Mother Katharine Drexel

by Cheryl C. D. Hughes

  The End for which God made us. What was that end? That I might know & serve my God, my Creator & Maker here on earth and afterwards see Him & enjoy Him forever in Heaven, I was therefore not created to shine in society, to enjoy myself, to do my own will, to follow my own inclinations, to be loved by creatures. Away, away with such thoughts, annihilate them, drive them, drive them not only now, but forever from your mind, O my soul. To know, love and serve God, that is your immediate end, that is why you exist. I must, then, strive year by year, month by month, week by week, day by day, hour by hour, second by second to know, to love, to serve God more & more. “Amplius et amplius” [more and more] God Himself will be my teacher in this knowledge.20

  Indeed, she calls self-love one’s greatest enemy: “To die to self-love that I may live in God alone is the great business of Spiritual Life.”21 As self grows in importance, the love of God and fellow man decreases. The opposite is equally true; therefore, she exhorted her sisters, whom she looked upon as both sisters and spiritual daughters, “Arise [from Holy Communion] and go out of yourselves, empty yourselves of all self — all self-seeking. There should not be an interest for you but for Jesus, and the interests of Jesus, and Jesus is Savior and comes little and emptied of Self to save that which is lost. Help him.”22 Katharine practiced kenosis in many small ways common to Christians throughout the ages; she was humble and self-sacrificing, and she fasted and prayed.

  She also practiced kenosis in a very radical, indeed, shocking way. She indulged in extreme mortification of her flesh. Mother M. Mercedes, SBS, the second superior of the order and one of the original three sisters to join with Katharine in the Mercy Convent, wrote in her memoirs of a disturbing discovery she made as a young novice.

  Reverend Mother always impressed me as a soul who practiced mortification in an heroic degree. In the early years, or rather in the first year of my Novitiate, having charge of the cleaning of her cell and office at St. Michael, I accidentally stumbled on a heavy discipline [an instrument of flagellation] all blood stained. Later on in the same year, having occasion to be sleeping in the same part of her house in which her cell was located, I was many times awakened by fearful scourging which was kept up with some vigor and strength for such a long time that it fairly sickened me. Later on, the Vicar General, Mother M. James, showed me a discipline which she had surreptitiously abstracted from Mother’s drawer, which was filled with small iron points and the whole almost saturated through and through with blood. I knew she practiced kneeling on her fingertips behind the main altar after night prayers from 15 to 20 minutes at a time, also with arms outstretched for like or longer periods. . . .

  Then again, she wore iron chains round [her] waist and arms and the hair shirt quite frequently. At meals she was most abstemious. For over thirty years she was never known to take a dessert or anything that was unusually palatable, such as the community had on Feast days. When a dish was presented to her, it was noticed that she always took the toughest or worst portion of meat, saying she liked that the best. Until forbidden by the Cardinal, or her Spiritual Director, I do not know which, she fasted very severely all the Lenten season and during the fast and abstinence days of the Church. . . .

  In kneeling she very seldom used any support, even during Mass or during the half-hour’s adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. In sitting she nearly always placed herself on the extreme edge of the chair and very seldom reclined against its back.

  In traveling, no matter how young or robust was the Sister companion she [MKD] invariably insisted on carrying the heaviest bag or suitcase, and never unless absolutely under obedience to do so would she travel in any but the cheapest way, saying that she preferred the day coaches that were crowded to their utmost capacity.23

  Other sisters also testified to Mother Katharine’s severe penitential practices. Mother M. Agatha Ryan, a member of the SBS Council in 1918 and a traveling companion of Mother Katharine in the 1920s and 1930s, remembered that sisters who had been in the order in the earliest days had commented on the severity of her practices. She testified, “I saw the chains which she used on herself. I also saw the hair shirt that she used on herself.”24 Sr. M. Frances Buttell, the dean of Xavier University, also testified to the ascetic practices of the founder:

