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“Keep Him near to you that you will not have more than a step to take to find yourself with Him and so that a mere whisper of His may be heard in your heart.” - Mother Katharine DrexelParish Mission Statement
We the people of St. Katharine Drexel Church, inspired by the legacy of our patron, strive to welcome all people, provide assistance to those in need, and celebrate our beliefs through the sacraments and God’s word. In the strength of our diverse backgrounds we seek to continue our own formation and to evangelize our community, so that we may become united as sisters and brothers in Christ.Our Story
Saint Katharine Drexel Parish was erected in July of 2001. It is composed of two merged parishes. One, Mary, Mother of God in Hempstead, TX was originally founded in 1879 and the other, St. Martin de Porres in Prairie View, TX founded in 1962. The new parish is a result of the need to consolidate resources both with regard to the current priest shortage and to the need to manage the resource of the local populations in a better way.
St. Katharine Drexel, canonized on October 1, 2000 was chosen as the new patroness by the parishioners of of the new combined parish. Since her canonization process was being completed about the same time that a name was being discerned and her history was very present to many people. In her lifetime, St. Katharine sought to bring God’s mercy and love to people who were not receiving their share of human resources.
The present parish is ethnically diverse, representing a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. We believe that we serve the memory of St. Katharine and the ministry of her order to facilitate a common vision for all who are a part of our parish and leave no one out.
We relocated to our current site in September, 2005.Holy Angels Chapel
The Catholic community of Hempstead originally began at St. Mary’s Church in Waller. The parish relocated to Hempstead when that church was destroyed by fire. In 1892, the small frame church building that is now named Holy Angels Chapel was constructed.
This church was built to replace a previous church building that had been erected earlier in 1879 and was demolished by a tornado in 1890. Until 2005, this church stood a short distance from the original site of St. Mary’s at the corner of Wilkins and 14th streets and was used as the parish hall for Mary, Mother of God Church. In the spring of 2005, it was moved to the new location of St. Katharine Drexel Parish on FM 1488.
In 1935, a Josephite priest began ministry in Prairie View, which grew to become the Catholic parish of St. Martin de Porres.In 2001, because of the shortage of clergy, both St. Martin de Porres and Mary, Mother of God were merged together to form St. Katharine Drexel Parish.
The name of this beautiful chapel is taken from our parish patroness, St. Katharine Drexel herself. One of the little expressions that she often said was, “Holy Angels”. She used it when she was excited, and when she was frustrated. It was mostly a kind of exclamation. Everything about this little chapel is an exclamation to the glory and wonder of God.
The chapel’s present renovation is truly a testament to the faith of the people of northern Waller County.
The stained glass windows represent both prior parishes. The six windows on the north and south sides come from Mary, Mother of God Church and the four windows on the east facade, as well as in the devotional alcove, came from St. Martin de Porres Church. All of the windows had to be modified to fit this chapel.The floors of the chapel are original, and are long leaf yellow pine. The pews were originally in St. Dominic’s College Chapel in Houston. They were later used by Our Lady of Walsingham Parish for many years until they built their church around 2005. At that time, they were given to St. Katharine Drexel. All the re-finishing work was done by parishioners.
The hanging light fixtures came from Christ Our Light (formerly St. Patrick’s) in Navasota.
The Stations of the Cross are from Mary, Mother of God. The altar, ambo, tabernacle and statue stands were all built by a parishioner, Mr. Dennis Yelton. The tabernacle is from St. Martin de Porres. The statues in the devotional area, St. Therese (in the main church), Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Sacred Heart are from Mary, Mother of God. The statue of St. Joseph (now in the main Church) was originally from St. Martin de Porres.In the building’s original design, the wall separating the chapel from the rear corridor did not exist, and a small baldachino was affixed against the back wall. When the church was remodeled into a parish hall, the sacristy became a small kitchen; the wall was added, along with the restroom and storage. When the building was moved to the present location, a confessional was installed.
There are two chairs that have been associated with this chapel since the 1930′s, one in the sacristy and one in the confessional. They have both been re-upholstered and the original hand-stitched upholstered seats now serve as framed art in the confessional.
