Catholic social tips
The month of July provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on Mother Marianne Cope’s legacy in Hawaii.
According to the book “Pilgrimage & Exile: Mother Marianne of Molokai,” July 15, 1884, was the date when Hawaii invested in the permanent ministry of the Franciscan Sisters. Mother Marianne and six Franciscan Sisters had traveled to Hawaii the year before to minister to patients with Hansen’s disease (also called leprosy).
According to “Pilgrimage & Exile,” Walter Murray Gibson, a minister in the Kingdom of Hawaii’s government, wrote to Mother Marianne: “‘Their Majesties and His Majesty’s Government … highly appreciate the invaluable service rendered by your Sisterhood of Charity to the people of this Kingdom.’ The Board of Health would welcome eight more sisters ‘at present’ and would pay for their ‘travelling expenses and establishment here,’” according to “Pilgrimage & Exile.”
After 35 years of faithful service in caring for the people afflicted with Hansen’s disease in Hawaii, most notably on Molokai’s remote Kalaupapa peninsula, Mother Marianne was called home to God. Her remains buried in Kalaupapa and then exhumed to rest at the Franciscan Sisters’ motherhouse in Syracuse, New York.
She was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Following her canonization, it was decided that relics from St. Marianne’s remains would be returned to Hawaii and housed as a reliquary in the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace. On July 27, 2014, her bones were received and blessed by Bishop Larry Silva before being permanently placed in the cathedral on July 31.
Reading our Holy Father’s prayer petition for July, which is for formation in discernment, sparked my reflection on Mother Marianne’s “Yes.”
Let us pray that we might again learn how to discern, to know how to choose paths of life, and to reject everything that leads us away from Christ and the Gospel.
“Pilgrimage & Exile” mentions rumors about Hawaii that caused the sisters to be fearful of joining the ministry efforts, which ultimately resulted in only four sisters answering the Board of Health’s call. It caused me to think about the times when the work of the Lord I may be called to do appeared, or was rumored to be, difficult.
For clergy and religious communities, prayer is central to their daily discernment as they answer the call to live out their vocation. For lay ministers, we don’t always rely on prayer in discerning what we are called to do.
Summer allows us to take time to pray and discern our paths. Let us ask for the intercession of St. Marianne in helping us find the path of life that God is calling us to follow.
Prayer to St. Marianne Cope
Lord, Jesus, you who gave us your commandment of love of God and of neighbor and identified yourself in a special way with the most needy of your people, hear our prayer. Faithful to your teaching, Mother Marianne Cope loved and served her neighbor, especially the most desolate outcast. Giving herself generously and heroically for the victims of leprosy, she alleviated their physical and spiritual sufferings, thus helping them to accept their afflictions with resignation, as a pledge of God’s love and their eternal happiness. Through her merits and intercession, grant us the favor which we confidently ask of you (mention request) so that the People of God, following the inspiration of her life and apostolate, may practice fraternal charity, according to your word and example. Amen. St. Marianne Cope, pray for us.
Sherry Hayes-Peirce is a Catholic social media consultant based in Southern California.