  She did use the discipline and she used the chain. In the early days of the community Mother Katharine encouraged the discipline be used, but always with permission of the [priest] confessor. I am positive she would not have encouraged it [the use of the discipline] if she did not use it herself. Her method of penance was a constant deprivation in small things, no one of which would attract notice. For example, she herself would never take dessert or sweets unless she was dining out. She herself prayed in uncomfortable positions — with arms outstretched or on her fingertips. She did these privately. I remember her giving the latter to me for a penance. . . . She seemed to be in constant communion with God.25

  It was her practice of mortification of her flesh with the metal-tipped discipline that shocked Mother Mercedes and the other sisters. Their distress over their superior’s spiritual practices was recorded in the order’s annals: “Mother naturally turned to the practice of mortification and bodily penance. It was always a subject of worry to those whose duty it was to watch Mother and persuade her to be at least moderate in the practice of mortification.”26 Lynch, in her history of the SBS, wrote, “Father Scully, who was strong and energetic, believed in the penitential life for religious and had the Sisters, especially Mother Katharine who tended to that way herself, fasting and using disciplines and hair shirts.”27 Fr. Scully wrote to Mother Katharine on the use of the discipline in the Jesuit novitiate at Old St. Joseph’s:

  Yes, the discipline is used in common in our novitiates after the lights are lowered in the dormitories on Wednesday and Friday night during the time that the head of the dormitory recites slowly the Hail Mary; a small bell is used to give the signal for commencing and ending. In public no one does more than this, and for beginners it is a good deal when the discipline is taken on the soft parts of the body and is well laid on. And the permission to do even more so is given very reluctantly, and of course, leave to use it at other times and to a greater extent — a request often prompted by vanity and self love, is with difficulty given.28

  According to Lynch, under the direction of Fr. Scully, Mother Katharine put aside “all the moderation in pursuit of virtue she had learned from Bishop O’Connor.”29 Whether her excessive and extreme use of the discipline originated with her or with Fr. Scully cannot be known at this distance, but that it shocked and distressed her sisters is obvious. That it was an assigned “duty” to watch over Mother and try to dissuade her from her excesses indicates how out of the ordinary her practice was. However, to Katharine’s mind, moderation in pursuit of holiness was no virtue.

  What obviously disturbed Mother M. Mercedes as a novice, and was apparently still disturbing to her in retrospect, is even more disturbing to those of the twenty-first century for whom well-being and filling up, not emptying out, are the highest goods. It is far easier to accept abstemious habits at the dinner table than to countenance self-inflicted pain. Those who have seen Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of Christ have a clear image of scourged flesh, albeit a Hollywood image manipulated for the sake of dramatic effect. Nonetheless, it is difficult to imagine voluntarily inflicting that sort and degree of pain on oneself. It seems medieval. The very idea brings to mind images of flagellation like the famous scene in Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal. Indeed, a medieval monastic handbook reads: “Brother, it is necessary for thee to be punished in this life or in purgatory: but incomparably more severe will be the penalty of purgatory than any in this life. Behold, thy soul is in thy hands. Choose therefore for thyself whether to be sufficiently punished in this life according to canonical and authentic penance, or to await purgatory.”30 Mortification of the flesh is still acceptable within the Catholic Church, but self-scourgi
ng with an iron-tipped discipline is a rare practice indeed. Studies of pain, whether inflicted by others or by oneself, show that under the influence of pain the individual loses himself. In her article “Sacred Pain and the Phenomenal Self,” Ariel Glucklich wrote, “Prolonged and unremitting pain has the effect of destroying the victim’s ability to communicate and finally shatters his or her entire world, including even the victim’s innermost self.” Glucklich adds, “Pain, in short, unmakes their profane world and leads the mystics to self- and world-transcendence.”31 Maureen Flynn says much the same in an earlier article: “For the mystic seeking to chain the human mind in order to acquire a higher, more perfect form of understanding, pain provided the necessary psychic shackle. This is why we see mystics conscientiously intensifying pain, on the surface of their bodies through vigorous scourging and within their bodies through concentration on the Crucifixion, until finally the contents of the world (including themselves) were canceled out in their minds.”32 Thus extreme pain becomes the ultimate tool for kenosis, one that Katharine did not hesitate to employ.

