23 January 2025 - Sister Marianne Cope - homily for Thursday of the 2nd week in Ordinary time - Psalm 40

Mother Marianne Cope (1838 - 1918), an immigrant to the United States from Germany, went to Hawaii went six other sisters from her religious order at the request of King Kalakaua. The sisters cared for the leper patients there. One of her first tasks was to care for Father Damien, who at that time was afflicted with the disease himself.  Mother Marianne died of natural causes, not from leprosy.  Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a poem in her honor in 1889, expressing the love and respect that many had for her and the other sisters who cared for the lepers, for the dignity and respect that they showed their patients.  She was canonized a saint in 2012.  

Poem by Robert Louis Stevenson 

Reverend Sister Marianne

Matron of the Bishop Home, Kalaupapa

To see the infinite pity of this place,

The mangled limb, the devastated face,

The innocent sufferers smiling at the rod,

A fool were tempted to deny his God.

He sees, and shrinks; but if he look again,

Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!—

He marks the sisters on the painful shores,

And even a fool is silent and adores.

Our psalm states today: “Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.” I think of Sister Marianne Cope and many other sisters I met while serving in the missions, of their humility and selflessness in serving the Lord and serving their brothers and sisters, often in very humble, menial tasks. I had a ministry volunteer at the prison try to tell me that it was an insult to him and his human dignity for us to ask him to do menial tasks that are part of the ministry, that he was not going to be mistreated like that. I tried to explain to him that ministry by definition is comprised of many of those types of tasks that he might see as menial, that they should not be seen as humiliating and disrespectful, because that is certainly not the intent, and that these things have to get done, that they are a big part of our ministry. We are called to see ourselves as servants of the Lord, not as princes of the Church. We unite our prayers with Sister Marianne Cope today.