Dusty Feasts

Official feasts used to be an important part of the human community. People would gather together to remember something sacred, express their faith and hope for the future, and / or just be together formally, recognizing each other as being part of a shared community. Few things express a desire for shared companionship and social intimacy more than dining together. Sadly, the gathering together for feasting is increasingly a relic of the past – at least here in the West.

It need not be so! Today we will remember the ancient feasts.

The Feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

This feast is a Christian religious celebration of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, an Italian-American, Catholic nun. She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was a major support to her fellow Italian immigrants in the United States, and she was the first U.S. citizen ever canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. She is a patron saint of immigrants.

Who is St. Frances Xavier Cabrini?

Frances Xavier Cabrini MSC (Italian: Francesca Saverio Cabrini (birth name), July 15, 1850 – December 22, 1917), also known as Mother Cabrini, was an Italian-American, Catholic, religious sister (nun). She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a religious institute that was a major support to her fellow Italian immigrants in the United States. Her congregation provided education, health care, and other services to the poor.

Mother Cabrini became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1909. On July 7, 1946, Mother Cabrini became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized a saint by the Catholic Church. She had entered the United States via New York City, and is now the patron saint of immigrants.

Mother Cabrini is the first woman to have a paid state holiday named for her in the United States. The Colorado General Assembly passed the act (HB20-1031) that established Frances Xavier Cabrini Day as an annual, legal, state holiday on the first Monday of October. It repealed Columbus Day. It was passed on March 10, 2020, signed by the governor on March 20, 2020, effective September 14, 2020, and first celebrated statewide in Colorado on October 5, 2020. Her annual Catholic feast day is her beatification day anniversary, November 13 in the U.S., and on her death day anniversary of December 22 elsewhere around the world.

Early life

She was born Maria Francesca Cabrini on July 15, 1850, in Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, in the Lombard Province of Lodi, then part of the Austrian Empire. She was the youngest of the thirteen children of farmers Agostino Cabrini and Stella Oldini. Only four of the thirteen survived beyond adolescence.

Born two months early, she was small and weak as a child and remained in delicate health throughout her life. During her childhood, she visited an uncle, Don Luigi Oldini of Livraga, a priest who lived beside a swift canal. While there, she made little paper boats, dropped violets, called the flowers “missionaries”, and launched them to sail to India and China. At thirteen, Francesca attended a school run by the Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Five years later, she graduated cum laude with a teaching certificate.

After her parents died in 1870, she applied for admission to the Daughters of the Sacred Heart at Arluno. These sisters were her former teachers, but reluctantly, they told her she was too frail for their life. She became the headmistress of the House of Providence orphanage in Codogno, where she taught and drew a small community of women. Cabrini took religious vows in 1877 and added Xavier (Saverio) to her name to honor the Jesuit cofounder Francis Xavier, the patron saint of missionary service. She had planned, like Francis Xavier, to be a missionary in the Far East.

Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

In November 1880, Cabrini and seven other women who had taken religious vows with her founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC). She wrote the Rule and Constitutions of the religious institute, and she continued as its superior general until her death. The sisters took in orphans and foundlings, opened a day school to help pay expenses, started classes in needlework, and sold their fine embroidery to earn a little more money. The institute established seven homes and a free school and nursery in its first five years. Its good works brought Cabrini to the attention of Giovanni Scalabrini, Bishop of Piacenza, and of Pope Leo XIII.

Mission to United States

In September 1887, Cabrini went to seek the pope’s approval to establish missions in China. Instead, he urged that she go to the United States to help the Italian immigrants flooding into that nation, mostly in great poverty. “Not to the East, but to the West” was his advice.

Cabrini left for the United States, arriving in New York City on March 31, 1889, along with six other sisters. In New York she encountered disappointment and difficulties. Archbishop Michael Corrigan, who was not immediately supportive, found them housing at the convent of the Sisters of Charity. She obtained the archbishop’s permission to found the Sacred Heart Orphan Asylum in rural West Park, New York, later renamed Saint Cabrini Home.

Cabrini organized catechism and education classes for the Italian immigrants and provided for many orphans’ needs. She established schools and orphanages despite tremendous odds. She was as resourceful as she was prayerful, finding people who would donate what she needed in money, time, labor, and support. In New York City, she founded Columbus Hospital, which merged with Italian Hospital to become Cabrini Medical Center from 1973 until its closure in 2008.

In Chicago, Illinois, the sisters opened Columbus Hospital in Lincoln Park and Columbus Extension Hospital (later renamed Saint Cabrini Hospital) in the heart of the city’s Italian neighborhood on the Near West Side. Both hospitals eventually closed. Their foundress’s name lives on in Chicago’s Cabrini Street.

She founded 67 missionary institutions to serve the sick and poor, long before government agencies provided extensive social services – in New York; Chicago and Des Plaines, Illinois; Seattle; New Orleans; Denver and Golden, Colorado; Los Angeles; Philadelphia; and in countries throughout Latin America and Europe. In 1926, nine years after her death, the Missionary Sisters achieved Cabrini’s original goal of becoming missionaries to China.

Cabrini was naturalized as a United States citizen in 1909.

