St. Katharine Drexel was born into a wealthy Philadelphia family in 1858 and learned from her father that money was meant to be shared with others. After inheriting her wealth in 1885, she began building schools, providing food and clothing, and paying the salaries of Native American teachers. She then extended this charity to African Americans. In 1891, she founded the religious order of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, taking four vows: poverty, chastity, obedience, and the unique fourth: “to be a servant of [Native] and [Black] races.”
Over the course of her lifetime, which lasted almost 100 years, she donated over $21 million to establish churches, schools, and hospitals in the USA. She founded Xavier University in New Orleans—the only Catholic African American college in the country. She fought for civil rights, confronting the Ku Klux Klan and providing financial support to the NAACP.
She was known for investing her money and her life in what she truly believed in, and she was canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000. St. Katharine Drexel drew her spiritual strength from her devotion to the Eucharist. Through her adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, she discovered how to surrender herself totally to God. Part of her favorite prayer was, “Let the doing of your will each moment be a spiritual communion. In it, you will give me yourself, I will give you myself.” This is a beautiful prayer that we can all share.
Source: United States Catholic Catechism for Adults. US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC, 2020. p.151-2.
