Today's post is a little longer than usual...I wrote an article about why we honor
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Colorado.
I hope you enjoy!
(This is the Stone House, that Mother Cabrini planned, and ordered built)
(This is one of the Mysteries of the Rosary, facing westward from the Shrine in Golden)
(This is the path up to the Sacred Heart statue, in winter)
“Not
to the East but to the West”
Mother Cabrini in Colorado
by
Rosemary
McGuire Berry
St.
Frances Cabrini was born in 1850 in Italy, died in Chicago, and is buried in
New York. So why do we have a Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden, Colorado?
Francesca
Saverio Cabrini longed, from childhood, to be a missionary to China. A true
successor of her patron Saint Francis Xavier, she founded the Missionary
Sisters of the Sacred Heart. But in 1888, she met with Pope Leo XIII, and told
him her dream. He said, “Not to the East
but to the West. Go to the United States and there you will find a great field
for labor.”
She had struggled
to know what God willed for her life and her institute. Now she was sure. The
Holy Father had spoken. In 1889, she sailed for New York, setting foot on
American soil for the first time on March 31, 1889. This mighty little woman
(you can see her tiny habit and shoes in the museum in Golden) was destined to
cross the ocean by ship thirty times in her missionary work.
“Taking
for herself the motto of the Apostle, ‘I can do all things in Him Who
strengtheneth me,’ she opened schools, colleges, kindergartens, hospitals and
free clinics in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Seattle, Denver and
Philadelphia. She did not confine her work to the United States but extended it
to Nicaragua, South America, Spain, France, and England,” wrote the Most Rev.
Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, D.D., in his biographical sketch of the saint. She
also left her mark on New Jersey, Mississippi, California, and her homeland of
Italy. She was a powerhouse of endless energy, once asking someone, “Do you
think God only asks of us what is possible?”
In 1902, Bishop
Nicholas Matz of Denver asked St. Frances Xavier Cabrini to come to Colorado.
Many Italian immigrants were laboring in the mines and on the railroad, without
spiritual support. She wrote, “I had not the heart to refuse him the work of
the Institute when the greater glory of God was in question.” She sent two
Sisters to Denver in June, and came herself with four more on October 24, 1902.
So many souls to save! So many children to teach! So many poor to console and
inspire and uplift!
The first
school of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart here was at the corner of
Navajo Street and 34th Avenue and operated on a shoestring. Two
hundred children showed up the first day. Mother Cabrini wrote that the
Colorado children “surprised us by their brightness, docility, good nature and
lovely simplicity.”
The bishop
dedicated the new school on November 17th, only three and a half weeks after
the Sisters arrived. Mother Cabrini wrote of the ceremony, “The hall presented
a beautiful and consoling sight, which struck me as being the first-fruits of a
Mission which will develop under the fructifying patronage of the Most Sacred
Heart of Jesus.” In 1906, the school was moved to 1726 W. 34th
Avenue.
Mother
Cabrini loved the Rocky Mountains. She told one of the Sisters that she
remembered studying them in Geography as a child, and wishing to someday see
them! She wrote home to Italy, “If one were to see this scene painted, those
enormous masses that appear to hang by a thread, with the railway cars running
zig-zag between the folds of the mountains up to the highest peaks, and then
precipitating themselves down into the valleys below, and running through the
gorges called canyons, whose walls are inaccessible, and, because of their
marble-like colors and beautiful forms seem like an enchanted castle, one would
imagine the whole thing was simply a creation of the painter’s brush.”
She told
the Sisters in her letter that there was so much work to be done here in the
West, that she must stay longer than intended. “It is not time lost, however,
so accompany me with your prayers and sacrifices, so that all our works may
prosper to the greater glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. For if the whole
world is obliged to love and make reparation to this loving Heart, which beats
only with love for us, how much more so should the Missionary, who bears His
name…”
The
Sisters ministered to the Colorado miners in Pueblo, Central City, Cripple
Creek, Trinidad, and other places. The nuns descended in terrifying small cages
900 feet into the earth, to visit them at work. Mother Cabrini told the men,
“My good brothers, we come down into the bowels of the earth to you in the name
of your Creator, He Who pines for your filial love.”
Mother
Cabrini used the example of the hard-working Colorado miners to inspire her
nuns in Italy thus: “The Sisters, who are performing this Mission for the good
of others, find it also advantageous to themselves [to visit the laborers in
the mines], for they realize what the world does for temporal gain, and the
thought of this fills them with greater zeal to work for the glory of the
Sacred Heart and the diffusion of our Holy Religion. To work for the extension
of the Kingdom of God on this earth, there is no necessity to go in search of
veins of gold, for the smallest act sanctified by a pure intention, and in our
case by Holy Obedience and performed according to the spirit of our Institute,
is the purest gold, and deposited where thieves cannot steal.”
The
Sisters visited the Denver General Hospital to comfort and inspire the
patients, particularly the Italian-speaking ones. They visited the prisons in
Canon City. They ministered to the people of Colorado Springs. Mother Cabrini
wrote, “I want Colorado to be one of my best missions.”
