Dedication
of St. Peter and Paul
Romæ Dedicátio Basilicárum
sanctórum Petri et Pauli Apostolórum. Eárum primam,
restitútam in ampliórem formam, Summus Póntifex Urbánus
Octávus consecrávit hac ipsa recurrénte die; álteram
vero, miserándo incéndio pénitus consúmptam, ac
magnificéntius reædificátam, Pius Nonus die décima
Decémbris solémni ritu consecrávit, ejúsque ánnuam
commemoratiónem hodiérna die agéndam indíxit.
At Rome, the dedication of the basilica of the holy apostles Peter and Paul.
The former, having been enlarged, was on this day solemnly consecrated by
Urban VIII; while the latter, more beautifully rebuilt after its total destruction
by fire, was solemnly dedicated on the 10th of December by Pius IX, though
the feast in commemoration of that event was transferred to this day.
THE DEDICATION OF THE BASILICAS
OF ST PETER AND OF ST PAUL
AS the commemorative feast of the dedication of the Archbasilica of the
Lateran is kept by the whole Western church, so also is that of the other
greater patriarchal basilicas at Rome, St Mary Major on August 5, and St
Peter’s and St Paul’s together on this day. Amongst all the places that the
blood of martyrs has rendered illustrious, that part of the Vatican Hill,
which was consecrated with the blood and enriched with the relics of the
Prince of the Apostles, has always been the most venerable. “The sepulchers
of those who have served Christ crucified” says
St John Chrysostom, “surpass the palaces of kings; not so much in the greatness
and beauty of the buildings (though in this also they go beyond them) as in
other things of more importance, such as the multitude of those who with devotion
and joy repair to them. For the emperor himself, clothed in purple, goes
to the tombs of the saints and kisses them; humbly prostrate on the ground
he beseeches the same saints to pray to God for him; and he who wears a royal
crown looks on it as a great privilege from God that a tentmaker and a fisherman, and these dead, should be his protectors and defenders, and for
this he begs with great earnestness.”
The martyrdom of St Peter took place according to tradition
at the circus of Caligula in Nero’s gardens on the Vatican Hill, and he was
buried nearby. It is held by some that in the year 258, to avoid desecration
during the persecution of Valerian, the relics of St Peter, together with
those of St Paul, were translated for a time to the obscure catacomb now called
St Sebastian’s. But they came back to their original resting-place, and in
323 the Emperor Constantine began
the building of the basilica of St Peter over the tomb of the Apostle. For
nearly twelve hundred years this magnificent church remained substantially
the same, a great papal establishment gradually growing up between it and
the Vatican Hill. This was made the permanent residence of the popes on their
return from the exile at Avignon, and by the middle of the fifteenth century
the old church was found to be inadequate.
In 1506 Pope Julius II inaugurated
a new building, designed by Bramante, whose erection was carried on over a
period of a hundred and twenty years, undergoing many alterations, additions
and modifications at the hands of various popes and architects, especially
Paul V and Michelangelo. The
new basilica of St Peter, as we see it today, was consecrated by Pope Urban VIII on November 18, 1626, the day
of its original dedication. The high altar was set up over the Apostle’s resting-place,
which until 1942 had been inaccessible
for many centuries. Though St Peter’s must always yield in dignity to the
cathedral of St John Lateran, it has nevertheless for long been the most
important church of the world, both in fact and in the hearts of Catholic
Christians.
The martyrdom of St Paul took place
some seven miles from that of St Peter at Aquae Salviae (now called Tre Fontane)
on the Ostian Way. He was buried about two miles from there, on the property
of a lady named Lucina, in a small vault. Early in the third century, according
to Eusebius (Hist. ecci., ii, 25, 7), a Roman priest, Caius,
refers to the tombs of SS. Peter and Paul: “I can show you the trophies [tombs]
of the apostles. If you go to the Vatican or on the road to Ostia you will
see the trophies of those who founded this church.” Constantine is said to
have begun a basilica here too, but the great church of St Paul-outside-the-Walls
was principally the work of the Emperor Theodosius’ I and Pope St Leo the
Great. It remained in its primitive beauty and simplicity till the year 1823, when it was consumed by fire. The whole
world contributed to its restoration, non-Christians as well as non-Catholics
sending gifts and contributions. During the course of the work the fourth-century
tomb was found, with the inscription PAULO APOST MART: To
Paul, apostle and martyr; it was not opened. Pope Pius IX consecrated the
new basilica, on the lines of the old one, on December 10, 1854, but the
annual commemoration was appointed for this day, as the Roman Martyrology
records.
The
reader may be referred to Cardinal Schuster, The Sacramentary
(Eng. trans.), vol. v, pp. 280-287; to 0. Marucchi, Basiliques et églises de Rome (1902), and Ch. Hülsen, Le chiese di Roma (1927). The
martyrdom and burial-places of SS. Peter and Paul have already been touched
upon, with further references, herein under June 29; and Cf. the first
entry under November 9.
“We do not”, says
St Augustine, “build churches or appoint priesthoods, sacred rites and sacrifices
to the martyrs, because, not the
martyrs, but the God of the martyrs, is our God. Who among the faithful ever
heard a priest, standing at the altar set up over the body of a martyr to
the honour and worship of God, say in praying: We offer up sacrifices to
thee, Peter, or Paul, or Cyprian? We do not build churches to martyrs
as to gods, but as memorials to men departed this life, whose souls live with
God. Nor do we make altars to sacrifice on them to the martyrs, but to their
God and our God.”
St. Peter’s is probably the most famous church in Christendom.
