Happy Feast of St. Cabrini

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini's arm bone, on display at her Lincoln Park shrine.

    There are a lot of Catholic feast days — 25 in November alone, by my count. Starting with All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day, at the beginning of the month, all the way to St. Catherine Labouré and St. Andrew, at the end.  Most months have about two dozen such holidays. You can't celebrate them all.
    Well, not being Catholic, I don't celebrate any of them. Except for St. Valentine's Day, I suppose, though the Catholic Church removed that from the official calendar in 1969 due to lack of historical documentation —they weren't even sure which of several Valentines were being honored (I feel safe speculating that the Vatican was perhaps prodded by the gross chocolate-and-flowers commercialization of the day).

      But sometimes a feast day pops up to be noticed, and since today —assuming you are reading this on Thursday, Nov. 13 —is the feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, I think we can pause to notice her for several practical reasons.
     The tireless social activist —think Jane Addams in a habit —was the first American saint (Nov. 13 was the day she was beatified in 1938) and a resident of Chicago. There is a shrine to her in Lincoln Park, incongruously nestled within a luxury high rise, that EGD visited in 2018, and you can dive into that experience here. 
     St. Cabrini is the patron saint of immigrants, which of course makes her relevant as heck. Gov. JB Pritzker has taken to repeating himself when he talks to national media, and it might be a change of pace if he looked into a camera and intoned: "The upper right arm bone of Mother Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants, is on display in a reliquary on the North Side of Chicago, and it guides us as a beacon of shining moral clarity to do the right thing," Sure, he'd get laughed at, but it might give pause to a few of the Catholic revanchists who are cheering on the current administration.
    Mother Cabrini herself was something of a mess. Pathologically terrified of water after nearly drowning, she chose a vocation that prompted her to cross the ocean 27 times. She also had, in the carefully chosen words of one account, a "frail health and nervous temperament" and was frightened of failure. 
    You can get insight into her situation by considering the "peace prayer" credited to her which, if you want to mark her day, is supposed to be said in her honor, perhaps along with lighting a candle:
     "Fortify me with the grace of Your Holy Spirit and give Your peace to my soul that I may be free from all needless anxiety, solicitude and worry. Help me to desire always that which is pleasing and acceptable to You so that Your will may be my will."

     The word that leaps out of that, for me, is "needless." A lot of worry is protective — am I being scammed? Is it safe to cross the street? Has this milk gone bad? Should I go see a doctor about this? Is there something else I could be doing to help my country?

     The key is not to let anxiety become a default position, the low level hum that sours your waking moments without really helping at all. But we are getting into the realm of St. Dymphna, a 7th century Irish teenager who is the patron saint of mental illness. Her feast day is May 15. Until then.