Start Near

Friday After Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58: 1-9

Saint Katherine Drexel

The people complain

God is not noticing their fasting

Not noticing how they ‘afflict themselves’

But God retorts

It is on you

Your fasts are for yourselves

And in fact pain those around you

You just don’t get it!

Do you call this a fast,

A day acceptable to the Lord?

Let me set you straight

Does my fast:

Release

Untie

Set free

Cause sharing

Provide shelter for the other

Clothe

And…for some reason…the one that hit me today

And not to hide yourself from your kin?

Start near

Close to home

Nothing reeks more than

Looking to all as loving, kind, patient

…except to those most near

The best preparation

for loving the world at large,

and loving it duly,

and wisely,

is to cultivate an intimate friendship

and affection

towards those

Who are immediately about us.

-Cardinal John Henry Newman

And not to forget St Katherine today…a ‘bringer of the poor to her door’:

St Katharine Drexel (1858 - 1955) was born in Philadelphia to a rich banking family. In 1889, at the age of 33, she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, dedicated to mission work among Indians and black people. (A survey of the situation in the United States at this time described “250,000 Indians neglected, if not practically abandoned, and over nine million of negroes still struggling through the aftermath of slavery”). She spent her entire life and her entire fortune to this work, opening schools, founding a university, and funding many chapels, convents and monasteries. She died on 3 March 1955, by which time there were more than 500 Sisters teaching in 63 schools throughout the United States.