"I spent the entire night in the new World … carrying the Blessed Sacrament to all parts of the land … I had all my sacrifices to offer: a mother, sisters, family, my mountain! When you say to me, 'Now I send you,' I will respond quickly, 'I go.'”
Welcome to "North American Sanctity," a series on holy men and women, boys and girls, saints and those on the road to sainthood, from Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Some will be familiar, others less so; but all are inspiring!
By Kimberly Bruce
She is called “The Lady of Mercy,” an immigrant to the United States who opened schools and orphanages to teach and evangelize Native American and immigrant children in the 1800’s. They called her “Woman Who Prays Always.”
She is St. Rose-Philippine Duchesne (feast day: Nov. 18), the foundress of the American branch of the Society of the Sacred Heart.
“Rose-Philippine’s whole life was transformed and illuminated by love for Christ in the Eucharist,” said Pope St. John Paul II at her canonization in 1988. “During the long hours she spent in front of the Most Holy Sacrament, she learned to always live in the presence of God. In him she placed her hopes and desires.”
French Revolution threat
Rose-Philippine Duchesne (pronounced DOO-shen) was born on Aug. 29, 1769, in Grenoble, France. She knew from her earliest years that she wanted to be a nun. At the age of 18, she became a novice at the Convent of the Visitation of St. Marie d’en Haut.
As this was during the time of the French Revolution, nuns were soon expelled from their convents. Sister Rose-Philippine returned home and risked her life by nursing prisoners, helping priests in the underground, feeding the poor, and opening a school for homeless children.
At the end of the war, Sr. Rose-Philippine met and befriended (future saint) Mother Madeleine Sophie Barat and in 1804 chose to enter her Society of the Sacred Heart.
Sister Rose-Philippine had longed to be a missionary to the Native Americans in the New World. She soon shared with Mother Barat a spiritual experience she had before the Blessed Sacrament while at adoration one Holy Thursday evening. She wrote:
I spent the entire night in the new World … carrying the Blessed Sacrament to all parts of the land … I had all my sacrifices to offer: a mother, sisters, family, my mountain! When you say to me, "Now I send you,” I will respond quickly, “I go.”
Twelve years were to pass, however, before Sr. Rose-Philippine’s dream of becoming a missionary to the Americas would be fulfilled.
Obedience
Sister Rose-Philippine had to remain obedient, patient, and at peace with her Mother Superior’s decision not to send her abroad during the ensuing years. She understood the importance of submitting to one’s Superior in religious life, as unto God.
Saint Faustina, likewise, understood the value of honoring one’s Superior. As she said in her Diary:
All the sisters should respect the Superior as the Lord Jesus himself, as I mentioned when speaking about the vow of obedience. They should behave toward her with childlike trust, and should never murmur or find fault with her commands, as this is very displeasing to God. Let each be guided by a spirit of faith in her relationship to superiors; let her ask with simplicity for all that she needs. God forbid that it ever happen or be repeated that any of the sisters would be a cause of sorrow or tears to the Superior. Let each one know that as the fourth commandment obliges a child to honor its parents, in like manner is the religious bound to respect her Superior. Only a bad religious would take the liberty of judging her Superior. Let the sisters be sincere with the Superior, telling her about everything and about their needs with childlike simplicity” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 567).
At last, in response to the request of Bishop William Du Bourg of New Orleans, Louisiana, for nuns to assist him in his diocese, Mother Barat sent Sr. Rose-Philippine and four others to America.
Mission to America
Arriving after 11 weeks at sea, the sisters were shocked to discover that the bishop had made no provisions for them to live amongst the Native American population, but, instead, sent them on their own to St. Charles, Missouri. As now-Mother Rose-Philippine described it, it seemed to her “the remotest village in the U.S.”
With grit and determination, in 1818 Mother and her nuns opened the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi. Extreme cold, lack of funds, and hunger led them to relocate to Florissant, Missouri, where they went on to found the first of several Catholic Indian schools.
“Increasingly filled with the love of God, and nourished by the ardent worship of the Holy Eucharist, Rose-Philippine Duchesne felt irresistibly pushed towards poor children and destitute families,” St. John Paul II wrote.
Louise Callan, RSCJ, author of a biography about St. Rose-Philippine, said:
Mother Duchesne suffered practically every hardship the frontier had to offer … poor 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.
“Woman Who Prays Always”
At the age of 72, Mother Rose-Philippine was finally given an opportunity to work amongst the Potawatomi Indian tribe in Sugar Creek, Kansas. Though she was no longer Superior, and not in the best of health, the head of the Jesuit mission pleaded, “She must come; 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 on the work.” There she established a mission school for girls and tended the sick.
Amongst these natives, Sr. Rose-Philippine received the nickname “Woman Who Prays Always.” Legend has it that the children would often sprinkle bits of paper on her habit while she was kneeling in prayer, only to return hours later to find the papers undisturbed.
Sister lasted only a year amongst the tribe due to her poor health and returned to Missouri to oversee her houses. She died on Nov. 18, 1852, at the age of 83.
May we learn to be as patient and obedient to the will of God in our own lives as St. Rose-Philippine was in hers. Like her, may we trust God’s timing and stay close to Him in the Holy Eucharist and the Sacraments of the Church.
Saint Rose-Philippine Duchesne, pray for us!
Next in the series: Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, Nov. 23.
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