Finding the Kingdom Like Vultures Find a Corpse, 32nd Friday (II), November 13, 2020

Yesterday the Church throughout the world pondered Jesus’ words that the kingdom of God is among us and why that is, because the King is here with us, he took on our flesh, he remains with us in the Sacraments, in grace, in the Church, in others; and we enter into that kingdom when we follow up our prayer “thy kingdom come!” with the complementary couplet “thy will be done!” We dwell within that kingdom when we’re with the King, when allow his will to be done within us, when he reigns. Today’s readings and memorials provide a fitting commentary on these truths.

In today’s Gospel, we see that even though Christ the King is present, some live in that kingdom and others don’t; others behave as if they are vincibly oblivious to it. Jesus contrasts Noah with those who perished in the flood, and Lot and those who perished in Sodom. Some were attentive and alert to God’s kingdom in their midst and some were not. Jesus encourages us to be similarly on guard. He says that when he comes we shouldn’t head down into the house to get our possessions or come in from the field; rather we should go straight to the King whose kingdom we should be seeking in action. He says that two will be sleeping, two will be cooking, but only one will be taken. This isn’t to be misinterpreted as if God’s going to do an arbitrary 50/50 split. Rather, it’s saying some in the very same circumstances will be ready because they’re connecting sleeping or cooking to God and his kingdom, and others won’t be ready, because all they think they’re doing is sleeping or cooking. When they ask where this will take place, Jesus uses an aphorism, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather,” to indicate that just as vultures find a corpse, so we should find the kingdom! He also gives the principle of living in the kingdom: “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it.” Those who are living in the kingdom are giving their life for God and others, so that his kingdom will come and his will be done. Those who try to preserve their own kingdom, to hallow their own name, to do their own will, will be those who lose their lives.

In today’s first reading, the only passage we have in the two year liturgical cycle of daily Mass readings from St. John’s Second Letter, the Apostle — who was present when Jesus said the words in today’s Gospel — makes plain what living in the kingdom is all about. He phrases it as “walking in the truth just as we were commanded by the Father,” following in the footsteps of the Incarnate Truth. He describes that involves not a new commandment but the one to “love one another” that Christ gave us, reminding us that to love is to “walk according to the commandments” because the commandments train us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He notes that there are “progressives” who do not “remain in the teaching of the Christ.” They do not remain, he says, in the Father and the Son and in the kingdom of God. Parallel to the upshot of Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel, he encourages them to lose their lives so as to save them: “Look to yourselves that you do not lose what we worked for but may receive a full recompense.”

Someone who showed us how to live fully in the kingdom, to walk in the truth, and to love others, is the spiritual giant the Church celebrates today, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who lived and worked for part of her life here in New York and is buried here in New York. She was born in 1850 near the Italian city of Lodi. From her earliest days, she had a deep love for God and a deep desire to spread love of him as a missionary, announcing his kingdom and helping people to enter it like vultures fly to a dead animal. The youngest of 13 children, her family would read each night from the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith and her young heart became inflamed. She used to make paper boats, fill them with flowers symbolizing the flourishing life of missionaries, and float them down the river, hoping that they would reach China. After the death of both of her parents when she was 18, she applied to enter various religious communities —including those who ran the school from which she graduated — but was refused because her health was poor. What an irony that she would work so much harder than likely many of those communities combined in spreading the faith! Eventually her parish priest, who appreciated her piety, zeal and organizational ability, asked her to help save a mismanaged orphanage. She assented and did all she could, forming around her a community of women to assist in the work of loving these orphans into the kingdom, but after three years of hard work the charitable institution was not able to be resuscitated. It was through that failure, however, that Frances’ life-long aspiration was able to be fulfilled. Her bishop summoned her and said, “I know you want to be a missionary. Now is the time. I don’t know any institute of missionary sisters, so found one yourself.” And with the group of seven women who had collaborated with her at the orphanage, she did: the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, erected to seek the Christian education of girls. It was suggested to her by many that her new community should head to the United States to work among the Italian immigrants. In the 1880s, there were 50,000 Italians in New York City alone, but fewer the 1,200 had ever been to a Mass or had learned the basic elements of Christian doctrine. They didn’t know how to make the Sign of the Cross, not to mention how to go from created things to the Kingdom so that they were always ready when the Lord would come. Ten of the 12 priests working among them had been kicked out of their Italian dioceses for problems; they had similar issues in recognizing God even among the sacred! Archbishop Corrigan of New York wrote her a formal letter asking her assistance, but at first she wouldn’t hear of it. She had set her heart on evangelizing China. But one night she had a powerful dream that induced her to consult Pope Leo XIII himself. The holy and wise pontiff, after hearing of the dream and her discernment, told her, in words that would change the history of Catholicism in America, “Not to the East, but to the West.” With six of her sisters, she set off for New York in 1889. When they arrived, a poor and humbling reception awaited them. They had been asked initially to organize an Italian orphanage and elementary school, but during their voyage, the benefactress underwriting the institutions had reneged on her commitments. There was no place for them or the orphans to live and no building for them to hold classes. Archbishop Corrigan told Mother Cabrini it was probably best for her and her sisters to return to Italy. Despite her disappointment at the chaos she found in New York, this tiny, strongly-accented Lombardian replied with a determination that ever after impressed the prelate, “No. The pope sent me here, and here I must stay.” From that point forward, Mother took some matters into her own hands. She went to see the benefactress to persuade her to change her mind, brought about her reconciliation with the archbishop, founded a house for the sisters and successfully began the orphanage. She began to receive vocations to her community almost immediately and that allowed her community’s apostolate to spread far and wide. She soon began to operate a hospital in New York and several institutions in New Orleans, where the integration of Italians was going particularly poorly. Requests for her help were coming from all over the world, and she traveled with sisters to open up homes, schools, hospitals and orphanages in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, France and England. She also founded institutions in most American cities where there was a heavy concentration of Italian immigrants. By 1907, when the constitutions of her community were finally approved — 18 years after the founding! — there were more than a thousand sisters working in over fifty institutions in eight countries. She died ten years later at the age of 67 while visiting her community in Chicago. In 1946, she became the first American citizen to be canonized a saint. Her future canonization had been foretold by Pope Leo XIII fifty years before when, asked about her, he replied, “Mother Cabrini is a woman of fine understanding and great holiness. She is a saint.” Mother Cabrini’s zeal for the faith and her sanctity were seen in her willingness to put out into the deep waters and lower her nets for a catch for Christ all over the globe. As a little girl, she had fallen into a river and almost drowned. Despite her fear of water from that point forward, she spent much of her adult life aboard ship sailing across rough seas — 30 cross Atlantic trips — or over rivers to open schools for the fish she and her community would catch in those nets. She models for us the courage and creativity needed to see and spread the faith and to enter the kingdom in such a way that they would be ready, like her, to be taken by the Lord when he came, since she had always been taken by him.

Today as we come to Mass on her feast day, to welcome the King within us and to ask for the grace always to remain aware of him and consciously in communion with him so that we will always dwell in his kingdom. We also come to pray that we and others might enter into the eternal fulfillment of that kingdom. The Kingdom of God and the King is at hand, and we ask him, reigning in the Eucharist, for a double portion of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini’s spirit so that, like her, we may love one another, walking according to the truth in the commandments, losing our life, and so serving others so that when the Lord comes he may not take one of us and leave the other behind, but thanks to our love, take us all!