Death

Mother Cabrini died from chronic endocarditis at age 67 in Columbus Hospital in Chicago on December 22, 1917,

Her body was initially interred at what became Saint Cabrini Home, the orphanage she founded in West Park, Ulster County, New York.

Veneration

In 1933, her body was exhumed and divided as part of the process toward sainthood. At that time, her head was removed and is preserved in the chapel of the congregation’s international motherhouse in Rome. Her heart is preserved in Codogno, where she founded her missionary order. An arm bone is at her national shrine in Chicago. Most of the rest of her body is at her major shrine in New York.

Cabrini was beatified on November 13, 1938, by Pope Pius XI, and canonized on July 7, 1946, by Pope Pius XII. Her beatification miracle involved purportedly restoring the sight of a day-old baby who had been blinded by a 50% silver nitrate solution instead of the normal 1% solution in the child’s eyes. The child, named Peter Smith (1921–2002), would later be present at her beatification and become a priest. Her canonization miracle involved the purported healing of a terminally ill member of her congregation. When Cabrini was canonized, an estimated 120,000 people filled Chicago’s Soldier Field for a Mass of thanksgiving.

In the Roman Martyrology, her feast day is December 22, the anniversary of her death, the day ordinarily chosen as a saint’s feast day. Following the reforms in Pope John XXIII‘s Code of Rubrics, the United States since 1961 has celebrated Cabrini’s feast on November 13, the anniversary of her beatification, to avoid conflicting with the greater ferias of Advent.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII named Frances Xavier Cabrini as the patron saint of immigrants, recognizing her efforts on their behalf across the Americas in schools, orphanages, hospitals, and prisons.

Cabrini is also informally recognized as an effective intercessor for finding a parking space. As one priest explained: “She lived in New York City. She understands traffic.”

Cabrini was the subject of a recent biopic, with the trailer embedded below:

For a less dramatized and shorter biography, I also submit the following, which was made a couple of years ago to explain to the people of Colorado why she was being celebrated via a new state holiday:

What do you eat to celebrate St. Frances Xavier Cabrini?

Cabrini is Italian-American, and I thought she should be celebrated with a famous Italian-American dish. It’s certainly arguable, but there may be no more quintessentially American food than the Italian import, pizza. But as she is associated with New York, Chicago, Colorado, and other places in the U.S., which kind of pizza? I went with the style of the place where she first arrived.

New York Style Pizza

[Note: I recommend visiting the link above for helpful hints and suggestions]

Ingredients

• 22 1/2 ounces bread flour, plus more for dusting (638g; about 4 1/2 cups)
• 0.5 ounce granulated sugar (15g; about 1 1/2 tablespoons)
• 0.35 ounce kosher salt (10g; about 1 tablespoon)
• 0.35 ounce instant yeast (10g; about 2 teaspoons)
• 15 ounces lukewarm water (415g; about 1 3/4 cups) (see notes)
• 3 tablespoons (45ml) extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 batch New York style pizza sauce
• 1 pound grated full-fat dry mozzarella cheese (454g; about 4 cups), placed in freezer for at least 15 minutes

Directions

1. Combine flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in bowl of food processor. Pulse 3 to 4 times to incorporate. Add water and olive oil. Run food processor until mixture forms ball that rides around the bowl above the blade, about 15 seconds. Continue processing 15 seconds longer.
2. Transfer dough ball to lightly floured surface and knead once or twice by hand until smooth ball is formed. It should pass the windowpane test. Divide dough into three even portions and place each in a covered quart-sized deli container or in a zipper-lock freezer bag. Place in refrigerator and allow to rise at least 1 day, and up to 5.
3. At least two hours before baking, remove dough from refrigerator and shape into balls by gathering dough towards bottom and pinching shut. Flour well and place each dough ball in a separate medium mixing bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and allow to rise at warm room temperature until roughly doubled in volume.
4. One hour before baking, adjust oven rack with pizza stone to middle position and preheat oven to 500°F (260°C). Turn single dough ball out onto lightly floured surface. Gently press out dough into rough 8-inch circle, leaving outer inch higher than the rest. Gently stretch dough by draping over knuckles to form a 12- to 14-inch circle about 1/4-inch thick. Transfer to pizza peel.
5. Spread approximately 2/3 cup sauce evenly over surface of crust, leaving 1/2- to 1-inch border along edge. Evenly spread 1/3 of cheese over sauce. Slide pizza onto baking stone and bake until cheese is melted with some browned spots and crust is golden brown and puffed, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to cutting board, slice, and serve immediately. Repeat with remaining two dough balls, remaining sauce, and remaining cheese.

Special Equipment

Food processor, pizza peel

What is a prayer to say for the Feast Day of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini?

via aleteia.org

Prayer

God our Father,
who called Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini from Italy
to serve the immigrants of America,
by her example,
teach us to have concern for the stranger,
the sick, and all those in need,
and by her prayers help us to see Christ
in all the men and women we meet.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

(from The Roman Missal)

When is the Feast Day of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini celebrated?

The Feast day occurs annually on 13 November.

I hope all who celebrate have a wonderful day!