Today, we celebrate St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, better known as Mother Cabrini. Mother Cabrini provides an excellent example for our times that we could all embrace, and greatly embodies our mission at CMF and CMF CURO.
So, who was Mother Cabrini? Mother was an Italian sister who founded her own religious order, the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and came to the United States at the end of the 19th century. While here, she helped build dozens of orphanages, schools, and hospitals. She was radically successful in her mission, and enabled the care of countless poor immigrants searching for a better life.
To be clear, we should not consider Mother Cabrini successful simply because she helped build so many institutions. She was successful because her work truly helped bring Christ’s healing love into the world.
This type of work is much of what is needed today.
Christ Himself is love. His mission is to bring healing to the world, both physically and spiritually. He acts because he loves, and his action is love, because He is action and He is love. Our duty as good and faithful servants is to help bring Him into the world, cooperating with the Holy Spirit, so that His love might continue to heal us and the whole world.
In a nutshell, the Christ Medicus Foundation exists to bring Christ’s healing love into health care, just as Mother Cabrini did. This is why we educate and promote the rights of religious freedom and medical conscience. When we are allowed to practice our faith in public, we are able to help bring others to Christ, so that they might encounter his healing love. When the conscience rights of medical professionals are respected, those professionals are able to practice medicine in accord with what they believe is the good of their patients. For Catholic medical professionals, this means helping their patients to encounter Christ’s healing love. Without the rights of religious freedom and medical conscience, it becomes much more difficult for us to share Christ’s healing love. Unfortunately, these rights face intense scrutiny, and sometimes outright attack, making the mission of their protection even more vital and urgent.
This mission is also why the Christ Medicus Foundation started CMF CURO. While we educate about and promote the protection of these rights for the sake of the common good, we must put our principles into action in a personal sense, just as Jesus does. This is the reason CMF CURO exists – to help our members with their individual spiritual, mental, and physical health needs. Our goal is to help each member encounter Christ’s healing love so that they might exhibit God’s glory through being fully alive. We also do this by helping to build a Catholic health care ecosystem. It is vital that we each seek out Catholic doctors who value life and who share in our mission, for our own individual good, but also to build up this Catholic health care ecosystem.
Mother Cabrini accomplished great things for God by building up Catholic health care in our country and helping to share His healing love. Today, let us celebrate her, and ask for her intercession in humility so that we might continue that mission.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us!
