Thursday Week 32 OT St. Frances Xavier Cabrini November 13, 2025
Fr. Alexander Albert Vermilion Catholic, Abbeville
The movie Cabrini is well made and fairly compelling to watch. It does a good job of portraying just how hard it was for St. Frances Xavier Cabrini to do her work, showing the obstacles, the reluctance of some Church leaders, and how bold and persistent Mother Cabrini could be in the face of those challenges. It conveys well her love for the poor and her witness to human dignity. For those reasons, it’s worth watching.
But it misses something important… very important. The filmmakers were trying to make her story appeal to as broad an audience as possible, so they were very subtle about why she cared so much for the poor and how she endured so many difficulties so well. Ultimately, they end up missing the most important part of Mother Cabrini’s character – her burning love for Jesus Christ.
I suppose that’s a pretty accurate representation of what Jesus is talking about today. “The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed,” he says. “Behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.” Jesus himself was widely misunderstood by the people in power. They saw a small-town outsider who was disturbing the peace. Or perhaps they saw a disappointment, a man who could have used his power to rescue Israel from the Romans but decided not to.
Jesus is the Kingdom of God. Although everyone around him could see him, not everyone could see the kingdom. In this gym right now, some of you see the Kingdom of God and some of you don’t. You see… or maybe you don’t see… the Kingdom of God is not a physical place, a political arrangement, or an obvious display of power. The Kingdom of God is a relationship… The Kingdom of God is not what we see, it is how we see. I’ll quit playing word games. The Kingdom of God is faith. A person with faith and a person without faith can look at the same situation or person – like the life of Frances Xavier Cabrini – and see different things. A person with faith sees the Kingdom of God in the ordinary events of Cabrini’s life… or in the rather humdrum circumstances of Mass in a gym. A person without faith sees… what? An Italian immigrant-turned-citizen who “fought the power” by caring for the sick, the orphan, and the immigrant. A person with faith sees those things too, but they see the Kingdom of God “among” it all.
In the movie, Mother Cabrini talks about human dignity and willpower and the importance of serving the poor. In real life, she almost never stopped talking about Jesus Christ, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mary, the Holy Spirit, and prayer. She prayed a lot. The reason Mother Cabrini loved the poor so much is that she spent enough time with Jesus in the Eucharist and in prayer to recognize Jesus – and the Kingdom of God – in the poor. The Kingdom of God was there all along in the slums of New York, but it took a woman of prayer – don’t forget Cabrini was a consecrated religious, not a social worker – it took a woman of prayer to see God’s Kingdom in the slums and in the immigrants.
The Kingdom of God is still among us. Do you see it? Do you just see a middle-aged man up here ranting about some Italian immigrant from the 1800s? Or do you hear Jesus calling you to imitate his love of the poor? Do you just see a table with some bread and wine… do you just hear some long complicated prayer? Or do you see and hear the very crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ made present on the altar?
And what do you see when you look at this great country? A country made possible by the many efforts of the many veterans who served and still serve to defend us? Do the United States of America represent the possibility of earthly and political utopia to you? Or does our country promise a place of freedom for you to live out an eternal life rooted in God’s Kingdom rather than any particular arrangement of power? And how can you or I judge which one we see? I can tell you whether or not you see God’s Kingdom the very same way I can tell that Mother Cabrini saw it: faith, hope, and love.
You need faith to see the kingdom. How much do you actually pray? Really and truly talk and listen to God with sincere effort? Do you have faith enough to act like the Sacraments are real and sacred and valuable? Do you make good use of the sacraments?
You need hope to see the kingdom. Do you constantly join in the complaining about political dysfunction? Are you way too focused on the economy? Is what excites you and motivates you based on material success or on spiritual progress? Do you want to be holy? Or are you just kinda limping along in order to avoid looking like a bad person?
Above all, you need love to see the kingdom. I could be vague and say “love the poor” and you’d all probably agree. But let’s pick a specific challenge this time. Today we celebrate the first American citizen to ever be canonized a saint. Cabrini was not born a citizen, however. She immigrated here. And she immigrated here at a time when New York City and a lot of other Americans very much wished the Italians would stop coming. Even other Catholics wanted Cabrini and the people she served to go away. By joining in with anti-Italian attitudes, the Irish Catholics hoped to escape the anti-Irish attitudes.
The United States has always had this tension of both welcoming immigrants and disliking immigrants. There has always been at least one group of people we’ve treated with suspicion… that we wanted to disappear. Who we target has changes over time – Irish, Italian, Catholic, French, Spanish, Jews, Asian, Hispanic, Arabic, Indians… but it’s always someone… and sadly, Catholics as a whole have not done a lot better even though we used to be the target.
But the Kingdom of God is among you. Immigration policy is complicated and nuanced. Neither I, nor the US Bishops, nor Pope Leo are advocating for open borders and carelessness. If you think that’s what we’re saying, then someone is lying to you! Read what they actually say. Read it carefully. Countries need to regulate their borders and citizenship should require time and effort and loyalty to gain. But none of that… no human law in existence justifies us treating human beings as anything less than human.
Someone coming here or staying here illegally is not an excuse for you not to love them. Even if deportation is the right course of action, it must be done with respect for them as human beings and it must be done in a way that sees the person, not merely the rules. The mere fact that something is illegal doesn’t mean it’s wrong. At one point, it was illegal for Catholics to vote or run for office in some states. Some states have recently tried to make it illegal for priests to keep secret what we hear in confession – I’ll happily break that kind of law and I’ll die before I break the seal. There are good men and women who have given decades of their life to their communities and are still “illegal” because the system messed up. Do you really want to stand in front of Jesus and say those people should lose everything because of a technicality?
Look, immigration is a hot topic and a divisive one. I don’t pretend to have all the political answers and most of you are too young to vote or affect policy… yet. But as your pastor, I care about your souls. I care about you seeing the Kingdom of God among you. We honor veterans today – men and women who protect out country so that we have freedom. But why do we have freedom? So we can love! So we can use that freedom to serve God and neighbor. Don’t dishonor veterans by turning a blind-eye to injustice. Don’t dishonor them by using a broken legal system as an excuse to dehumanize whole groups of people. Look at the poor, the orphan, the widow, the immigrant – legal or not – with the eyes of Jesus Christ. Treat them as human beings, as men and women for who Christ died.
The Kingdom of God is among you. It’s not waiting for the right people to get into office or the wrong people to get out of the country. It’s here right now. For those, like St. Frances Xavier Cabrini who chose to see everything through the lens of faith, hope, and love, the kingdom is obvious. Look at this Mass, look at your classmates, look at your political parties, look at your enemies… above all, look at the least among us with faith, hope, and love… and you’ll see the kingdom too.