Massive in scale and a veritable museum of art and architecture, it began
on a much humbler scale. Vatican Hill was a simple cemetery where believers
gathered at St. Peter’s tomb to pray. In 319 Constantine built on the site
a basilica that stood for more than a thousand years until, despite numerous
restorations, it threatened to collapse. In 1506 Pope Julius II ordered it
razed and reconstructed, but the new basilica was not completed and dedicated
for more than two centuries.
St. Paul’s Outside the Walls stands near the Abaazia delle Tre
Fontane, where St. Paul is believed to have been beheaded. The largest church
in Rome until St. Peter’s was rebuilt, the basilica also rises over the traditional
site of its namesake’s grave. The most recent edifice was constructed after
a fire in 1823. The first basilica was also Constantine’s doing.
Constantine’s building projects enticed the first of a centuries-long
parade of pilgrims to Rome. From the time the basilicas were first built
until the empire crumbled under “barbarian” invasions, the two churches, although
miles apart, were linked by a roofed colonnade of marble columns.
Comment: Peter, the rough fisherman
whom Jesus named the rock on which the Church is built, and the educated Paul,
reformed persecutor of Christians, Roman citizen and missionary to the Gentiles,
are the original odd couple. The major similarity in their faith-journeys
is the journey’s end: Both, according to tradition, died a martyr’s death
in Rome—Peter on a cross and Paul beneath the sword. Their combined gifts
shaped the early Church and believers have prayed at their tombs from the
earliest days.
Quote: Quote: “It is extraordinarily
interesting that Roman pilgrimage began at an…early time. Pilgrims did not
wait for the Peace of the Church [Constantine’s edict of toleration] before
they visited the tombs of the Apostles. They went to Rome a century before
there were any public churches and when the Church was confined to the tituli
[private homes] and the catacombs. The two great pilgrimage sites were exactly
as today—the tombs, or memorials, of St. Peter upon the Vatican Hill and the
tomb of St. Paul off the Ostian Way” (H.V. Morton, This Is Rome).
On the day of 18 November
The dedication of the basilicas
of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles, the first of which was built by the emperor
Constantine on the Vatican hill over the grave of Saint Peter, but having
fallen into ruins in days of old, was rebuilt on a larger scale and re-consecrated
on this very day; the second, built on the Ostian Way by the emperors Theodosius
and Valentinianus, was lamentably destroyed by fire and re-consecrated on
the tenth day of December after the interior was restored. The brotherhood
of the Apostles and the unity of the Church are in some way expressed in their
common celebration.
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952
St. Odo o spread Cluny's influence to monasteries
Turónis, in Gállia, tránsitus beáti Odónis,
Abbátis Cluniacénsis.
At Tours in France, the passing of blessed Odo, abbot
of Cluny.
942 ST ODO OF CLUNY, ABBOT (A.D.)
FROM the middle of the tenth century
until the beginning of the twelfth the abbey of Cluny in Burgundy was the
most powerful influence in the monasticism of western Europe and played a
part in religious affairs second only to that of the papacy itself; as the
centre and directing authority of a vast monastic reform.
It affected the life and spirit
of the monks of St Benedict for a far longer period, and its influence can
be traced even till today. Cluny owed its driving-power and achievements principally
to seven of its eight first abbots, of whom St Odo was the second. He was
brought up in the family of Fulk II, Count of Anjou, and afterwards in that
of William, Duke of Aquitaine, who founded the abbey of Cluny. At nineteen
Odo received the tonsure, and was instituted to a canonry in St Martin’s
church at Tours, and he spent some years studying in Paris. Here he gave
much time to music, an enthusiasm that was shared by his master, Remigius
of Auxerre. One day, in reading the Rule of St Benedict, Odo was shocked
to see how much his life fell short of the rules of perfection there laid
down, and he determined to embrace the monastic state. He some time after
went to the monastery of Baumeles-Messieurs in the diocese of Besançon,
where the abbot, Berno, admitted him to the habit in 909.
The
abbey of Cluny was founded in the following year by Duke William, and was
committed to the care of St Berno, who put St Odo in charge of the monastery
school at Baume. It is recorded that on one occasion while Odo was on a journey
the daughter of his host for the night appealed to him secretly to help her
she was going shortly to be married, against her will. He could not resist
her tears and entreaties, and enabled the girl to escape from her home, taking
her with him to Baume. Not unnaturally, the abbot was indignant at his subject’s
rashness, and ordered Odo to look carefully after the girl and make proper
provision for her safety. Accordingly, after taking her meals to her daily
and instructing her in the religious life, he found a place for her in a convent
of nuns. With age came more prudence and, when he was about forty-eight, St
Odo was appointed to succeed St Berno as abbot of Cluny.
Berno had already undertaken the reformation of a number of monasteries
from Cluny, and under Odo the number grew apace, among them being the famous
house of Fleury on the Loire, which was destined to have a considerable influence
in England. Of Odo’s school at Cluny it was said that, “A boy is brought up
as well there as a prince in his father’s castle”. But it was no life of
ease. A monk had once complained to St Odo that St Berno ruled Baume with
a rod of iron, but a hard and rigid discipline
was required to keep order among the vigorous spirits of the tenth century,
and Cluny was no exception. Odo also ruled with a rod of iron, and would
intimidate refractory monks with stories yet more terrific than his own
discipline. But not always. In exhorting them to deeds of charity he told
one day of a young student who, while entering the church for Matins early
one cold winter’s morning, saw a half-naked beggar, freezing under the porch.
The student took off his cloak and wrapped it round him, and went into the
cold church for the long office. After Lauds he lay down on his bed to get
warm, and as he rolled the blankets round himself found a gold piece, more
than sufficient to buy a new cloak. “I did not then know the name of the
hero of this incident”, says the biographer, “but I have found it out since.”