With
wisdom, prudence, and Heavenly guidance, though against man’s advice, Mother
Cabrini bought a property on the outskirts of Denver for her orphanage. Many
children had been orphaned in mining accidents. In 1904, she opened Queen of
Heaven Orphanage for the first thirty orphans, at 4825 Federal Boulevard in
Denver. The bishop didn’t think it was a good location because it was so far
out of town, but Mother Cabrini loved the view and the space for orchards and
green fields. She also foresaw that the city would grow westward.
They began
with a frame house, but Mother Cabrini planned an impressive brick building
that was dedicated in 1918 and inaugurated in 1921. It housed as many as 317
children at a time.
One of
their first orphans was a baby they found in a poor miner’s hut, six months
old, all by herself. The Sisters cared for the baby for the day, waiting for
someone to come home. When the grimy, exhausted dad returned, he explained that
his wife had died in childbirth, and that he was doing the best he could to
take care of baby Giselle by himself. He mixed whiskey with her milk so that
she would sleep most of the day. The Sisters offered to take her to the
orphanage, and a few weeks later, the father died in a mining accident. The
little girl stayed with the Sisters for the rest of her life. She had been
affected by the alcohol in infancy, and so remained a simple, loving child of
God, who loved to visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament. She lived with the Sisters
until her death in 1978.
On August
7, 1909, Mother Cabrini and Mother Luigina Albertini, the orphanage superior,
drove a horse and buggy to Golden and bought land for a summer camp for her
girls. They got a good price for the land because of the poor water supply. The
deed shows a date of August 10, 1909. The following April, she bought
additional land, and in November 1912, she bought a third parcel of land,
making a total of 900 acres!
In
September 1912, Mother Cabrini miraculously found water for the Sisters and the
girls. One of the Sisters wrote, “Our Mother walked around as though looking
for something, then said, ‘Surely there has to be a spring here. Look for it
daughters and find it… I say a spring has to be here.’ She walked over to a large
red rock and touched it with her cane. She then said, ‘even here beneath this
rock there is true water, pure and good, for children to keep clean. Dig a
small hole, for beneath this rock is water fresh and light that all can drink,
a marvelous mineral water.’”
The water sprang
forth and can still be drunk from the spigots through which it now flows. A
Lourdes shrine was built over it, suggested by Monsignor Della Chioppa, who
visited the shrine in 1928 during the beatification process of Mother Cabrini.
He said that it was a “miracle of a Saint.” Cures have been reported here. A grateful parent built a crucifix at the base of the mountain. Clifford Bohannan donated it
in 1954 in thanksgiving for the cure of his son from polio, which he attributed
to the boy being bathed in the spring water from the shrine.
Mother
Cabrini also chose a spot for the Stone House, intended as a vacation cabin for
the orphans. She told the Sisters and girls to collect stones for this purpose.
She told them how she wanted it, and it was finished in 1914. It is now used as
a retreat house.
On
November 15, 1912, Mother Cabrini visited the property for the last time. They
climbed to the highest point of the land, where the 22-foot statue of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus now stands on an eleven-foot base. After they enjoyed a
picnic together, Mother Cabrini asked the Sisters and children to find white
stones, and with them, Mother Cabrini formed a heart, a cross, and a crown of
thorns. This beautiful marker can be still be seen at the foot of the Sacred
Heart statue, which was erected in 1954. Mother Ignatius Miceli, a successor of
Mother Cabrini at the Denver orphanage, writes, “She then spoke of the goodness
and beauty of God, of His great kindness, telling them ‘the Heart is a symbol
of the great love Jesus has for each of you.’ She then dedicated the mountain
to the Sacred Heart.”
The
Sisters’ exemplary work with children continued through the decades. Mother
Ignatius Miceli remembers, “At 2:00 am on a snowy morning [in 1958], Stapleton
Airport called and said they had a plane load of Cuban girls who had been put
on the plane at Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I accepted all of them and taught them
English. Their ages ranged from first graders to high school girls.”
In 1965,
the Highway Department decided they needed some of the land to build I-70.
Unfortunately, in 1967, all the orphans were moved to foster homes and lost the
shelter and guidance of the Sisters. That same year, the state bought the
property and a few years later, they tore down the magnificent building.
Mother
Cabrini, a little sickly immigrant lady from northern Italy, founded 67
schools, orphanages, and hospitals in her lifetime. In 1909, in Seattle,
Washington, she became an American citizen. Twenty-nine years after her death,
she became the first canonized American citizen saint.
Monsignor
Aristeo V. Simoni, Vice-Postulator of her canonization, wrote: “It would seem
that God wished to give the Catholics of America a saint typically American. If
Yanks are known throughout the world for getting things done efficiently and
with the utmost dispatch, then St. Frances Cabrini is indeed a typical
American. She accomplished wonderful things, surmounted obstacles that would baffle
ordinary persons.”
