Ninety-nine years ago today, on December 22, 1917, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants, went to Heaven. It was her last and greatest journey.

Her sense of humor comes out in some of her letters during her earthly travels. After an arduous trip from Europe to the United States in September, 1894, she wrote: "I wanted to go to Heaven, but with one thing and another we have entered the New York Bay."

Her joy was not even lost when she became badly sunburned/windburned on the deck of a ship, and in May 1895, she wrote: "Yesterday, at mid-day, my eyes were almost closed by the swelling, and I had to stop writing. Today the swelling has greatly diminished, but there are white blisters on my forehead which give me the appearance of a leper. How strange and wonderful! No one here can tell me what it is, but it is consoling to abandon oneself to the most Adorable and most Loving Heart of Jesus..."

When things happen to us, do we abandon ourselves to the Heart of Jesus?