It was, of course, Odo himself who at Tours had learned the spirit of St
Martin.
In 936 St
Odo made his first visit to Rome, called thither by Pope Leo VII. Hugh of
Provence, who called himself king of Italy and who had considerable respect
for St Odo, and it was to try to conclude a peace between him and Alberic,
“Patrician of the Romans”, that Odo had been summoned, was besieging the city.
His first, temporary success was the negotiation of a marriage between Alberic
and Hugh’s daughter. At the abbey of St Paul-outside-the-Walls he “regulated
the spiritual life of the monastery in an apostolic way and by his words
kindled faith, piety and love of truth in all hearts.” The spirit of Cluny
had been carried beyond the borders of France, and the influence of St Odo
was felt in the monasteries of Monte Cassino, Pavia, Naples, Salerno and
elsewhere in Italy.
Once an attempt was made on his life, a peasant, who said the monks
of St Paul’s owed him some money, attempting to brain him with a stone. Odo
paid the man and thought no more about it, till he heard that Alberic had
sentenced him to lose his right hand for his intended crime. Thereupon the
saint went to the prince and got the sentence annulled, and the man set free.
Twice more within six years Odo had to go to Rome to try and keep the peace
between Hugh and Alberic for the distracted pope, and on each occasion he
extended the sphere of his reforming zeal. Meanwhile in France the work went
on, secular nobles handing over to him monasteries over which they had exercised
an un-canonical control and superiors inviting him to visit their abbeys and
prescribe for their communities. As usual there were plenty of monks who
resented being jolted out of their easy-going ways, and put every obstacle
in the way of the reformer. At one house it was made a grievance against the
Cluny monks that they washed their underclothes after Vespers on Saturday.
When they made no reply but went on with their washing, the critic exclaimed,
“I was not made a snake to hiss or an ox to low, but a man with a human voice.
Is this how you come to teach us the Rule of St Benedict ?” and departed in
indignation to complain to the abbot. At Fleury St Odo was received at first
with swords and stones, some monks even threatening his life if he entered
the monastery. He talked gently to them, gave them three days to cool down,
and then rode up to the entrance on his donkey as if nothing had happened.
“They received him like a father and his escort had nothing to do but to
go away.”
In the year 942 St Odo went to Rome for the last time, and
on his return called at the monastery of St Julian at Tours. After assisting
at the solemnities of the feast of his patron, St Martin, he took to his bed,
and died on November 18. One of his last actions was to compose a hymn, still
extant, in honour of St Martin. In spite of his full and very active life
St Odo found time to write, as well as another hymn and twelve
metrical antiphons for St Martin, three books of moral essays, a Life of
St Gerald of Aurillac, and a long epic poem on the Redemption. There is also
a tradition, mentioned by all his biographers, that he wrote several works
on ecclesiastical music; but they have not come down to us, though some falsely bear his name.
John, a
monk of Cluny, and another monk named Nalgodus both wrote lives of Abbot Odo.
These are printed in Mabillon, vol. v, and in Migne, PL., vol. cxxxiii.
E. Sackur in Neues Archiv, vol. xv, pp. 105—112, has
called attention to another recension of the life by John, but it is later
in date. There is a good modern biography by 0. Ringholz (1885), and an attractive,
but rather inaccurate, account, Saint Odon, by Dom du Bourg in the
series “Les Saints”. See also Sackur, Die Gluniacenser, vol. i, pp.
36—120 ; A. Hessel in the Historische Zeitschrzft, vol. 128
(1923), pp. 1—25 ; and for the relations of Cluny with England,
L. M. Smith, The Early History of the Movement of Cluny (1925) and
D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (1949), cap.
viii; Watkin Williams, Monastic Studies (1938), pp. 24-36.
Born near Le Mans, France was raised in the households of Count
Fulk II of Anjou and Duke William of Aquitaine, received the tonsure when
he was nineteen, received a canonry at St. Martin's in Tours, and then spent
several years studying at Paris, particularly music, under Remigius of Auxerre.
Odo became a monk under Berno at Baume-les-Messieurs near Besancon in 909,
was named director of the Baume Monastery school by Berno, who became abbot
of the newly founded Cluny, and in 924 was named abbot of Baume. He succeeded
Berno as second abbot of Cluny in 927, continued Berno's work of reforming
abbeys from Cluny, and in 931 was authorized by Pope John XI to reform the
monasteries of northern France and Italy. Odo was called to Rome by Pope Leo
VII in 936 to arrange peace between Alberic of Rome and Hugh of Provence,
who was besieging the city, and succeeded temporarily by negotiating a marriage
between Alberic and Hugh's daughter; Odo returned to Rome twice in the next
six years to reconcile Alberic and Hugh. Odo spread Cluny's influence to monasteries
all over Europe, encountering and overcoming much opposition, and successfully
persuaded secular rulers to relinquish control of monasteries they had been
illegally controlling. He died at Tours on the way back to Rome on November
18. He wrote hymns, treatises on morality, an epic poem on the Redemption,
and a life of St. Gerald of Aurillac.
ST. ODO: CHANGE OF LIFESTYLE BASED
ON HUMILITY, AUSTERITY
VATICAN CITY, 2 SEP 2009 VIS
In this morning's general audience, held in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall,
the Pope resumed his series of catecheses on the great writers of the mediaeval
Church in East and West. The Holy Father arrived in the Vatican by helicopter
from Castelgandolfo, and returned there following his audience.
Focusing his remarks on St. Odo, Benedict XVI explained how the
saint was born around the year 880, eventually becoming the second abbot
of the famous abbey of Cluny. "From that centre of spiritual life, he was
able to exercise a vast influence on the monasteries of the continent", fomenting
a lifestyle and a spirituality inspired by the Rule of St. Benedict. He died
in 942.