On Friday,
December 21st, 1917, sick from complications from malaria, she
pushed herself to make her usual hour of Adoration in front of the Blessed
Sacrament in Chicago. She spent the rest of the day helping the Sisters fill Christmas
candy bags for the 500 children at an Italian school, which she had bought with
her own money. She worked intensely, and repeatedly urged, “Hurry! Hurry!” Did
she know that this was to be her last project to help the children? The next
morning, she was worse, and around midday, her soul flew to Heaven. On the 100th
anniversary of her death last year, the governor of Colorado proclaimed Mother
Cabrini Day for the whole state.
Mother
Cabrini was beatified in 1938, and a Solemn High Mass was offered at the
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver by a prelate who knew her. In
1946, she was canonized, and the Archbishop offered a Solemn High Mass in the
Denver Cathedral. Fifty priests, many nuns, and eighty-two girls from the Queen
of Heaven orphanage joined the 1,500 people present. The first church in the
world to take the name of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was in Littleton,
Colorado. The first pilgrimage to Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden took place in
1947 with a group of 10,000 pilgrims.
The
saint wrote from Colorado in 1902, “The days fly, souls are being lost. Death
is approaching more quickly than we realize, and then the time for work is
over. Work, then, while you have time. Work with energy, and especially with
the spirit of sacrifice…This storms the Heart of Jesus, and draws from It, as
it were, the most precious graces for those souls who are the hardest and most
obstinate in resisting His love….Continue, my dear daughters, to procure the
greater glory of the Sacred Heart, in which I leave you, so that He may inflame
you with His Divine and Holy Love.”
Sources
for this article:
Travels of Mother Frances Xavier
Cabrini Foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (a collection of her letters), with
a biographical sketch by the Most Rev. Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, D.D.,
Apostolic Delegate to the United States, published by the Missionary Sisters of
the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 1944.
Mother Francesca Saverio Cabrini
Foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart by C.C. Martindale, S.J., Benziger
Brothers, 1931.
Too Small a World: The Life of
Francesca Cabrini
by Theodore Maynard, published by the St. Frances Cabrini Shrine in New York,
1945.
Francesca Cabrini: Without Staff or
Scrip by
Lucille Papin Borden, Macmillan Company, 1945.
The Saint and the Citizens by Sister Gabriel Quast, M.S.C.,
R.N., Archdiocese of Chicago, 1968.
Mother Cabrini by Sister Joan Mary, D.S.P.,
Apostolate of the Press, Daughters of St. Paul, 1952.
Cabrinian Colorado Missions by Mother Ignatius Miceli, M.S.C.,
D & K Printing, 1996.
Novena Prayers and Sketch of the
Life of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
by the Mother Cabrini League (no date)
Litany
to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini – FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY
Lord, have
mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ,
hear us. Christ, graciously hear us.
God the
Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.
God the
Son, Redeemer of the World, have mercy on us.
God the
Holy Ghost, have mercy on us.
Holy
Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.
Holy Mary,
pray for us.
Holy
Mother of God, pray for us.
Holy
Virgin of Virgins, pray for us.
Saint
Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.
Faithful
Servant of God, pray for us.
Missionary
of the Sacred Heart, pray for us.
Lover of
Jesus, pray for us.
Holy
Teacher, pray for us.
Guardian
of children’s innocence, pray for us.
Apostle of
youth, pray for us.
Seeker of
souls, pray for us.
Patroness
of Catholic Action, pray for us.
Hope of
the sick, pray for us.
Mother of
the poor, pray for us.
Mother of
orphans, pray for us.
Mother of
immigrants, pray for us.
Refuge of
the homeless, pray for us.
Comforter
of prisoners, pray for us.
Example of
obedience, pray for us.
Lover of
poverty, pray for us.
Angel of
purity, pray for us.
Exemplar
of humility, pray for us.
Mirror of
patience, pray for us.
Victim of
Divine Love, pray for us.
Consoler
in every human misery, pray for us.
Model of
devotion to the Vicar of Christ, pray for us.
Messenger
of Peace, pray for us.
Pilgrim of
Christ, pray for us.
Symbol of
unity among nations, pray for us.
Glory of
America, pray for us.
Benefactress
of humanity, pray for us.
Consolation
of those who invoke thee, pray for us.
Our
advocate with the Sacred Heart, pray for us.
Lamb of
God, who takest away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord!
Lamb of
God, who takest away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord!
Lamb of
God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us!
Pray for
us, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, that we may be worthy of the promises of
Christ.
Let us Pray: O Lord Jesus Christ,
Who having inflamed Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini with the fire of Thy Divine
Heart didst lead her through many nations to gain souls to Thee, and through
her didst enrich Thy Church with a new family of Virgins, grant that by her
intercession we may be adorned with the virtues of Thy Divine Heart and attain
to eternal happiness. Who livest and reignest world without end. Amen.
(from
a leaflet from the Mother Cabrini League, Chicago)
