The Month of Corpus Christi

 June 2024 Blog The Month of Corpus Christi

I am Stephanie Morris, formerly the Director of Archives of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and an Associate of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament (ASBS). Sister Annette Marie O’Donnell had begun this blog as “Companions on the Journey” but has retired from actively writing. St. Katharine said we are all typewriters in the hands of the Lord; it has been a pleasure and privilege for me to serve as St. Katharine’s typist for many years.

First, let me start by congratulating all the grads, Dads, and their families!

It may seem odd to call a graduation a “commencement” as you have just completed years of schooling. As St. Katharine noted in writing to a boy graduating from St. Michael’s: “Your graduation from Saint Michael’s College really means for you a “commencement” – the commencement of a new life.” As she hoped for all the graduates of the SBS schools, St. Katharine prayed “that the good work you have done and the many lessons you have learned … will enable you to begin life with zeal and purpose and take your place” as a leader. “Catholic leaders, strong, courageous, honest, intrepid, zealous, unswerving in fidelity to God and to duty, is what we look for.” 

Congratulations and best wishes in all that you endeavor. May you be blessed with success, safety, and happiness.

Dads, you have a role model in St. Joseph. Although very quiet, the effect he had had on Jesus was widely known as Jesus was called “the carpenter’s son.”

“Corpus Christi” is, as you probably all know, Latin for the feast of “The Body and Blood of Christ.” It became one of the principal feasts of the Church. For the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, this is a very important feast, as the Blessed Sacrament is the Eucharist, the Body of Christ.

As a young woman, Kate wrote in her diary: “Do not let a day pass in … June without saying a fervent prayer to the Sacred Heart. Let nothing worry you.” For St. Katharine, the Sacred Heart was “the center, the power of the Eucharist.” Devotion to the Sacred Heart had come easily and early to Kate. Kate had had an aunt – Emma’s sister – in the Religious of the Sacred Heart. Kate and her sisters did their sacramental preparations with the Religious of the Sacred Heart.

In her travels, St. Katharine tried to schedule daily Mass along her journey. She checked train schedules and would squeeze a daily Mass in between connections. She felt the omission of a daily reception of the Eucharist would

be a great loss to her. St. Katharine had daily Mass and Communion written into the earliest rules of the congregation, something usually reserved to cloistered communities in her day. Bishop O’Connor assured her that she could write that into the congregation’s constitution. She had originally considered a cloistered community for this reason.

St. Katharine’s favorite color was red – the color of fire, the color of love. Images of the Sacred Heart usually include a red heart with red flames emanating from it. As St. Katharine said, “If you are cold, come to the Sacred Heart for the flame of love.” She meant cold in the sense of feeling indifferent, not energized to proclaim the Word of God through your actions, a feeling of being lost or alone. Go to the Sacred Heart, go to and receive the Eucharist, to feel the fire of God’s love and strength, to feel the fire of love restored in you.

Summers are usually quite warm, and a fire may not be the first thing you think of during a heat wave. But may the fire of the love of the Sacred Heart keep you filled with the grace of love to hold and to share.

Stephanie Morris, ASBS

May 25, 2024