The Pope mentioned some of the saint's virtues, highlighting his
"patience, ... detachment from
the world, zeal for souls, commitment to peace, ... observance of the commandments,
concern for the poor, education of the young and respect for the elderly. One aspect that merits particular
attention is the devotion to the Body and Blood of Christ which Odo - in the
face of a widespread negligence that he vigorously deplored -cultivated with
conviction. He was, in fact, firmly convinced of the real presence of the
Body and Blood of the Lord under the Eucharistic species, by virtue of the
'substantial' conversion of the bread and wine".
St. Odo said that "only
those who are spiritually united to Christ can worthily receive His Eucharistic
Body;
in any other
case, eating His flesh and drinking His blood would not be beneficial, but
harmful".
The Holy Father highlighted
how "St. Odo was a true spiritual guide, both for the monks and for the faithful
of his time. Faced with the 'immensity of vices' spread throughout society,
the remedy he proposed ... was that of a radical change of lifestyle founded
upon humility, austerity, detachment from the ephemeral and adherence to the
eternal. With the profound goodness of his soul, Odo diffused around
him the joy with which he himself was filled. ... Through his resolute activities
he nourished in the monks, and in the lay faithful of his time, a desire
to proceed rapidly along the path of Christian perfection".
Benedict XVI concluded his remarks by expressing the hope that "the
goodness of St. Odo, the joy that derives from faith, ... may touch our hearts
and that we too may discover the source of happiness that comes from the goodness
of God".
AG/ST. ODO/... VIS 090902 (430)
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1769 St. Rose
Phillipine Duchesne Virgin dream of serving Native Americans
Born in Grenoble, France, in
1769, Rose joined the Society of the Sacred Heart. In 1818, when she was forty-nine
years old, Rose was sent to the United States. She founded a boarding school
for daughters of pioneers near St. Louis and opened the first free school
west of the Missouri. At the age of seventy-one, she began a school for Indians,
who soon came to call her "the woman who is always praying". Her biographers
have also stressed her courage in frontier conditions, her singlemindedness
in pursuing her dream of serving Native Americans, and her self-acceptance.
This holy servant of God was beatified by Pope Pius XII in 1940 and canonized
by Pope John Paul II in 1988.
1852 BD PHILIPPINE DUCHESNE, VIRGIN
UNDER May 25 herein there is
printed an account of St Madeleine Sophie Barat and the foundation of the
Society of the Sacred Heart. In the course of it there are references to a
certain Mother Duchesne, who introduced the newly established congregation
to North America; and this Mother Duchesne was beatified in 1940. She was
born in 1769, at Grenoble in Dauphiny, her father being the head of a prosperous
mercantile family. At her christening she was given the names Rose Philippine,
of which the first was a veritable augury, for St Rose of Lima, on the eve
of whose feast she was born, was the first canonized saint of the New World.
There was nothing especially remarkable about her childhood she had a strong
and rather imperious nature (characteristic of her father’s family), she was
of a serious disposition, and she early showed interest in history. At the
age of eight a Jesuit who had worked in Louisiana and told the Duchesnes
stories about the Indians kindled her first enthusiasm for missionary life
and the American land. Philippine went to school with the Visitation nuns
of Sainte-Marie-d’En-haut and also was taught by a tutor with her cousins
the Périers, and she became uncommonly well-educated. Then when she
was seventeen, and her parents were looking around for a husband for her,
she announced her intention of being a nun; and after some opposition she
was allowed to join the community with which she had been at school. Eighteen
months later, however, her father forbade her profession—and for a sound reason
he did not like the outlook for the future in France. And sure enough, in
1791, the Visitandines of Grenoble were expelled, and Philippine returned
to her family, who were now living in the country.
Throughout the years of revolution Philippine
did her best to live in a way in all respects befitting a religious. She looked
after her family; she tended the sick and confessors of the faith and others
in prison, and above all was concerned for the education of children. When
the Holy See concluded its concordat with Napoleon in 1801, she was enabled
to acquire the buildings of her old convent of Sainte-Marie-d’En-haut.
Philippine had always hoped to be instrumental in re-establishing the Visitandine
community of which she had been a member, but now she found the undertaking
even more difficult than she had expected indeed, it proved to be impossible.
On a day in August, 1802—it was in fact the 21st, the feast day of the foundress
of the Visitation nuns, St Jane Frances de Chantal— it was decided to abandon
the venture; and a few days later Philippine and another sister were left
alone in the convent. Unkind outsiders were not slow to say that it was another
example of the “stiffness “ of the Duchesne character, that Sister Philippine
made things difficult in community life. Philippine decided to offer Sainte-Marie-d’En-haut
to Mother Barat, who not long before had begun the first house of the Society
of the Sacred Heart, at Amiens. The proposal was agreed, and on December 31,
1804, Philippine and four others were admitted as postulants at Sainte-Marie.
Thus were brought together, as novice-mistress and as novice, these two souls,
“one of marble, the other of bronze”, St Madeleine Sophie Barat and Bd Philippine
Duchesne. Less than a year later the novice was professed. The months of preparation
had seen a growing-together of foundress and aspirant, a better understanding
of discipline on the part of the young nun who had been so much “on her own”-perhaps
her hardest struggle was to give up personal mortifications and penances
at the word of her mother in religion.
