Violets and Paper Boats

 “Don’t look back, lengthen your stride, and press toward the goal." ~ Philippians 3:13-14

The youngest of 13, Maria entered the world in 1850, nine weeks prematurely. Born to  Italian farmers, she’d remain small, frail, and mostly in ill health throughout her life.

Her Dad read to her from a book of missionary stories, which piqued Maria's curiosity. From an impressionable age, her dolls became nuns and she dreamt of joining a religious order, serving God, and becoming a missionary herself.

Her Uncle Luigi, a Catholic priest, lived near a river where she launched small paper boats to “far-off places like India and China.” Into each, Maria placed violets, imagining the tiny purple flowers were missionaries.

Violets were an interesting choice. Their fragrance stimulates our sense receptors with a sweet, but fleeting odor. Humans can’t register the violets’ s aroma for more than a few minutes before our olfactory receptors ignore them. They’ll return later as fragrant as before.

Despite her deep faith and passion, 3 different Catholic religious orders rejected her application due to her ongoing health issues, including the “Daughters of the Sacred Heart,” who had taught and mentored her. She sailed past that obstacle by taking a headmistress position at a local orphanage.

Eventually, Maria’s work ethic, ambition, and ingenuity impressed Pope Leo XIII. He allowed her to make the three sacred promises (poverty, chastity, and obedience) necessary to become a nun. She petitioned the Pontiff for permission to float on to China, as her youthful violets had done, and evangelize the people there.

Instead of China, the Pope sent her to America, to nurture the growing population of impoverished Italians flooding into the States. The once-frail violet sailed on a wooden ship, not of paper; west rather than east.

In 1889, Mother Frances Cabrini, the daughter of Italian farmers, arrived in NYC with six members of the Order she’d formed nine years earlier, the “Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

The violet’s here-then-gone phenomena describe Mother Cabrini’s selfless works. She moved on to Chicago, then Seattle, New Orleans, and Denver. She arrived in one spot, founded hospitals and schools, then left, only to reappear in another city, working just as diligently.

She founded 67 institutions to serve the sick and poor, rallied community support, and showed a knack for leading staff. She cared for people’s physical and spiritual needs with an astonishing energy and tenacity that energized donors.

Then, like the scent of the violet, she left this world after traveling tirelessly for 28 years, setting up schools, hospitals, orphanages, and novitiates. Just like the molecules of a violet’s scent that lingers in our olfactory senses, Mother Cabrini, the Patron Saint of Immigrants, still works for us through her intercession.

Though she had been born in Italy, that citizenship would earn her the title of the first American saint in 1946 by Pope Pius XII.

“Sweet Jesus, help me! I surrender myself totally to you, to serve you faithfully and to attract many souls to Your holy love.” Amen (St. Frances Xavier Cabrini)