November 18
St. Rose Philippine Duchesne
(1769-1852)
Born in Grenoble, France, of a family that was among the new rich, Philippine learned political skills from her father and a love of the poor from her mother. The dominant feature of her temperament was a strong and dauntless will, which became the materialand the battlefieldof her holiness. She entered the convent at 19 without telling her parents and remained despite their opposition. As the French Revolution broke, the convent was closed, and she began taking care of the poor and sick, opened a school for street urchins and risked her life helping priests in the underground. When the situation cooled, she personally rented her old convent, now a shambles, and tried to revive its religious life. The spirit was gone, and soon there were only four nuns left. They joined the infant Society of the Sacred Heart, whose young superior, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, would be her lifelong friend. In a short time Philippine was a superior and supervisor of the novitiate and a school. But her ambition, since hearing tales of missionary work in Louisiana as a little girl, was to go to America and work among the Indians. At 49, she thought this would be her work. With four nuns, she spent 11 weeks at sea en route to New Orleans, and seven weeks more on the Mississippi to St. Louis. She then met one of the many disappointments of her life. The bishop had no place for them to live and work among Native Americans. Instead, he sent her to what she sadly called "the remotest village in the U.S.," St. Charles, Missouri. With characteristic drive and courage, she founded the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi. It was a mistake. Though she was as hardy as any of the pioneer women in the wagons rolling west, cold and hunger drove them outto Florissant, Missouri, where she founded the first Catholic Indian school, adding others in the territory. "In her first decade in America Mother Duchesne suffered practically every hardship the frontier had to offer, except the threat of Indian massacrepoor lodging, shortages of food, drinking water, fuel and money, forest fires and blazing chimneys, the vagaries of the Missouri climate, cramped living quarters and the privation of all privacy, and the crude manners of children reared in rough surroundings and with only the slightest training in courtesy" (Louis E. Callan, R.S.C.J., Philippine Duchesne). Finally, at 72, in poor health and retired, she got her lifelong wish. A mission was founded at Sugar Creek, Kansas, among the Potawatomi. She was taken along. Though she could not learn their language, they soon named her "Woman-Who-Prays-Always." While others taught, she prayed. Legend has it that Native American children sneaked behind her as she knelt and sprinkled bits of paper on her habit, and came back hours later to find them undisturbed. She died in 1852 at the age of 83. Quote:
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1 Maccabees 4:36-37,52-59 / Lk 19:45-48 Today we get a happy ending to the dreadful story we've been hearing all week, starting with the Greeks' brutal imposition of their culture upon the Jews, the revolt that followed, and finally the triumph of the Maccabees in expelling the Greeks and restoring the temple and its worship. It is a happy ending for awhile, but students of history know that it was neither the first nor the last "ending." There had been happy endings before, when David first seized Jerusalem from the pagans and when his son Solomon had built the first great temple. And then there was the time when the Israelites came back from captivity in Babylon in the sixth century and rebuilt the temple which had been burned to the ground. And long after the Maccabees' triumph in the second century before Christ, the temple would need to be rebuilt and rededicated yet again by King Herod during Jesus' childhood awaiting its final destruction in 70 A.D. In this life, sad or happy endings are rarely endings, but only moments on the road. There's always another chapter in the story. And that points to the issue we need to focus on today. The journey we're on is a very long one, with many twists and turns, and inevitably with moments when we lose our focus and lose connection with the Lord. It can happen at any time or stage in our journey, whether we're young or old. The temple got rebuilt and rededicated so many times precisely because this was true about the Israelites, as it is true about us. That's reality. We can face that reality by engaging each new day with open and listening hearts, that are able to hear the Lord speaking to us when we're wandering into dark places. We can face that reality by making prudent course changes early and often. And each time, God will help us. |