Early in 1806 Sainte-Marie-d’En-haut was visited
by the abbot of La Trappe, Dom Augustine de Lestrange, who three years before
had sent the first Cistercian monks to North America; and this visit served
to inflame Bd Philippine’s desire to be a missionary in that land. Nowadays
we do not think of the United States as mission territory; but a hundred and
forty years ago{quote from 1960} far the greater part of that huge country
was still unsettled by Europeans, or indeed by anybody; the frontier was only
gradually moving west, and the Indians were still a notable proportion of
the population. But though Mother Barat approved in principle, it was still
to be another twelve years before Mother Duchesne achieved her ambition, years
during which the instrument was to be prepared and tempered, both spiritually
and in the handling of affairs. At last the appointed time came. Mgr Dubourg,
Bishop of Louisiana, called on Mother Barat and asked her to let him have
some of her religious as soon as they could be spared from France. She promised
to do so, but would perhaps have put the enterprise off indefinitely had it
not been for the direct and impetuous intervention of Mother Duchesne. And
so, in March 1818, five religious of the Sacred Heart left Bordeaux for the
New World. Mother Duchesne, to her great regret,
had been appointed their superioress.
After a trying
voyage (“Seasickness is really evil”, wrote Bd Philippine, “It affects the
head as well as the stomach, and makes one useless for anything”) the little
party landed at New Orleans on May 29, the feast of the Sacred Heart. They
went up the Mississippi to Saint Louis, then a town of about 6,000 inhabitants,
in what is now Missouri. Here Mgr Dubourg, who found them a house for their
first establishment at Saint Charles, welcomed them: it was a small log cabin.
And here, among the children of the poor, was started the first free school
west of the Mississippi. The white population was in majority Catholic, and
composed of French, Creole, English and others, many of them bi-lingual;
the nuns had been studying English ever since they were assigned to America,
but Bd Philippine never really mastered the language. Two passing remarks
of hers throw light on the sort of people they had to work among:
“Some of our pupils have more gowns
than chemises or, above all, pocket-handkerchiefs”, and “At Portage-des-Sioux
the walls [of the church] were adorned with representations of Bacchus and
Venus... put up out of sheer ignorance”. As for the Indians, “We used to entertain
the pleasing thought of teaching docile and innocent savages, but the women
are idle and given to drink as much as the men”. After a hard winter the
bishop decided to move the community to Florissant, nearer Saint Louis.
A three-storied brick building was provided, and into this the nuns moved
on the two days before Christmas, 1819;
St. Ferdinand's
Convent, built in 1819 under the supervision of Mother Duchesne. This convent
became the first Mother House of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart outside of
France; the site of the first Catholic school for Indian girls in the United
States; the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi; and the first
novitiate for women in the
upper Louisiana Purchase Territory.
Mother Duchesne
wrote a vivid account of the bitterly cold rigors of the move, complicated
by a cow that ran away. The more commodious residence raised the possibility
of starting a novitiate, about which Mgr Dubourg was not too sanguine in view
of the independent American character. But the ground was broken when a postulant
presented herself to be a lay-sister, and the first American to receive the
habit of the Society of the Sacred Heart was clothed on November 22, 1820
her name was Mary Layton.
Old St. Ferdinand's
Church,the oldest Catholic church building between the Mississippi River and
the Rocky Mountains. St. Ferdinand's served as the focal point of the Catholic
Indian Mission movement, begun by Father De la Croix in 1820. Father DeSmet was ordained at St. Ferdinand's
in 1827.
Opening of the novitiate and
the progress of the school were more encouraging signs for the future, and
Bd Philippine herself was getting to understand better the strange people
of a strange land. It must be remembered that she was in her fiftieth year
when she crossed the Atlantic—and she was very much of a Frenchwoman. Americans
baffled her both in their faults and their virtues, and it has been well said,
“she probably never attained, in its perfection, ‘tact in dealing with those
whose customs are not European'”.
In any case she underwent some
of that ‘‘mellowing” that increasing age so often brings, but without losing
the old enthusiasm she could write to Mother Barat in 1821, “I thought I had
reached the height of my ambition—but I am burning with desire to go to Peru.
However, I am more reasonable than I was in France when I used to pester
you with my vain aspirations.’’
In the same year the second house was opened, at Grand Coteau,
about one hundred and fifty miles from New Orleans. Mother Duchesne’s visit
to this new foundation involved probably the worst journey she ever undertook
it took four weeks out and nine weeks in, and the return trip was partly made
on a boat on which yellow fever broke out—a horrible experience of the neglected
sick and of the callous fear of the rest. She devoted herself to the care
of one stricken man, whom she baptized before he died; and it nearly cost
her own life, for she too sickened and had to be put ashore at Natchez, where
she could find no shelter but the bed of a woman who had herself just died
of the fever.
Back at Florissant, Bd Philippine found it was a case of one
grim trial after another. Temporal difficulties and the jealousy and slanders
of outsiders were ruining the school—“They say everything about us, except
that we poison the children”, she wrote to Mother Barat. At length there were
only five pupils left but when things were looking their worst improvement
came through help from a new quarter. The difficulties had been partly caused
by the withdrawal of Mgr Dubourg to Lower Louisiana but in 1823 he was able
to arrange for the establishment at Florissant of the novitiate of the Jesuits
in Maryland. It is difficult to tell whether in the ensuing period the Society
of the Sacred Heart owed more to the Society of Jesus or the fathers to the
nuns. In 1826 and the following year two more houses were opened, St Michael’s
near New Orleans and in Saint Louis itself; and the house at Saint Charles
was refounded in 1828. With Bayou-la-Fourche there were now six houses of
the society in the valley of the Mississippi. The next ten years continued
to be full of trials and hardships, disappointment and ill-health, borne by
Bd Philippine with trust in God but with ever-mounting fatigue. However, it
was not till 1840 that her wish to resign her responsible office was granted,
and then not by St Madeleine Sophie. The assistant general of the Society
of the Sacred Heart came on a visitation of the American houses. She was Mother
Elizabeth Galitsin, a woman of strong and imperious character, not unlike
Mother Duchesne in her earlier years, and she caused a certain amount of
upheaval among the nuns in America. Bd Philippine did not resist the autocratic
methods of the visitor (who was twenty-eight years younger than herself);
but she was made to fear that perhaps she had failed in the trust assigned
to her, and she asked to be allowed to resign. Mother Galitsin agreed without
demur, and Mother Duchesne returned to the Saint Louis house as a simple religious.
