Today's gospel speaks of the sacredness and the permanence of marriage and it's interesting because we are reflecting on "Spiritual Stars" of the Millennium. And the Spiritual Star that we reflect on this weekend was married, and it was a marriage that did not work out. It was a marriage that did not last. Rose Hawthorne was the daughter of the famous American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Remember he wrote The House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter.)

At age 20, Rose met a young American writer in Europe and married him. They had one son together who died of diptheria at the age of 4. And her husband, throughout their marriage, was a confirmed alcoholic. After 20 years of very difficult married life, both of them, in 1891, were converted to the Catholic Church, became Catholics, very prominent and active Catholics. And while it may have been good for their faith life, it didn't do anything special for their marriage. And three years later, their separation was permanent and it was final.

Rose was now in her early 40's. And, after a life devoted to her husband and to society events, social events and entertaining in high society in New England and New York, she began to look for meaning and service to give value to her days and to her nights. And she found it in a very surprising and even frightening place. She found meaning and service among victims of cancer in the poorest slums of New York City. Now, today cancer still frightens us. But, in 1890, it was considered and viewed, not just as incurable, but also as contagious. And the moment a patient in a hospital was diagnosed with cancer, they were moved out. And they were barred from entry to any other hospital in the city. If you had a lot of wealth, your family could take care of you. Otherwise, you were exiled onto an island in the middle of the East River, or you gathered with other cancer patients in the slums.

Rose took a three-month course in nursing, and then rented a three-room tenement apartment in the very tough, lower East side of New York, and began visiting cancer patients, tenement by tenement. She wrote about some of the things she did on a typical day, for example: in October of 1896, she said that she fed and clothed a starving mother and daughter; she changed the dressings for a cancer patient two times; she visited an elderly woman dying of cancer; she prevented the eviction by a landlord of a tenant because he had cancer; and she brought food to a child dying of meningitis. Before long, she was inviting the patients into her three little rooms, into her apartment. Day after day, she spent washing the cancerous sores and changing the bed clothes of her impoverished guests.

But even more important, she was determined to offer friendship and respect and a sense of worth and a sense of value to those whom others considered outcasts. She drew a motto from the writing of St. Vincent dePaul. It was, "I am for God and the poor." She rented a larger building then and she opened it and named it, "St. Rose's Free Home for Incurable Cancer."

She set two rules for those who wanted to work with her. If you worked with her, you had to live with the poor and accept no salary. And the second rule was that you would accept no payment ever from a patient or from their family or from the state. She expanded her work and she funded more buildings by begging from her acquaintances and friends in society, and by advertising in the New York papers. One of her most generous and constant benefactors was Mark Twain.

In 1900, she and her helpers joined a community of women religious Dominicans. But after 6 years with them, she left and she founded her own community which she named "The Servants for the Relief of Incurable Cancer." She died in 1926 at the age of 75, and today her community continues her work. They are usually referred to as the "Hawthorne Dominicans." And they continue to be faithful to Rose Hawthorne, serving the poor and refusing to accept any payment from families or from the government.

Her engagement ring and her wedding ring are exactly where she left them, on the hand of a statue of Jesus in one of the principal buildings that they staff in New York.

Well, what lessons do we learn from Rose Hawthorne? I'd say the first one has to be about marriage. Just because a marriage doesn't work out, or because our family is disfunctional, it doesn't mean that our life doesn't work out and that we have to be disfunctional. It means that we can begin again and find a new life.

Secondly, what strikes me is how anonymous she is! I mean, this weekend, I guess I've spoken to close to 4000 people and I bet there aren't more than two that ever heard of her before. And what it tells me is, in our history as a community, as a Church, there's a tremendous amount of good being done in very quiet ways. Perhaps, some people, during their lifetime they're known and then they're forgotten. There's others that aren't even known during their lifetime. But, enormous amount of good! Now, there's a lot of criticism leveled at the Church today and much of it is deserved. And there are a fair number of scandals for which the Church community is responsible. But, at the same time, there is an enormous amount of good work and good people, untold amount, of which we can be very proud and to which we have to try to live up.

The third thing is about the poor. The American Bishops said that the test of a healthy country, the test of a healthy society, is not how high its standard of living is or how well off the well-off are. The test of a healthy country is how it treats its poorest and weakest citizens. Rose Hawthorne says the same thing. A test for Christians, for those who try to follow the gospel is: how do you stand with the poor? And where's your concerns with the poor? Her answer was, "I am for God and for the poor."

Now, these Spiritual Stars we look at, we end up standing in their shadow and in their light. Nathaniel Hawthorne, toward the end of The House of the Seven Gables, writes, "If this author has one moral to pass on it is the truth that the wrong-doing of one generation lives on in successive generations." Well, Rose Hawthorne, his daughter, tells us the opposite is also true. We remember the past and its giants and its Spiritual Stars to be encouraged and to be challenged and to know that our God has walked and has worked in the courage, the compassion and the care of these people. But, even more to know, that our God continues to work and to walk when we show care and compassion for one another. Let us give thanks to The Lord Who is so good. Amen