Overview:
The Memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
A Reflection for the Memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
“Indeed, she [Wisdom] reaches from end to end mightily
and governs all things well.”
“The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed,
and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’
For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.”
“For just as lightning flashes
and lights up the sky from one side to the other,
so will the Son of Man be in his day.
But first he must suffer greatly and be rejected by this generation.”
Find today’s readings here.
There is almost too much richness to contemplate in today’s readings and memorial. The first reading presents us with one of the few—and perhaps the most developed—feminine images associated with God in the Bible, that of Wisdom. She is described as “an aura of the might of God and a pure effusion of the glory of the Almighty,” “the refulgence of eternal light, the spotless mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness,” and “she, who is one, can do all things, and renews everything while herself perduring.”
The Gospel and first reading also use similar images to describe Wisdom and the Son of Man: Speaking to his listeners about the coming of the Kingdom of God, Jesus says that rather than an observable beginning of the Kingdom on Earth, he will “light up the sky from one side to the other” like a lightning flash. In the first reading, Wisdom does the same: “she reaches from end to end mightily and governs all things well.” One imagines that this parallel was part of why the lectionary’s assemblers chose to pair these readings.
But what does this image mean for how we see God at work in our world? Because we are working with poetry, the answers are as varied as our interpretations of the image of lightning: It can be at the same time powerful and soothing; a destructive bolt or a gentle light reflecting off the clouds in a nighttime storm; paradoxically moving in silence yet always accompanied by a thunder that can shake us from our comfort. Employed as it is in these readings, the metaphor also seems limited by the fleeting nature of lightning: Isn’t Wisdom, like the Kingdom of God, supposed to be something that lasts, that “governs all things well” for more than just a flash?
Similarly difficult to pin down is the meaning of Jesus (through Luke) saying that “the Kingdom of God is among you.” Tolstoy famously borrowed the phrase for the title of his manifesto on Christian anarchy and others have likewise taken it to mean that we ought to be building the Kingdom on Earth; others have taken it the total opposite way, to mean that the Kingdom is a purely spiritual reality; still others with a more literal view believe Jesus was simply referring to his own presence in the crowd that day.
Having sat with these readings for a few days in preparing this reflection, the interpretation that resonates most with me in this moment is that we receive just glimpses on this earth of what God’s Kingdom—governed by Wisdom—will look like when it comes. We strive to create it, but ultimately the best we can achieve are flashes of it: bright, clarifying, but fleeting.
Still, those moments are worth our efforts. Mother Cabrini, who we remember today, is a testament to what we can accomplish when we cooperate with God’s grace and Wisdom. She showed courage and persistence in pursuing her missionary vocation even when rejected by church leaders; she faced down and even managed to erode some of the anti-Italian sentiment that pervaded U.S. cities at the turn of the 20th century; she governed the institutions she founded wisely, acting against financial mismanagement and remaining involved in each even as she traveled the world, founding more.
Her life, ultimately, was a flash of Wisdom, and the institutions she founded gave us some glimpses of the Kingdom. May we all seek to be led by Wisdom today to bring some light, however fleeting, to a dark world.
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