  The use of the discipline is largely unmentioned in the literature on convent life. However, the lives of saints are replete with disciplines, hair shirts, and chains about the waist. It is known that St. Catherine of Siena, Katharine Drexel’s patron saint, wore the hair shirt and chains. She also famously drank the pus from the sores of someone she was nursing.33 St. Peter Damian (d. 1072), the prior of Fonte-Avellana, introduced the use of the discipline to Monte Cassino: “There was much opposition outside his own circle to this practice [use of the discipline], but Peter’s persistent advocacy ensured its acceptance to such an extent that he was obliged later to moderate the imprudent zeal of some of his own hermits.”34 When Sister Claire Spellman entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Notre Dame De Namur in 1946, each novice was given a discipline and an armband, “the bracelet,” which she described as being made out of metal and looking like a pot scrubber with points on the inside. “That was a common practice in all the orders. . . . These [types of mortification] were private practices, conducted in private. Some felt a need for their own penance and some did penance on behalf of others. I hated the idea of the discipline. Most of us just stopped doing it.”35 As late as 1949, the Sisters of Notre Dame in the California Province were reminded to wear the bracelet on the left arm. “The ‘bracelet’ resembled a row of interlocking links of a chain fence. The points of the links put pressure on the arm but did not pierce the skin. Any flexing of the muscles would bring a sharp reminder of its presence. [The sister] and the superior decided on frequency and duration of use.”36 However, according to Sister Spellman, the bracelet did indeed pierce the skin to the point that one sister’s doctor, upon seeing her severely pierced arm, forbade her to wear it.37 At any rate, the sisters were to wear the bracelet on the left arm so as to leave the right arm free for meals. Novices of the Sisters of Notre Dame are no longer given a discipline or bracelet upon entering, yet presently, members of Opus Dei are known to use the discipline and the cilice: “The cilice is a chain, or strap with small spikes in it. Numeraries and associates [members of Opus Dei] wear it around their thigh for 2 hours a day. It has also been described as a wire mesh, with the ends of the wires pointing inward. Sometimes the points are filed down.”38 The bracelet of the Sisters of Notre Dame must have been similar to the cilice of Opus Dei. Mortification of the flesh is a time-honored aid to the spiritual life, and not just for Christians. It is common among Buddhists.

  It is clear from reading Frederick William Faber’s Spiritual Growth that mortification of the flesh was a practice that needed defending to mid-Victorian, English-speaking Catholics. Painful mortification was considered outdated on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet Faber maintained that mortification, including that which inflicted real pain, was not simply ancillary to the growth and development of Christian spirituality but essential to it: “There can be no interior mortification without exterior; and this last must come first.” One aspect of mortification would have appealed to Katharine: it intensifies love and prepares the heart for the emotion of love. “And where the object loved and contemplated is one of sorrow and suffering, as Jesus is, love impels us more or less vehemently to imitation.”39 Another important aspect of mortification for her would have been its connection to prayer. Faber called mortification the single means by which prayer succeeds, and he insisted that it be carried out only under obedience to a spiritual adviser or confessor, lest the pain itself become its own end.40 Katharine, as a reader of Faber’s works from her early teen years, would have been familiar with his recommendations on mortification of the flesh and its importance to one’s progress in spiritual development and, indeed, one’s salvation. Modern readers are nonetheless distressed, while at the same time fascinated, by those who would give pain to the body for the sake of the soul.

