This first appeared in the November 2024 issue of Our Sunday Visitor Magazine.
At a funeral Mass I attended last summer, a cell phone went off during the consecration. Of all things, the ringtone was the chorus of John Denver’s “Country Roads.” “Take me home to the place I belong. … “
Inappropriate as it was in the moment, the lyrics caused me to reflect — or better, to rejoice — in knowing that the deceased — a woman of great faith, who’d had recourse to the sacraments throughout her life — really was going home.
My family hosted a repast after the internment, welcoming extended family, friends and strangers into our home. For this time of grieving and fellowship, we invited them to make the place their home too. Sometimes homecoming is about going back to where you came from. Other times, it’s about finding belonging in a new place, in the unknown, in a space where you would otherwise be alone.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, known in her day as Mother Cabrini, devoted her life to helping immigrants find a place to call home on earth. In her way of living, she consequently guided the souls she encountered toward heaven.
Cultivating a generous heart
The United States wasn’t home to this Italian woman. In fact, she’d asked Pope Leo XII for permission to travel to the American west, rather than the east coast, as a missionary. But the need was in New York, and so to New York she went.
Mother Cabrini touched so many lives not because she knew the language, worked in the government, or had a great deal of money to spend. What she had was a generous heart formed by her faith, an openness to seeing the need in others, and a willingness to put someone else before herself. She epitomized hospitality in a land that was not initially her own.
Practicing spiritual hospitality
St. Thérèse of Lisieux, patron of missions, is famous for saying, “The world is thy ship and not thy home.” We may be able to claim a hometown or a site of prolonged residence as “home,” but these are temporal and will pass away. Our more profound association is as children of God, adopted sons and daughters. If our home really is in heaven, then we are responsible to practice spiritual hospitality in our daily lives: giving others our attention, choosing to listen to their difficulties, having the humility to walk with them even when we’re not sure we know the way ourselves.
The vulnerability and self-sacrifice Mother Cabrini embodied made room for immigrants in a place that was often hostile to them in their most basic needs: food, shelter, dignified work. She did that in the largest city in the country. Following her example, especially in this holiday season, may we have her intercession to help us practice hospitality on a smaller scale in our homes, welcoming those who have stepped away or slipped away with as much joy and love as those who are closest to us.
