On November 13, the universal Church honors St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, an Italian missionary who spent much of her life working with Italian immigrants in the United States. Mother Cabrini, who had a deathly fear of water and drowning, crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than 30 times in service of the Church and the people she was serving.

St. Frances Cabrini, from a young age, longed to be a missionary in China, but God had other plans for her. Orphaned in Italy before she was 18, she joined the Sisters of the Sacred Heart and took on the name “Xavier” in honor of St. Francis Xavier, the great missionary to the Orient.

At the advice of Pope Leo XIII, who told her “Not to the East, but to the West,” she focused her missionary efforts on the United States. Accepting Archbishop Corrigan of New York’s invitation, she came to America and spent nearly 30 years traveling back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean as well as around the United States setting up orphanages, hospitals, convents, and schools for the often marginalized Italian immigrants.

Eventually, St. Frances became a naturalized U.S. citizen. She died in 1917 and was canonized in 1946, just before a new wave of immigrants began to arrive in the U.S.

St. Frances Cabrini is the patron of immigrants.

REFLECTION FOR THE DAY

With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments. Psalm 119:10

Years ago, I made a retreat at a Trappist monastery and heard something there I have never forgotten. One evening, a monk gave a short meditation in which he said with great conviction, “God is interested in you!” I had never heard this phrase used before, and it struck me very deeply. His words gave me a new insight into God’s love that remains with me to this day. If God is interested in us, then every part of our life is important to God. And because God’s divine energy is infinite, God’s interest in us does not come and go. It is always there for us. It makes sense, then, to seek God with all our heart, to thank God with deep gratitude for God’s gifts and to ask God’s help when we are in darkness and pain. With all our heart, we seek that divine friendship that never fails because God’s interest in us never dies.