“Do not let the children go without shoes.” According to Father Wayne Paysse, executive director of the Black and Indian Mission, that imperative was one of the last mandates St. Katharine Drexel gave to the sisters of her religious order. The mandate has also apparently become the driving incentive for the mission and its director who was in the Diocese of Beaumont this month for the celebration of her feast day.
The Black and Indian Mission has been assisting the church in Southeast Texas by providing grants from its annual collection, and the diocese was given a little more help during Father Paysse’s visit.
During the feast day Mass, sponsored by the Office of African American Ministry, more than 100 members of the laity and clergy were challenged to follow the example of St. Katharine, the philanthropist saint who gave all that she had to continue the mission of Jesus. Father Paysse told the gathering that St. Katharine’s words were about more than just shoes, they were about “faithfulness, commitment, sacrifice and love.”
St. Katharine Drexel had a deep commitment to African American ministry. She and her order helped establish several schools in the diocese one of which was on the grounds of what is now Blessed Sacrament Parish in Beaumont.
The diocese has received many grants from the mission over the years to help with evangelization to African American communities including a $30,000 grant for the current year. Father Paysse used the visit this year to add a little extra to that grant. At the end of the Mass for the St. Katharine Drexel celebration, Father Paysse presented Bishop Curtis J. Guillory, SVD, with a $10,000 check to further the work of evangelization assuring not so much that the children would not go without shoes, but that they would not go without the love and sacrifice needed to meet their spiritual needs.
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