Read the room: the tiny details that tell the whole story
Pilgrimages are usually centered on big things: soaring basilicas, mighty rivers, convents and towns and even entire mountain ranges. Yet every time I guide a pilgrimage, often to the same sites, I find that the deepest impact sparks from something much smaller. Maybe it's some little piece of a saint's handwriting, a clock he checked every day, or a knee-shaped dent in her prie-dieu.
These tiny details can easily slip past our notice, and with them all the riches we might encounter. Read the Room will be a new occasional series in which we'll look at one—and only one—zoomed-in detail and the story it tells.
I hope you love it as much as I love writing it.
Violets at St Frances Cabrini's New Orleans chapel
Inside the chapel of St Frances Cabrini’s former convent and orphanage in Mid-City New Orleans, every pew is carved with a simple four-petaled flower. It appears merely decorative until you start noticing violets everywhere in the chapel: velvety potted violets clustered around her statues, painted violets circling across the ceiling frescoes, and wooden violets carved into every pew.
As a little girl in Italy, Francesca Cabrini spent a lot of time on her uncle’s rural farm. Her favorite pastime there was to make paper boats and float them down the creek. These were missionary boats, she pretended, en route to China to share the love of the Sacred Heart. But who would be the missionaries filling the boats? When Francesca found patches of tiny wild violets, she carefully plucked them and tucked the stems into her boats.
Missionaries.
Her missionary violets represented her own dearest dream. After she had grown up and founded a new religious community, she asked permission to take her little band of sisters to China. But the pope told Frances, “Not East, but West.” The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart came to the United States and Frances embarked on decades of tireless work to serve the impoverished immigrants of America.
When you see her violets, you’re seeing the first blooms of sanctity.
How to find it
Sacred Heart Chapel, Cabrini High School, 1400 Moss Street, New Orleans. The chapel is a designated local shrine. The school hosts free tours of her chapel along with her preserved bedroom and a small museum of her personal effects.
__________
Thy Ship can help you build and book a New Orleans itinerary that goes deep, not just far. Let's talk!
Contact me. I am a Catholic author, artist, speaker, pilgrimage leader, and travel concierge.
I'd love to collaborate with you on your next retreat, day of reflection, pilgrimage, trip, or event.
Subscribe to Beaucoup by Thy Ship, our free weekly newsletter guide to Catholic New Orleans and Paris.
Comments