Homily for Memorial of St. Marianne Cope

Homily for the Memorial of
St. Marianne Cope

Jan. 23, 2024
Collect
Mark 3: 31-35
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, N.R.

This homily wasn’t delivered in person because of a quarantine at the Residence; it was emailed to the Brothers instead.

We celebrate today the memory and the example of St. Marianne Cope, a religious who put into practice the love of Christ by her care for the least of her brothers and sisters—lepers who were, literally, the outcasts of the kingdom of Hawaii, later the U.S. territory of Hawaii.  At age 46, leaving behind her ministry of working with immigrants in upstate New York and hospital administration, she volunteered for the mission of mercy for lepers, 1st on Oahu and then assisting and succeeding St. Damien on Molokai.

Some of you may have served in Hawaii and know more fully the story of the leper colony of Molokai.  If not, it’s perhaps hard for us to imagine the misery of the place and its people, even after St. Damien had done so much for their benefit and St. Marianne continued that.

She herself said: “I am hungry for the work, and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen ones, whose privilege it will be to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the souls of the poor Islanders. . . .  I am not afraid of any disease; hence it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned lepers.”

Of that, the cardinal prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes said at her beatification:  “She left everything and abandoned herself completely to the will of God, to the call of the Church, and to the demands of her new brothers and sisters.  She put her own health and life at risk.”  She carried out what Jesus teaches in today’s gospel, doing God’s will and thus showing that she was truly a sister and mother of the Lord Jesus (Mark 3:35).

St. Joseph’s Residence certainly isn’t like Molokai.  But we can thank God anyway that you have staff here like our sisters out in the hall, house administrators, and others who care for you with the same love that St. Marianne gave to the sick in her care, who, as the collect said, “burn with love for [God] and for those who suffer.”  Not only do they care for you as sisters, mothers, and brothers, but they also encourage us to be brothers to one another, and so to Jesus.