The rug in the center isle has a particular story also. The first school that Mother Katharine founded was St. Michael School for Indians on the Navajo reservation, just outside of what is today known as Window Rock, Arizona. The Navajo people did not originally weave rugs. However, after the Euro-Anglos began to settle in the west where the Navajo lived, they taught them how to weave so that they could trade their rugs for money or other necessities they needed. The Navajo people used traditional designs from their pottery and transferred them into woven images. This rug, though not Navajo, uses some of their traditional designs.KATHARINE DREXEL (1858-1955)
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States of America, on November 26, 1858, Katharine Drexel was the second daughter of Francis Anthony Drexel and Hannah Langstroth. Her father was a well known banker and philanthropist. Both parents instilled in their daughters the idea that their wealth was simply loaned to them and was to be shared with others.
When the family took a trip to the Western part of the United States, Katharine, as a young woman, saw the plight and destitution of the native Indian-Americans. This experience aroused her desire to do something specific to help alleviate their condition. This was the beginning of her lifelong personal and financial support of numerous missions and missionaries in the United States. The first school she established was St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe, New Mexico (1887).Later, when visiting Pope Leo XIII in Rome, and asking him for missionaries to staff some of the Indian missions that she as a lay person was financing, she was surprised to hear the Pope suggest that she become a missionary herself. After consultation with her spiritual director, Bishop James O'Connor, she made the decision to give herself totally to God, along with her inheritance, through service to American Indians and Afro-Americans.
Her wealth was now transformed into a poverty of spirit that became a daily constant in a life supported only by the bare necessities. On February 12, 1891, she professed her first vows as a religious, founding the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament whose dedication would be to share the message of the Gospel and the life of the Eucharist among American Indians and Afro-Americans.
Always a woman of intense prayer, Katharine found in the Eucharist the source of her love for the poor and oppressed and of her concern to reach out to combat the effects of racism. Knowing that many Afro-Americans were far from free, still living in substandard conditions as sharecroppers or underpaid menials, denied education and constitutional rights enjoyed by others, she felt a compassionate urgency to help change racial attitudes in the United States.The plantation at that time was an entrenched social institutionin which the coloured people continued to be victims of oppression. This was a deep affront to Katharine's sense of justice. The need for quality education loomed before her, and she discussed this need with some who shared her concern about the inequality of education for Afro-Americans in the cities. Restrictions of the law also prevented them in the rural South from obtaining a basic education.
Founding and staffing schools for both Native Americans and Afro-Americans throughout the country became a priority for Katharine and her congregation. During her lifetime, she opened, staffed and directly supported nearly 60 schools and missions, especially in the West and Southwest United States. Her crowning educational focus was the establishment in 1925 of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only predominantly Afro-American Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States. Religious education, social service, visiting in homes, in hospitals and in prisons were also included in the ministries of Katharine and the Sisters.In her quiet way, Katharine combined prayerful and total dependence on Divine Providence with determined activism. Her joyous incisiveness, attuned to the Holy Spirit, penetrated obstacles and facilitated her advances for social justice. Through the prophetic witness of Katharine Drexel's initiative, the Church in the United States was enabled to become aware of the grave domestic need for an apostolate among Native Americans and Afro-Americans. She did not hesitate to speak out against injustice, taking a public stance when racial discrimination was in evidence.
For the last 18 years of her life she was rendered almost completely immobile because of a serious illness. During these years she gave herself to a life of adoration and contemplation as she had desired from early childhood. She died on March 3, 1955.
Katharine left a four-fold dynamic legacy to her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, who continue her apostolate today, and indeed to all peoples:– her love for the Eucharist, her spirit of prayer, and her Eucharistic perspective on the unity of all peoples;
– her undaunted spirit of courageous initiative in addressing social iniquities among minorities — one hundred years before such concern aroused public interest in the United States;
– her belief in the importance of quality education for all, and her efforts to achieve it;
– her total giving of self, of her inheritance and all material goods in selfless service of the victims of injustice.
Katharine Drexel was beatified by Pope John Paul II on November 20, 1980.Translate this Page