An interesting history lesson . .
.
The Woman Who Never Gave Up
The Life of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne
BY: JEANNE KUN
Kaskasia, Michigamea, Cahokia—strange-sounding
Indian names peppered the priest’s conversation as he sat in the Duchesnes’
study in France and told of his work in far away North America.
As young Philippine listened to Father Jean-Baptist Aubert, a
new desire began to burn in her heart: to be a missionary among the Native
Americans. Little did she realize that it would take more than sixty years for
her dream to be fulfilled. Many thwarted hopes and deferred dreams marked the
long course of her life, but Rose Philippine Duchesne learned to recognize and
embrace in these disappointments the plans God had for her.
Under the
Shadow of a Revolution. Philippine
was born in 1769 into the respectable and civic-minded Duchesne family in
Grenoble, in a French province bordered by the Alps. When she was eighteen, she
entered the Visitation convent, Sainte-Marie-d’en-Haut. But just as Philippine
was preparing to make her final vows, her father refused to give his permission
because he was concerned about her future safety.
Monsieur Duchesne’s fears proved well-founded as the church
became a victim of the French Revolution. Begun in 1789 to champion the rights
of the “third estate,” or general population of France, the revolution soon
took a violent turn, imprisoning members of the “privileged” first and second
estates (clergy and aristocracy), banning Catholic worship, and confiscating
church properties. In 1792, the revolutionary government forced the Visitation
sisters to close their convent. Twenty-three-year-old Philippine, disappointed
that she had never taken her vows, reentered the world outside the cloister.
For the next twelve years, Philippine trod an extraordinary
path. During the Reign of Terror, when countless priests and nuns were led to
the guillotine, she risked her own life by caring for priests who managed to
avoid capture and go into hiding. While she followed a personal routine of
prayer and meditation, she also cared for the sick and dying and taught street
urchins.
When the political scene began to stabilize, Philippine was able
to gain the legal title to her former convent, where she tried to regroup the
scattered Visitation sisters and reestablish their community life. Her efforts
failed, however, and in 1804, their spiritual director suggested that
Philippine and three friends apply to the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Progressing
along God’s Pathways. The
Society of the Sacred Heart—an order dedicated to teaching young girls—had been
founded a few years earlier by Madeleine Sophie Barat. Barat had hoped to help
revive Catholic life in France as the country recovered from the revolution.
Mother Barat visited Philippine, who was thirty-five by this time, and accepted
her and her companions into the society, convent building and all. Thus began a
devoted friendship that lasted nearly fifty years.
Though a full ten years younger than Philippine, Mother Barat
did not hesitate to counsel her new sister. She recognized Philippine’s headstrong
impetuosity and through the influence of her friendship, sought to help the
older woman become more patient and gentle.
With her years of experience and deep life of prayer, Philippine
became a trusted support to Barat as the young society expanded. She was the
order’s first general secretary and was placed in charge of their first convent
and school in Paris. Yet all this time Philippine never lost sight of her
childhood dream to be a missionary in America. For fourteen years, even though
she encouraged this desire, Mother Barat kept Philippine in France, where she
felt the society most needed her strength and talents.
Then, in 1817, it seemed that Philippine’s dream would finally
be fulfilled. When Louis Dubourg, Bishop of Upper and Lower Louisiana (an area
that also encompassed Missouri) came to France seeking priests and religious to
serve in his vast mission territory, Philippine fell to her knees and begged to
be sent out. Finally, Mother Barat consented, and at the age of forty-nine,
when many women would prefer security and comfort, Philippine threw herself
into a demanding and even dangerous adventure. She was dismayed, however, by
Barat’s decision to appoint her “superior” of the four sisters who set sail
with her.
Striking
Roots in America. The story
of the next twenty-three years is one of courageous steadiness and
perseverance, and again of expectations thwarted and dreams deferred. After an
eleven-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean and a six-week steamboat trip up
the Mississippi River, the sisters met Bishop Dubourg in St. Louis, Missouri.
There he informed them, to Philippine’s great disappointment, that instead of
establishing a mission to Native Americans, they were to establish a school for
the daughters of Missouri settlers, a work he judged more immediately crucial.
Just a few weeks after their arrival in St. Charles, Missouri,
Mother Duchesne and her sisters opened the first tuition-free girls’ school
west of the Mississippi. They endured the hardships of rugged frontier life: a harsh
climate, cramped lodgings with little privacy, frequent shortages of money and
supplies, and devastating illnesses such as cholera. But they also established
schools that offered an impressive academic curriculum as well as a solid
grounding in the Christian faith. The tuition from boarding schools for
wealthier girls helped cover the costs of orphanages and running free day
schools for poorer students. This work was especially dear to Philippine
because it recalled her work during the Reign of Terror when she had helped the
poor of Grenoble.
