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Quotes of Blessed Marianne Cope
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January 2007
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BLESSED MARIANNE'S FEASTDAY AND BIRTHDAY CELEBRATED JOYFULLY
"She patterned her life after that of Jesus, who not only told people of God’s love in His Sermon on the Mount; He also lived it. Knowing that His Heavenly Father loves all people, Jesus treated all people with dignity and respect. Children were welcomed into His busy schedule. Moral and social outcasts looked for chances to be with Him. "
The Most Rev. James M. Moynihan, Bishop of Syracuse
As we well know and appreciate, Mother Marianne was the first American beatified during the Pontificate of our present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. On May 14, 2005, the day she was raised to the title of Blessed, we heard it proclaimed officially that January 23rd, her birthdate is her official feastday. Her feastday in the future will be celebrated each year especially in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse and expectantly later on in all the dioceses of our country.
A few activities which took place in January in commemoration of her second feastday brought to our attention are as follows:
In Syracuse, NY., Bishop James M. Moynihan was the main celebrant of a Mass offered in her honor on the evening of her feastday Vigil (see homily below.) The Sisters of Saint Francis in Syracuse invited the public to join them for the celebration taking place in their Motherhouse chapel. A large number of devotees including the Knights of Columbus were in attendance. The attendees were once again treated to a feastday homily by the Bishop whose devotion to Mother Marianne is one of great depth.
In 2005, during the Beatification ceremony at the Vatican, presided by Jose Cardinal Saraiva Martins, as part of the service the Hawaiian hymm MAKALAPUA was sung by the Mother Marianne choir assembled for the occasion because it was a favorite of Mother Marianne. At the Syracuse ceremony, on the Vigil, to the delight of the observers, the special Hawaiian song and dance were done once again in honor of Blessed Marianne Cope.
Good to tell about also is that actually there were three days of celebration in the Central New York area. At Assumption Church, Syracuse, Sr Grace Anne Dillenschneider spoke to parishioners filling them in with pertinent data of factual and spiritual interest about Mother Mariannne at the Saturday evening Mass and at a Sunday Mass (Jan.21 &22). After Mass the public was invited to view relics collected during the time of Mother Marianne's exhumation in 2005. A group of Franciscan sisters joyfully sang on both occasions. Mother Marianne was invested and professed on the site of this same Assumption Church and did attend building ceremonies of the current church.
On the feastday itself at St. Joseph-St. Patrick in Utica, NY, a special Mass in Mother's honor was celebrated in the evening by the pastor, Fr. Richard Dellos. This is the parish church of Mother's childhood and young adulthood. A procession was held to the recently erected Shrine on the church property with attending devotees later being treated to refreshments in the parish hall which featured a large birthday cake made especially for the occasion.
Reportedly, more beautiful celebrations took place during the week in convents and schools in the entire Community and in hospital settings in New York and Hawaii. A special Mass also took place at the location of her great sacrifice, Kalaupapa, Molokai, with several of our sisters in attendance.
A special debt of gratitude once again was felt to Patrick Downes, editor of The Hawaiii Catholic Herald, who gifted us with the beautiful reverential hymn, Blessed Mother Marianne," which was sung with great devotion at the feastday commemorations. Only one who knew the story of Kalaupapa could have come up with such a wonderful detailed tribute. sml
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VIGIL OF THE FEAST IN HONOR OF BLESSED MOTHER MARIANNE COPE - JANUARY 22, 2007
FRANCISCAN MOTHERHOUSE, SYRACUSE, N.Y.
Homily by Most Rev. James M. Moynihan, D.D.:
Visitors to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse are immediately confronted on their way to the bank of elevators by a life-size portrait of a Franciscan Sister. Beneath that portrait is a splendid bronze plaque containing the following words:
"I wish you all the blessing you may stand in need of...That you may say... in all sincerity,‘My God and my all.’"Principal Founder of St. Joseph’s Hospital-1869Administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital-1870-1877Principal Visionary of establishing a College of Physicians & Surgeons at St. Joseph’s Hospital – 1871 |
Behind that portrait and plaque lies a story, the likes of which read like a book of fiction, eminently worthy of a Cecil B. deMille Hollywood production.
The story is about Mother Marianne Cope, a Sister of St. Francis of Syracuse, who devoted most of her adult life to caring for people with leprosy, quarantined on a tiny slip of land on the Hawaiian Island of Molokai a century and a half ago.
She was born Barbara Koob in the German Grand Dutchy of Hessen Darmstadt on January 23, 1838. Two years later, her parents took her and her three brothers and sisters to the United States where they settled in the City of Utica, New York.
Her parents eventually had ten children, and young Barbara became a U.S. citizen with the rest of her siblings when her father received his own naturalization papers. She was just out of grade school when she went to work at a factory near her home to help support the family who eventually changed their surname to the Americanized "Cope." Young Barbara longed to become a religious sister but waited nine years in order to help her parents care for their younger children. It was only after the younger ones came of age that she felt free to enter the convent. She did so in 1862, at the age of 24, joining the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis in Syracuse a month after the death of her father.