And now, when she was seventy-one years old, she was able to
turn her attention to those people for whose sake she had originally wanted
to come to America—the Indians. The famous Jesuit Father De Smet had asked
Mother Galitsin to send nuns to set up a school in the mission among the Potawatomi
at Sugar Creek in Kansas. Four religious were nominated to go, including
Mother Duchesne “if able to travel”. She was able to travel. But she was
with her beloved Indians for only about twelve months she could not master
their language, the hardships of the life were too much for her failing strength.
Her heart spoke of Indians among the Rocky Mountains to be converted to Christ;
but her superiors spoke of the need for her to come away. “God knows the
reason for this recall,” she said, “and that is enough.”
Bd Philippine’s last years were
spent at Saint Charles, but the tide of her life went out on no gentle ebb.
The fortunes of the Society of the Sacred Heart in America did not rise in
one unwavering curve of progress; houses that Mother Duchesne had founded
and nursed were threatened with dissolution; and for nearly two years correspondence
between herself and her deeply loved Mother Barat was not delivered—a mystery
never properly cleared up.
So, during a prolonged old age of suffering and prayer, Mother Duchesne
completed her life of apostleship and self-sacrifice. She died on November
18, 1852. She was eighty-three years old. It was said of her by a contemporary
“She was the St Francis of Assisi of the Society. Everything in and about
her was stamped with the seal of a crucified life. She would have liked to
disappear from the sight of men, and it may indeed be said that no one occupied
less space in the world than Madame Duchesne. Her room was a miserable hole
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 a cupboard; her only covering at night was an old piece
of black stuff with a cross 
like a pall.” While she lay dead a daguerreotype was taken
of Philippine Duchesne, “in case” as was said, “she may one day be canonized”.
Less than a century later that day is within sight. This missionary of the
American frontier was beatified in 1940, and her feast is kept
on November 17.
Duchesne_shrine_behind_old_convent
On the death of Mother Duchesne,
Father De Smet wrote, “You should publish a beautiful biography... No greater
saint ever died in Missouri, or perhaps in the whole Union.” This was first
most adequately done by Mgr Baunard, whose Life of Mother Duchesne was translated
into English in 1879. Then in 1926 appeared Mother Philippine Duchesne by
Marjory Erskine. This is a full-length work that depends of necessity largely
on Baunard, but corrected in certain points and with fresh matter added. See
also The Society of the Sacred Heart in
North America, by Louise Callan (1937), and Redskin Trail, by M. K. Richardson (1952).
{Cannonized July, 3 1988}
Testimony of Fr. De Smet
One of those who listened to Fr. De Smet speak of Mother Duchesne
in 1847 made these notes of what he said:
“He said she had climbed all the rungs of the ladder of sanctity,
and never had he seen a soul more ardent in love for Our Lord. In his opinion,
she rivaled St. Teresa. Never had he known a person who was poorer
in all that concerned her private life, and in this she imitated St. Francis
of Assisi. Nor a more apostolic soul, eager for the salvation of souls, and
he thought St. Francis Xavier had shared with her his zeal for the conversion
of the infidels. Ending his talk he said: Now she is on the sorrowful
way of Calvary to which old age and infirmities have condemned her, but no
matter how hard that road may seem to her, she is climbing it with all the
fervor of youth. She has struck deep roots in American soil and they will
one day bear an abundant harvest. I should not be surprised if some day she
were raised to our altars.” (Callan, Philippine Duchesne, pp. 462-3.) {Cannonized
July, 3 1988}
This portrait of Mother Duchesne was reportedly done by an Ursuline
nun in New Orleans and said to most closely resemble what she really looked
like.
Duchesne Utah.
The name Duchesne was utilized
for the new community. The name Duchesne is taken from the name of the river
that runs through town and was likely named by fur trappers in the 1820s in
honor of Mother Treasa Duchesne founder of the School of the Sacred Heart
near St. Louis, Missouri.
The community of Duchesne is located just above the junction
of the Strawberry and Duchesne rivers in the Uintah Basin of northeastern
Utah. It was first identified as a potential town site by Father Escalante
when the Dominguez-Escalante expedition camped near the present-day town
18 September 1776 while on their epic journey. Duchesne is strategically
located not only due to its location at the junction of the rivers but it
is also at the mouth of Indian Canyon, the major route into the Basin through
the Tavaputs Plateau from Price.
The town came into being in 1905 when the United States government
opened the region to homesteading under the Allotment Act. The land that forms
all of Duchesne County and western Uintah County had formerly belonged to
the Ute Indians as part of their reservation. A.M. Murdock, an Indian trader
at Whiterocks, obtained permission from the government to set up a trading
post at the site that became Duchesne City. With the assistance of several
other men, he set up a large circus tent for a general store and trading
post. Government surveyors laid out the streets and the survey was accepted
by the government on 18 October 1905. Other settlers soon pitched their tents
and built pioneer dwellings that were replaced over the next months and years
with more modern buildings for homes and businesses.
