| Rose Philippine Duchesne came to the
wilds of North America when anything west of Pittsburgh was
considered uncharted wilderness. She came up the Mississippi
to Missouri and established a school at St. Charles as early
as 1818, while St. Elizabeth Seton was doing her work in
the eastern United States. She is the foundress of the American
branch of the Society of the Sacred Heart.
She was born in Grenoble, France,
in 1769, her father a successful businessman. She was educated
by the Visitation nuns and, although her father opposed
her decision, she entered the Visitation Order in 1788,
in the middle of the French Revolution. She was not able
to make her profession because of the disruption of the
Revolution and had to return home when the Visitation sisters
were expelled from their convents.
During the Revolution, she cared
for the sick and poor, helped fugitive priests, visited
prisons, and taught children. After the Revolution, she
tried to reorganize the Visitation community but was unsuccessful,
so she offered the empty convent to St. Madeleine Sophie
Barat, foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart, and
entered the Sacred Heart Order herself. When the bishop
of New Orleans, William Du Bourg, requested nuns for his
huge Louisiana diocese, St. Rose Philippine Duchesne came
to the United States, arriving in New Orleans in 1818.
She and her four nuns were sent to
St. Charles, Missouri, where she immediately opened a school;
then at Florissant, she built a convent, an orphanage,
a parish school, a school for Indians, a boarding academy,
and a novitiate for her order. In 1827, she was in St.
Louis where she founded an orphanage, a convent, and a
parish school. Her energy and ideas were prodigious. When
she was seventy-two years old, she founded a mission school
for Indian girls in Kansas and spent much of her time there
nursing the sick.
Her last years were spent at St.
Charles, a model and inspiration to those around her, facing
all the hardships of pioneer work. She died on November
18, 1852, at the age of eighty-three and was canonized
in 1988. She was truly the "missionary of the American
frontier," one that her beloved Potawatomi Indians called <Quah-kah-ka-num-ad>, "Woman-who-prays-always."
Thought for the Day: Setback after
setback after setback, even into old age! This woman of
bronze—St. Rose Philippine Duchesne—let nothing
stop her, nothing discourage her, nothing slow her down.
We can do almost anything for God if we refuse to be discouraged
and are willing to pay the price: the price is something
called holiness.
Taken from "The One Year Book
of Saints" by Rev. Clifford Stevens published by Our
Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Our Sunday Visitor,
Inc., Huntington, IN 46750. |
