When Jesus makes his proclamation in the Gospel of Matthew today as he sends his disciples out to be missionaries to the world, I feel like he is specifically speaking to us in the modern world. He tells them to travel lightly – to not take a walking stick or a second tunic or a pair of sandals, to not take gold or copper or silver in their money belts. I can relate to this, since I when I hiking, when I am carrying my backpack and everything on my back, it is important to travel very lightly.
I sent out a Flocknote reflection earlier in the week on Mother Mary Alphonsa, an American nun who is being put forth on the road to sainthood with the Archdiocese of New York. Her birth name was Rose Hawthorne. Her father was the famous novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter, a novel most of you probably read in American literature in high school. That novel shows American high school students what life was like in a village in colonial America.
Rose was born in 1851, a year after that novel was published. Rose grew up both in Massachusetts and in England, where her father served as US counsel. She married when she was a young lady, but her marriage was not a happy one: her husband struggled with alcoholism and with holding down a job, and she lost her only child when he was 5 years old. Yet, in the midst of their marital problems, she and her husband converted to Catholicism when they were traveling in Italy. It was her Catholic faith that brought her courage and strength. She separated from her husband and devoted her life nursing patients with cancer, who were very much discriminated against in the late 19th century America.
After her husband’s death in 1898, Rose Hawthorne became a Dominican sister. She established the Dominican Congregation of St Rose of Lima, also known as the Servants from Relief for Incurable Cancer. They established a center for cancer patients in New York. Rose Hawthorne become Mother Mary Alphonsa. She served as a Dominican sister until her death in 1926. The Dominican priest who is defending Rose Hawthorne’s case for beatification stated that even though she was a lady of culture, education, and social status, she lived amongst the poor and established a home for them where they could live in dignity and comfort. She and her religious sisters were the servants to their cancer patients, showing them care, love, and concern. Rose Hawthorne’s biography is entitled Sorrow Built a Bridge.
Jesus calls us to different journeys in our lives of faith. I admire Mother Mary Alphonsa, for her life of faith that calls our to us today.
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