The town was originally called Dora, after Murdock's baby daughter. This
name was replaced for a short time by the name Theodore, in honor of President
Theodore Roosevelt. But when town to the east adopted the name of Roosevelt,
it was thought that two towns in the same county named for the same president
would be too confusing for mail delivery. The name Duchesne was utilized for
the new community.
St. Philippine Duchesne: Failures Became Her Success Marian T. Horvat,
Ph.D.
Rose Philippine Duchesne was
born into a prosperous and prominent lawyer in Grenoble, France in 1769. Her
family was Catholic, her mother pious, but the men in the family were ambitious
and liberal in their politics. Her father had become an enthusiastic supporter
of the new ideas of liberty that were spreading all over France among the
old aristocracy and high bourgeoisie in the last decade of the Ancien Regime.
His activities in the revolutionary clubs and Masonic groups that promoted
Voltairian ideas would cause great grief for Philippine and her mother. (1)
Philippine Duchesne, 1769-1852
The Duchesne blood came to the fore early in Philippine – revealing
itself in strong doses of willfulness, stubbornness and independence. This
served, however, to help her resist the marriage proposals her parents arranged
for her, and remain faithful to the religious vocation she knew God had given
to her since the “call,” as she termed it, at age 8 on her First Communion
day.
1. What happened to Philippine’s father? In 1814, he died with
Philippine and her sister at his side, after receiving Confession and Extreme
Unction. His conversion was a triumph of the daughter’s faith, trust and prayer,
made powerful by the complete sacrifice of self. Louis Callan, RSCJ, Philippine
Duchesne, Frontier Missionary of the Sacred Heart (Newman Press: 1966), pp.
128-9.
We can catch a glimpse of her strong will and determination
in the story of her entrance at age 18 into the Visitation Convent of St.
Marie d’en Haut nearby her home. One morning she left home in the company
of an aunt to visit the convent. Once there, she simply announced her intention
to stay, and set her distraught aunt home alone to face her enraged father.
He rushed to the convent to confront his daughter and take her home, but left
resigned to the decision of Philippine, so like him in temperament. She did,
however, acquiesce to her father’s wishes that she not take her final vows
until she was 25 because of the political upheaval in France. Nor was
it long before her father’s well-founded fears came to realization. In 1792,
while Philippine was still a postulant, the nuns were dispersed by order
of the Government. During the Reign of Terror, St. Marie Convent was used
as prison for those who opposed the Revolution in the area.
Instead of returning to her family
villa as expected, Philippine took a flat in Grenoble with another woman
and organized the Ladies of Mercy. These ladies risked their lives to bring
material and spiritual help to those imprisoned at St. Marie or to assist
the priests living as fugitives. To her worried family members, she always
gave the same answer: “Let me be. It is my happiness and glory to serve my
Divine Savior in the person of those persecuted for His Sake.”
In 1801, after Napoleon Bonaparte had overthrown the revolutionary
Directory, Philippine used her own funds to purchase the badly damaged Convent
of St. Marie d’en Haut from the State. Several nuns joined her there, but
soon left, complaining that the work was too difficult and Philippine too
exacting in demanding compliance to the old Rule. It was the first of many
failures for Philippine Duchesne, but she remained on the former Visitation
grounds, convinced that God had a plan for her and her beloved Convent.
Three years later, History records the providential and touching
meeting of Mother Madeleine Sophie Barat, founder of the Society of the Sacred
Heart, and Philippine Duchesne. As Mother Barat, only 25-years-old, entered
the Convent of St. Marie on December 13, 1804, she was met by Philippine,
who fell to the ground, kissed her feet, and repeated the psalmist’s words:
“How lovely on the mountain are the feet of those who bring the Gospel of
peace.”
“I let her do it through pure stupefaction,” Mother Barat said
as she told of that first meeting. “I was utterly dumbfounded at the sight
of such faith and humility, and I did not know what to say or do.”
At age 35, Philippine Duchesne signed over her Convent to the
Society and became a postulant in a new community. One year later her first
vows were taken, and she finally pledged herself to poverty, chastity, and
obedience.
The next years were busy ones for the fledgling community. Mother
Barat quickly recognized the organizational qualities in the great and generous
soul of Mother Duchesne, who became secretary general of the Order and was
given charge of the new motherhouse in Paris. Had she remained in France,
she would have enjoyed the honor of her community, the consolation of her
close friendship with Mother Barat, and the company and support of her distinguished
and prosperous family.
Instead, what took root in her
heart was a great desire to bring the Gospel to the forsaken “savages” of
America. After hearing a sermon from a traveling missionary in 1805, Mother
Duchesne felt irresistibly drawn to the foreign missions. For twelve years,
with holy impatience, she pleaded to go, offering all her works, prayers and
sacrifices for the sake of her “dark souls” in America.
In January of 1817, Bishop Louis Dubourg of St. Louis, Mo. came
to France to beg for sisters to be spared for the American missions. Mother
Barat had neither spare funds nor sisters for the enterprise. But the indomitable
Philippine intervened, for a second time throwing herself at the feet of her
Superior, begging consent to go. There was a poignant moment of silence –
and permission was granted. At last, in March of 1818, Mother Philippine
Duchesne, age 49, was placed as superior over a band of four other missionary
sisters who set sail for the New World on the vessel Rebecca.
Failure, not success in America
The sisters arrived in New Orleans with no instructions from
Bishop Dubourg. Mother Duchesne soon came to the sore realization that they
had been called to America not to work with the Indians, but to educate the
daughters of merchants and farmers. Months later, when the sisters finally
arrived in St. Louis (MO) they were asked to establish themselves in St.