Within twelve years, the sisters opened six schools in Missouri
and Louisiana. They were staffed by sixty-four sisters: fourteen from Europe
and fifty from the Mississippi Valley who had joined the society. Under Mother
Duchesne’s leadership, the Society of the Sacred Heart had clearly taken root
in American soil. Yet, blinded by her own humility, she had little sense of the
success of her efforts. She often considered herself a failure, especially as
superior, and repeatedly wrote to Mother Barat asking to be relieved of her
office. However, many others saw things differently. Philippine was constantly
praised both for her hard work and for her deep prayer life.
Although Mother Duchesne ungrudgingly embraced her role as
teacher and superior, she never abandoned her dream to go to the Indians. Day
after day, she continued to pray that God would grant her desire.
On the
Banks of Sugar Creek. In 1841,
when Philippine was seventy-one years old and in poor health, a Jesuit
missionary named Peter De Smet proposed that the sisters start a school among
the Potawatomi, a tribe among whom there were already some Catholic converts as
a result of the Jesuits’ labors. From France, Mother Barat wrote to Mother
Galitzin (the new superior in America who had recently replaced Philippine) and
asked her to include Philippine in the mission venture. “Remember that in
leaving for America, good Mother Duchesne had only this work in view,” she
wrote. “It was for the sake of the Indians that she felt inspired to establish
the order in America. I believe it enters into the designs of God that we
should profit, if possible, by the opportunity offered us.” Philippine was, of
course, delighted.
When the other sisters questioned the prudence of including
Philippine because of her age, Fr. Peter Verhaegen —another Jesuit
missionary—insisted: “If we have to carry her all the way on our shoulders, she
is coming with us. She may not be able to do much work, but she will assure
success to the mission by praying for us. Her very presence will draw down all
manner of heavenly favors.” When the group arrived in Sugar Creek, Kansas, five
hundred braves rode out in gala dress to welcome them!
Weak and ailing, Philippine could not take up the demands of
teaching or even master the Potawatomi language. “If Alexander the Great wept
on the shores of the ocean because he could not carry his conquest further,”
she wrote, “I might weep also at the thought that my advanced age prevents me
from saving so many poor people.” But she did what she was able to do best: She
prayed. And as Fr. Verhaegen had prophesied, God poured out immense grace upon
the mission.
Philippine spent long hours before the Blessed Sacrament in the
log chapel. As she knelt before the tabernacle, lost in prayer, many of the
Indians would come into the church to watch her. Noiselessly they would
approach her, kneel, and kiss the hem of her worn habit or the fringe of her
old shawl. They were also deeply touched by her kindness as she sat with the dying
to comfort them.
“The Indians had the greatest admiration for her, asked her to
pray for them, and called her Quah-Kah-Ka-num- ad—‘Woman-who-prays-always,’”
wrote one of the sisters. “Every-one admitted that a great number of baptisms
resulted from her prayers. Almost every Sunday afternoon three or four men or
women and their families were baptized, and Mother Duchesne inscribed all their
names in the register.”
The
Designs of God. But
Philippine’s joy would be short-lived. Concerned about her poor health, Bishop
Peter Kenrick of St. Louis considered it unwise for her to remain in Sugar
Creek. Mother Barat soon concurred and wrote to ask her “eldest daughter” to
make her “greatest sacrifice” and return to Missouri.
Mother Duchesne arrived back in St. Louis on June 29, 1842,
exactly a year from the day she had set out for Sugar Creek. In a letter from
this time, she poignantly described her acceptance of God’s plan: “I cannot put
out of my mind the thought of the savages, and my ambition carries me even to
the Rockies. I can only adore the designs of God, who has taken me from the
thing I had so long desired.”
Philippine spent ten more years at St. Charles, where she had
established the first school. She remained interested in all the society’s
foundations and filled her days with prayer and whatever small services she
could do: teaching a few French-speaking students, sewing vestments for her
missionary friends, mending for her community. When she died on November 18, 1852,
her old friend Fr. Verhaegen was present to give her the last sacraments.
Mother Rose Philippine Duchesne was canonized by Pope John Paul
II in 1988. The State of Missouri named her first among the women on its
Pioneer Roll of Fame. The inscription on the plaque reads: “Some names must not
wither.” And among the Potawatomi, Quah-Kah-Ka-num-ad is still remembered with
great fondness and reverence.
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