s was expressed in the union of adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament with active service for the good of others, giving of herself and everything she possessed.
“The spirit of the Eucharist consists in the donation of one’s own being,” she wrote. In order to point out the central nucleus of the charism of the congregation she founded, she wrote to her Sisters, “Get up after receiving Holy Communion and go find Him in the people. Everything you do for the people, you do for Him.”
On February 12, 1891, Sister Mary Katharine Drexel was professed as the first Sister of the new missionary congregation, The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
Over the next 42 years, Mother Katharine made many missionary journeys, established many missions, schools and convents and made many visitations to supervise them. She traveled by train, stagecoach, boat and car from one end of the country to the other in a flurry of apostolic activity. In most cases in the early days of her missions, Mother herself went to help the mission get set up and welcomed the sisters when they arrived. She had to deal with architects, contractors, lawyers and local church authorities. She had to be familiar with all of the details of the mission and plan its implementation. She also helped to clean and furnish the buildings. It took all of her talents in cooperation with God’s graces to do what seemed the impossible.
Mother believed that the best help for African-Americans and Indians was a Christian education that taught the whole person, mind and spirit. She could not change a racist society but she did what she could do within its limitations. She taught the victims of discrimination that they were children of God, equal in dignity to all. That education entered into their homes and later into society.
Discrimination, racism, and segregation through so-called “separate but equal” public facilities remained as the law of the land of the United States until the Supreme Court reversed itself in 1954 in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Finally, after 335 years of living in the United States, racial discrimination against African-Americans was declared illegal. Mother Katharine’s schools, teachings and example helped to lead the way to de-segregation and the Civil Rights Movement that followed it.
The Contemplative Life
In the fall of 1935, after a series of visitations to her missions, Mother Katharine suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage in St. Louis. She was advised to change her lifestyle, end her visitations and curtail her activities. With great reluctance, she agreed and returned to the Motherhouse in Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania. She said, “Nobody is necessary for God’s work. God can do the work without any of His creatures.” Her sister Louise wrote, “Truly the zeal of God’s house has consumed Mother. It is well nigh impossible in the span of our life to cover such a vast extent of ground and influence so many lives.”
Mother was confined for her last 20 years to two rooms on the second floor of the Motherhouse. She lived a life of prayer, penance and writing in her wheelchair. She prayed at daily Mass and daily two complete Rosaries of 30 mysteries, many Stations of the Cross, hours of meditation and countless litanies and ejaculations. Her wheelchair and writing evidenced her penitential poverty. The wheelchair was a makeshift thing consisting of a pupil’s desk fastened to wheels. She wrote letters giving guidelines for her sisters on scraps of paper with pencils that she sharpened down to the erasers. By God’s providence, Mother Katharine had become the contemplative nun that she always wanted to be.
On the morning of March 3, 1955, Mother Katherine suddenly opened her eyes from her bed, looked straight ahead, closed them again, gave a sigh and breathed her last at the age of 96.
Mother Katharine’s friend, Helen Grace Smith, stood by her coffin and said, “Her love of personal poverty made her oblivious to comfort of any kind. She went long distances, in all kinds of conveyances, and often walking when there was no other way, and she 