  Yet many people severely restrict their diets or run miles a day through heat, cold, rain, and snow for bodily fitness. Were this done for the sake of the soul, it would be mortification of the flesh and cause many to look askance at it. There are runners and other athletes who have run through shin splints, plantar fasciitis, and broken bones. Medical patients endure various noxious and painful therapies and surgeries to regain health. Women undergo Botox injections and the surgeon’s knife for the mere sake of perceived physical beauty. Most people believe that such painful behavior for the sake of the body is sane, productive, and even worthy of praise; yet, these same people find the idea of undergoing pain for the health and purity of one’s soul to be repugnant, illogical, and medieval. To the religious individual of a certain tradition and cast of mind, mortification of the flesh is but one means of practicing kenotic spirituality. Even Mother Teresa of Calcutta, perhaps one of the most recognized, respected, and admired women of her time, routinely used the cilice and discipline. She told her sisters in the Missionaries of Charity, “If I feel sick, I take five strokes (of the discipline). I must feel its need in order to share in the Passion of Christ and the suffering of our poor.”41 Fr. Clementin Wottle, a Franciscan missionary to Native Americans, quoted Mother Katharine as saying, “I wish I could take part and have the Lord give me those pains they made him suffer. I wish He would let me do it.”42 This was a desire she shared with St. Paul: “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24).

  This type of kenosis, or self-emptying through pain, is for the sake of the Church, that one may be able to bring others to Christ through the Church. One’s spiritual progress “tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ.”43 “More intimate union” here refers to intimate love between Christ and his disciple, but something is not owned unless it can be shared with others; the love between Christ and his disciple must be shared by the disciple with her fellow beings in and through the Church.

  Kenosis through the Evangelical Counsels

  The apostle Paul puts kenosis in this manner, at once straightforward and mysterious: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). The Second Vatican Council puts its effects in this way:

  This love, this holiness, this self-emptied person now filled with Christ is expressed in many ways in individuals, who in their walk of life tend to the perfection of charity [or love], thus causing the edification of others; in a very special way this [holiness] appears in the practice of the counsels, customarily called evangelical. The practice of the counsels, under the impulsion of the Holy Spirit, undertaken by many Christians, either privately or in a Church-approved condition or state of life [as priests, nuns, brothers, and the like] gives and must give in the world an outstanding witness and example of this same holiness. . . . The Lord Jesus . . . himself stands as the author and consummator of this holiness of life: “Be you therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” [Matt. 5:48]. . . . The followers of Christ are called by God, n
ot because of their works, but according to his own purpose and grace. . . . They are warned by the Apostle to live “as becomes saints” [Eph. 5:3] and to put on “as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of mercy, kindness, meekness, patience” [Col. 3:12] and to possess the fruit of the Spirit in holiness [cf. Gal. 5:22; Rom. 6:22].44

  Kenosis is a path toward holiness that is not to be grasped for itself alone. It is but a means to an end, to holiness. Mother Katharine shared the spirit of kenosis with her sisters, who had answered the call of Jesus to serve him. Christ initiates the call, and, moved by the Holy Spirit, the disciple discerns its authenticity and obeys. In “renouncing the world [religious] may live for God alone. They have dedicated their entire lives to his service. This constitutes a special consecration that is deeply rooted in that of Baptism and expresses it more fully. . . . In such a way they share in Christ’s emptying of himself [cf. Phil. 2:7] and in his life in the Spirit [cf. Rom. 8:1-3]. . . . Religious are to follow him as the one thing necessary [cf. Luke 10:42]. They fix their minds and hearts on him.”45 Their complete commitment to Christ in this life foreshadows and provides a pretaste of their complete unity with Christ in the perfection of love in the world to come. Here is a prayer from Katharine that demonstrates her understanding of the connection between serving Christ completely in this life and at the same time looking forward to the next. Self-abandoned, she no longer belonged to herself but to Christ alone — absolutely. “Yes, my Lord, and my God Jesus, to you I commend my spirit, my soul with its faculties, my body with its senses, my heart with its affection, all that I have, and all that I am. Dispose of me absolutely, in everything, according to Your will. Henceforth, dearest Jesus, may everything outside You be a matter of indifference to me, provide only I accomplish Your will and advance Your love. O Jesus, I love You and Your Mother and abandon myself to Your love for time and eternity.”46