Barbara was invested on November 19, 1862 and took the name of Mary Anna. She quickly became known as Sister Marianne, and a year later she professed her vows. Her biographer describes her as a "small, delicate woman," capable, intelligent, hardworking and kind. She spoke and wrote both English and German fluently.
She began her religious life as a school teacher, and from her earliest years, she was given various positions of responsibility and authority. But in 1870, her career path changed from education to health care, and she was installed as nurse-administrator of the new St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse which had just opened the previous May. The Franciscan Sisters had founded another hospital three years earlier – St. Elizabeth’s in Utica; both institutions were unique for their time and place, in that they were open to patients without regard to religion or race. They were also among the first 50 general hospitals in this country.
Sister Marianne served at St. Joseph’s for six years, and she made the hospital succeed in a city where no hospital had up to that point been successful. It was there that Sister Marianne’s abiding charity, intelligence and leadership qualities thrived and matured.
Not only was St. Joseph’s open to the public, but Sister Marianne accepted patients such as alcoholics who had been rejected by other institutions. As a health-care administrator, she was practical as well as creative. She stressed hygiene and cleanliness long before their obvious benefits were scientifically proven. She was an advocate of patients rights, long before such rights were considered fundamental.
Sister Marianne also accepted for clinical instruction at St. Joseph’s medical students from the newly created College of Physicians and Surgeons at Syracuse University. In 1877, she was elected Provincial Superior and became "Mother Marianne."
By 1864 in Hawaii, leprosy had become such a serious problem that the Kingdom passed "isolation" laws. The disease, most likely introduced to the islands by immigrants from the Far East, had spread quickly among a local population that had little or no immunity to such an exotic foreign virus. The Government in a panic, was desperate to stop the disfiguring plague by any means possible. Police arrested and brought anyone suspected of having the disease to a hospital that had been built in Honolulu in 1865. By January of the following year, the first group of patients was dropped on to Molokai’s desolate peninsula of Kalaupapa, a geographical prison, cut off from the rest of the island by towering cliffs, and from the rest of the world by the vast Pacific Ocean.
In 1883, members of the Hawaii government began looking across the United States for a religious community to care for their citizen victims of leprosy. Of the dozens of religious superiors contacted, only Mother Marianne said, "yes."
In her letter accepting the request, she wrote, "I am hungry for the work... I am not afraid of any disease, hence it would be my greatest delight even to minister to the abandoned lepers."
Traveling with six sisters, she arrived in Honolulu on November 8, 1883 at the age of 45. It had been her intention to help set up the Franciscan Mission in Hawaii and then return to Syracuse. She did not know then that she would remain in Hawaii for the rest of her life.
Immediately assigned to the Kakaako Branch Hospital in Honolulu, Mother Marianne and her sisters transformed a hopeless and dirty clinic and receiving station into a clean orderly place for its more than 200 patients. The sisters also soon opened Kapaiolani Home, a residence for the daughters of leprosy patients. In her first five years in Hawaii, Mother Marianne founded the Malulani General Hospital on Maui, and established St. Anthony’s School, Wailuku in 1885. Later, in 1900, she would open St. Joseph’s School, Hilo on the big island of Hawaii. In the beginning, she worked with Blessed Damien deVeuster, who was at the end of his own extraordinary labors. As Father Peter Gumpel, the relator of her cause put it, she even made Father Damien look good.
She patterned her life after that of Jesus, who not only told people of God’s love in His Sermon on the Mount; He also lived it. Knowing that His Heavenly Father loves all people, Jesus treated all people with dignity and respect. Children were welcomed into His busy schedule. Moral and social outcasts looked for chances to be with Him.
Foreigners requested the opportunity to meet Him, and on the opposite side of the coin, the people of wealth and prestige even invited Him into their homes. To read the story of Jesus’ life is to be amazed by its inclusivity. It was an expression of His theology.
It was also the life story and theology of Mother Marianne Cope. How she loved those lepers, with their devastated faces, spreading sores, and their decaying limbs, even more than she loved herself. Not only did she love them, she also educated them and guided them with wisdom and understanding. She saw in their suffering faces, the suffering face of her beloved Lord. Like the Good Samaritan, she became their refuge and their strength. She drew her strength from her faith, from her holy Masses and holy Communions, and from striving to be a perfect daughter of St. Francis. She sought no earthly honors or approval whatsoever. She wrote, "I do not expect a high place in heaven. I will be very grateful to have a little corner where I can love God for all eternity." Now we rejoice in knowing that she has been assigned a corner in heaven larger than any she could possibly have hoped for.
The plaque in the lobby of St. Joseph’s Hospital sketches the seven years she spent as the principal founder and administrator of that proud institution. It’s the next 35 years of her life, the ones worthy of a Cecil B. deMille production, that describe how Sister Marianne Cope of Syracuse became Blessed Mother Marianne of Molokai.