SAINT OF THE MONTH NEWSLETTER • MAY, 2014 • WWW.CARMELITEMISSIONS.ORG CARMELITE MISSIONS

Mary’s Blessing to All...

Happy Mother’s Day,

To our friends of Carmelite Missions who are mothers, grandmothers, and all those special people who are like mothers to others! We love you and wish you a very happy day.

As in the past years, a Novena of Masses will be offered at Carmelite Missions. It will begin on Mother’s Day, May 11th. I am enclosing a card that you can use to list the names of those living or deceased whom you would like to be especially remembered.

To join you in prayer at this special time for those you love so much, is one small way that we have of expressing our gratitude for your goodness to us and to the poor we serve in many parts of the underdeveloped world.

Again this May, our SAINT OF THE MONTH is the story of one of those special people who are like mothers to others. She is the fourth U.S. citizen to be canonized – St. Rose Philippine Duchesne. She left the comfort of her native France in the early 1800s to share the GOOD NEWS of GOD’s loving kindness with the Indian people in the area around present day St. Louis, Missouri. With this gift, she also brought the touch of gentleness – a mother’s touch – to the American frontier.

Our fourth canonized Saint is an inspiration to Carmelite missionaries who, like St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, still journey to harsh and distant places…

To bring good news to the poor; To proclaim liberty to captives, Recovery of sight to the blind And release to prisoners, To announce a year of favor from the Lord. Luke 4:18-19

May St. Rose Philippine Duchesne be an inspiration to you, dear friend of Carmelite Missions! You make our work possible. And may Mary, the Mother and Beauty of Carmel, bless you this May and always!

With my love,

St. Rose Philippine’s kind of work continues in India where Carmelite Sisters Fr. Joseph P. O’Brien, O. Carm. minister to desperately poor people. They especially teach their people how to make Director of Carmelite Missions a better life for themselves and their families. Saint of the Month  St. Rose Philippine Duchesne  “A Mother’s Heart on the American Frontier”

When Mother Rose Philippine Duchesne died in St. Charles, Missouri, in 1852, Father Pierre Jean De Smet, the celebrated missioner to the Indians, wrote her religious Sisters, urging them to publish a biography. “No greater saint,” ever died in Missouri, or perhaps in the whole Union.”

The Church agreed with Father De Smet because in 1940 this valiant woman was given the title of “Blessed” and declared worthy of veneration and imitation. On July 3, 1988, she was canonized by Pope John Paul II becoming the fourth United States Saint.

Rose Philippine Duchesne was born into a prosperous merchant family of , France, in 1769. Since she was born on the eve of the feast of St. Rose of Lima, first saint of the New World, she was given that saint’s name. Among the visitors who came to her parents’ home when she was a child was a Jesuit missioner from whose stories about Indians were to become a motivation in her future life.

The young girl was educated by was realized when the resulted in the expulsion of many religious tutors and went to a school directed by communities, including the Visitation Sisters, and Rose was forced to return home. Visitation Sisters. When she was seventeen and her family was seeking a suitable In the years that followed she tried to live as a religious: tending the sick, visiting those husband for her, she announced that she in prison, and educating the young. was joining the who were teaching her. At first the family objected but later When ended the persecution of the Church and signed a concordat with the relented when she stood firm. However, in 1801, Rose bought the buildings of her old convent and sought to restore a when she was preparing to make her first Visitation presence, but her effort failed. Hearing of a new group of Sisters that was starting, profession a year and a half later, her the Society of the Sacred Heart, she approached the founder, the future St. Madeleine Sophie father forbade it because of the Barat, and offered her the buildings she had bought; thus, at the age of thirty-three, Rose uncertainty of the times. His foreboding Philippine Duchesne became a postulant in the new community. In 1806, a Cistercian abbot who had sent the first Trappists to North America visited her Even though she was a woman of convent and spoke about the missions across the Atlantic. The visit reawakened her indomitable spirit, with great trust in God’s missionary ardor and she spoke to Mother Barat about sending her to the missions. While providence, the years had fatigued Mother Mother Barat approved in principle, she told her zealous friend that the new community Duchesne. When she was seventy-one years would have to have firm footing at home before venturing overseas. old, however, she got the opportunity to realize her dream of working exclusively among the Indians. It happened this way: in Gentleness on the American Frontier 1840 an assistant of Mother Barat came Rose Duchesne was forty-nine years of age when the order finally came to her. Mother from France to inspect the Mississippi Barat had been visited by Bishop Louis William Dubourg of St. Louis who asked for some of foundations. Mother Duchesne asked to her religious when they could be spared. The matter might have been put off indefinitely resign as American superior and her except for gentle reminders from Mother Duchesne! In March, 1818, Mother Duchesne led request was granted. a band of four religious to a ship at Bordeaux and set sail for the New World. The journey in those days was not easy. They spent eleven weeks at sea before was reached. At the same time, Father De Smet was “Seasickness is really evil,” Mother Duchesne wrote back. “It affects the head as well as the asking the assistant general for some nuns stomach and makes one useless for anything.” to open a school among the ’s at Sugar Creek in present-day Kansas. Mother But the journey was not over at New Orleans. Ahead lay forty-seven days up the Duchesne asked to be included in the Mississippi to St. Louis, which they reached on what Mother Duchesne thought was a contingent of four nuns to be assigned propitious day, May 29, feast of the Sacred Heart, only to learn that she and her companions there. She was told she could go “if you are were unexpected and that there was no work for them among the Indians! able to travel.”

