From Season to Season

“What will you give me if I had him over to you?” “What’s that man’s life worth to you?” “How much is your power, your agenda, your comfort, your security worth to you?”   We’ve heard the story and we know the answer: 30 pieces of silver.   It’s a very specific amount. In Exodus we read that 30 pieces of silver was the value of a slave. Later in the Old Testament, the Prophet Zechariah received 30 pieces of silver as payment for his work as a shepherd. Saint Matthew wants us to make those connections. And we could, of course, spend time reflecting on the theological or symbolic value of those pieces of silver, and perhaps you can do that on your own today.   But as I reflected on the Readings of this “Traitor Wednesday,” I found myself coming back to the Lenten series on morality and the Ten Commandments that led at Saint Pius X Church [in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin] these past six weeks. And, one of the basic ideas of morality that we explored in the ser...

The daughter of one of the wealthiest men in America, Katherine Drexel was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1858. While visiting Europe, Katherine worked to recruit priests and religious to minister to Native Americans, and it was during this trip that Pope Leo XIII suggested that Katherine herself become a missionary. The following year, she established schools in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, California, Oregon, and New Mexico. In 1889, Katharine entered the novitiate of the Sisters of Mercy, and in 1891 she professed her vows as the first member of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People . Opening a novitiate in Philadelphia, she received twenty-one new sisters in the first year. The new community’s first mission was in New Mexico. Following the death of her father in 1901, Katherine and her sister each received an inheritance amounting to one thousand dollars a day. Other missions and schools soon followed, including Xavier University in New Or...