother Caprini this morning. They both came from of course, as you know, mother Caprini came from Lombardy in Italy.
And then at the insistence of Leo the thirteenth in 1889, she came over to New York with about six nuns, and that's how she started. And then she spent most of her life in the her headquarters were in New York City, although she died in Chicago in 1917. Now here's the from the as a very young girl, all she wanted to be was a missionary to China. It's all she wanted to do. The same thing with Saint Therese of Lisieux.
All she wanted to do was to go to China. She wound up as a contemplative Carmelite in her own own her in her own little town. She didn't even get out of Leeds yet. She it's just laughable. So here is mother Capri, the thirteenth child in in the family.
Her teacher, when she went to primary school, was her own sister. That's a that's a joy of having 12 siblings ahead of you. You got to weigh pay for it. What happened to this little kid? Well, well, she wasn't so young.
She got smallpox at the age of 22. In those days, that was a that was a terrible thing for a beautiful young woman. So the order she wanted to join wouldn't take her. So then at the at the well, at the suggestion and maybe the insistence of a of a priest that she knew, where did she go? She went to work in an orphanage just as a laywoman.
She had she had been teaching school, but he said you can do better work among those poor little kids in the orphanage. So she went to the orphanage just to work there for the children. And then the orphanage is closed up, put out of existence. So she wasn't even settled there. So then the bishop appoints her priors of an of a new foundation, missionary sisters of the sacred heart.
She had no idea being a mission missionary of the sacred heart, but she was practically shoved into it. Not literally, but she just followed the way that was being indicated by people in authority of the church. And then she's not settled there because then Leo the thirteenth comes along in '89. That's about the time Catholic u was founded. And what does he do?
He said, we need somebody to go over to New York to to set to help our the large number of Italians who were coming over at that time. That's '89. Industrial revolution, railroad systems, everything flourishing. They needed a lot of cheap labor. We had it right over on North Capitol Street in that reservoir over there.
So she said yes. She didn't wanna go. She wanted to stay with her family. She wanted to stay with the work she was doing. So with six done, she comes to New York in '89.
She crossed the Atlantic 30 times in thirty five years. And that was it wasn't you didn't cross the Atlantic in July very often in those days. It was a rugged thing. She crossed the ocean 30 times. When she died in 07/1917, this woman left 67 convents of the missionaries of the Sacred Heart with over 1,500 nuns.
And that's not all. I'm not going to rehearse all the hospitals, the orphanages, the schools, that she founded in South America and Central America and in The United States. It's absolutely a fantastic story. But if you read the lives of these people, they their lives generally are fantastic. And what do I mean by fantastic?
I'll tell you what I mean. They are lives which in the beginning of the people's careers could not be imagined, couldn't even be guessed at, couldn't be imagined. When this little girl, when she even in her in her teens, when she wanted to be a missionary to China, that's all she wanted to be. She winds up in New York, which is considerable away from China. Instead of working with Ophegus, she works with Italian immigrants.
And here's it's just amazing. Schools, hospitals, orphanages. But in addition to that, she always insisted on establishing centers for Christian doctrine, d o c t r I n e, doctrine. Not what I think, not what I like, not what I'm comfortable with, but what the the doctrine of the holy Roman Catholic church passed on tradition. That's what she aimed to do.
She had classes and this is in the this is in the turn of the century. She's having classes for adults because a lot of the a lot of the people who needed her help most were adults. It's just and and she's she died in 17, 67 years old. That is the lady we are commemorating today. Now the point is that we talk about mother's seat, when we talk about smetha Gabrini, when we talk about Albertus Magnus that we will have Sunday, when we talk about Aquinas, when we talk about Saint Augustine of Hippo, when we talk about Athanasius, They are not past tense.
They are present tense. They are as much of the church living and viable as we are the church, probably much more so. Much more so. They are our companions in arms. We are the soldiers in the trenches or whatever figure you speak.
We're we're out there in the Sahara or up there in Saudi Arabia. We are the we are the soldiers in the battle today. We are fighting, trying to fight the good fight. They are the church triumphant. But we're united as one in the body of Christ along with the church suffering, which we think so much of during October.
We are one. We are the body of Christ, the mystical body of Christ. We're all in this together. And it should be our one concern that these companions we're surrounded by, the the people in purgatory, the saints of triumphant, that's our company that we try day in and day out to be worthy of them. And if there's any single lesson that we can take to heart and live daily, I mean daily and hourly, is that god is the boss.
We are here as his creatures, and the best we can do is say not my will, but thine be done. Hallelujah. Praise god. In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.