Bishop Dubourg finally decided to send them to St. Charles, Missouri, where there were French, Creole and English Catholics, poor and in need. He found them a log cabin in which “The Woman Who Always Prays” to live and there on the frontier these refined French women opened the first free school Thus a dream that began with a girl of west of the Mississippi. eight in Grenoble, France, was finally realized by an old woman in an Indian A year later a new foundation was begun at Florissant. It included a convent, a boarding village in what was to be the state of Kansas; school, and a when the first American girl, Mary Layton, joined the new community. but dreams do not always turn out as Still later, an orphanage, academy, and free school were begun in St. Louis. In time she expected. Mother Duchesne was too old to would found six houses of her society from New Orleans to St. Louis, making frequent and learn the Potawatomi language, so she lengthy trips on the mighty river. On one journey yellow fever broke out on the boat and she spoke the international language of nursed the sick, baptizing one man before he died. Through her ministrations, she caught kindness and love. Since she could not the disease herself and she was put ashore at Natchez to die. teach, she decided to pray for the success of their work. She spent four hours in the She survived, as she was to survive other tribulations and trials which came her way and morning and four hours in the evening lost that of her Sisters. She was able to share some of her burdens with the Jesuits when they in prayer in the simple chapel. The Indians arrived in St. Louis in 1823; but as one Jesuit wrote, “It is difficult to tell whether in the named her “Woman Who Always Prays.” ensuing period the Sacred Heart owed more to the Society of Jesus or the Fathers to the nuns.” Bishop Dubourg had moved his headquarter to New Orleans, so the Jesuits became One young Indian, who found it the ones Mother Duchesne relied upon for advice and assistance. difficult to believe that Mother Duchesne could remain kneeling for long periods of Mother Duchesne and her nuns brought gentility to the American frontier. They time in profound prayer, one day crept into provided education for poor children who otherwise would never have had any. They trained the chapel and arranged corn kernels on girls not only to become wives and mothers but to be ladies. The contributions they made to the skirt of her habit. When the Indian those living in the Mississippi Valley have never been truly recognized, but they were great. youth returned hours later, Mother NON-PROFIT CARMELITE MISSIONS ORGANIZATION 8501 Bailey Road • Darien, IL 60561-8418 U.S. POSTAGE www.carmelitemissions.org PAID Rescigno’s Marketing Connections

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Duchesne was still absorbed in prayer, and the kernels of corn remained exactly as he had The feast day of this valiant woman is placed them. Mother Duchesne’s new dream was to go to the Indians of the Rocky observed on November 17. This builder of Mountains, but it was not to be. Her health began to fail and she was recalled to Missouri, “I Catholic America wrote home in her early do not know the reason for this recall,” she said, “but God knows and that is enough.” days in Missouri of her poverty and difficulties. Her brother immediately replied Her last years were spent at St. Charles, where despite ill health she continued her long that he would send her the money for prayers and mortifications. One Sister who knew her well wrote: “She was the St. Francis of passage back to France. “Use the money to Assisi of the Society. Everything in and about her was stamped with the seal of a crucified pay the passage of two more nuns coming life. She would have liked to disappear from the sight of men, and may it be said no one to America!” she replied, revealing the stuff occupied less space in this world than Madame Duchesne. Her room was a miserable hole of which our Catholic pioneers were made. with a single window, in which paper supplied the place of some of the panes; her bed was a mattress two inches thick, laid on the ground by night and put away in the day in the cupboard; her only covering at night was an old piece of black stuff with a cross like a pall.” (The preceding story is reprinted with permission: Nevins, Albert J., Thus on November 18, 1852, at the age of eighty-three Mother Duchesne’s missionary Builders of Catholic America, life ended. The work she founded grew from a one-room log school in St. Charles, Missouri, Our Sunday Visitor publishing, to colleges extending from New York to California. The religious of the province she founded Huntington, Indiana, pp. 218-224) have carried her spirit to South America and Australia.

Remember the Carmelite Missions when you write your will.