Charles, 14 miles from St. Louis on the Mississippi River, which Mother Duchesne
described as “the remotest village in the United States.” In a one-room shanty
on a two-acre plot without a tree or blade of grass, they established the
first Convent west of the Mississippi and the first free school for girls
in the United States.
In her famous letter describing that first brutal winter, she
reported how water froze in the pails on the way from the creek to the cabin,
how food froze to the table, and how the sisters often had no fire for lack
of tools to cut wood. (2) By the spring of 1819, the house in St. Charles
was considered impracticable, and a new foundation with a convent, novitiate
and boarding school was begun at Florissant, north of St. Louis, Mo.
2. The large correspondence of
Mother Philippine Duchesne with Mother Barat, other religious, family members
and friends, as well as pertinent material from the archives of the Society
of the Sacred Heart, was organized in a biography by Louis Callan, R.S.C.J.,
published by Newman Press in 1957. The quotes and information in this article
was taken from an abridged version of that biography titled Philippine Duchesne:
Frontier Missionary of the Sacred Heart 1769-1852, published in 1965.
While the hardships of life might have resulted in a breakdown
of discipline, Mother Duchesne insisted that the Rule and customs of the new
convent be faithfully followed. When Bishop DuBourg requested certain relaxations
to accommodate the more easygoing American spirit, Mother Duchesne firmly
refused.
During the next years the congregation made a slow but steady
progress. As American born girls joined the growing band of sisters, Mother
Duchesne opened four convents and two schools in west central Louisiana. Supported
by the prosperous French-speaking plantation owners, these schools saw a
success that Mother Duchesne would never personally experience in her own
impoverished foundations in Missouri. Finally an orphanage, academy and free
school were begun in the original destination, St. Louis, Mo., and in 1828,
the Sisters returned to St. Charles to cheers and applause of the townspeople.
Mainly because of her perseverance and organization skills, twelve Sacred
Heart schools had opened in the New World by 1850.
But Mother Duchesne felt herself a failure: she met no success
with the few Indian free schools for girls she tried to establish. Because
she could not learn English, she could not teach the American girls or interact
with their parents. “Americans only admire those who have good looks and speak
their language,” she would explain, and then tell how she was lacking in
both regards. The gracious charms and formal manners of the French Old Regime,
which she never changed, left her out of touch with the more egalitarian and
relaxed American way of life. She brought this European formality and ceremony
to the lives of the young ladies she influenced, a culture and refinement
that would be a signal mark of the alumni of the Sacred Heart up until the
1960s, when the schools suffered the effects of the Cultural Revolution
that entered the religious orders and Church with Vatican II.
For 22 years, Mother Duchesne was forced to bear the heavy yoke
of directing those who seemed to not want her directorship. Some Sisters also
resented her formal ways and insistence on Rule, although all admired her
spirit of prayer and sacrifice. At council meetings, she found it difficult
to make her opinion prevail, since the common issue of her enterprises was
failure, while the New Orleans foundations always met with success.
When Mother Barat once suggested
that she move to New Orleans, she replied in a letter: “I carry in my heart
a great fear of spoiling things wherever I shall be, and this because of the
words I think I heard in the depths of my soul: You are destined to please
Me, not so much by success as by bearing failure.”
In 1834, at age 65, Mother Duchesne retired to Florissant, the
“poorest and humblest house of the congregation.” Still burdened with the
administrative functions of governing the growing congregation in the United
States, she nonetheless considered herself of no practical use.
Finally, in 1840, she was permitted to resign as Superior of
the American Mission. Her life became more and more the hidden work of prayer,
suffering and providing whatever small service she could perform for her community
and the Jesuit missionary priests who were carrying out the work of converting
her beloved Indians. “All desire but that of doing God’s holy will has been
extinguished in me,” she wrote to Mother Barat.
Finally, the Mission to the Indians
As soon as the Belgium missionary Jesuits arrived in Florissant,
MO, in 1823, Mother Duchesne became their enthusiastic supporter and friend.
Even though her own foundations were always in dire need of money and goods,
she found a way to provide small gifts of money, altar linens and clothing
to aid the missionary work. In turn, the priests considered her a vital partner
in their missionary ventures because of her constant prayer and many acts
of mortification she offered for their work.
A special friendship that lasted until her death formed with
the young postulant Fr. Peter John De Smet, the future great missionary to
the Indians of the Rockies. He made it a top priority to pay his respects
to “good Mother Duchesne” on every return from his Indian missionary visits.
“I never returned from one of these visits but with an increase of edification,
with a higher opinion of her virtues and sanctified life and always under
the full conviction that I had conversed with a truly living saint,” he wrote.
“I always considered Mother Duchesne as the greatest protector of our Indian
missions.”
In 1840, Fr. De Smet asked the
Assistant General of the Society of the Sacred Heart for some nuns to open
a school among the Potawatomis at Sugar Creek in present day Kansas. Although
ill and weakened by a life of hardship, penances and privation, Mother Duchesne,
age 72, requested permission to join the colony. A final time, Mother Barat
acquiesced against all good sense to the indomitable Rose Philippine Duchesne.
In July 1841 the group arrived in Sugar Creek where they were
warmly received by the Indians - who offered them gifts of human scalps. Having
never mastered any Indian language, Mother Duchesne could not teach; her
infirmities rendered her incapable of the hard mission work. Instead, she
spent her time in prayer and small acts of charity. The Indians loved and
respected the “Woman-who-prays-always,” the name they gave her. She spent
fours hours in the morning and four in the afternoon motionless before the
tabernacle, a spectacle that amazed the Indians and won their love and veneration.
One night when she was making an all night vigil, an Indian
crept up and left some kernels of corn on the hem of her habit to see if
she really remained in prayer motionless for those long hours. He returned
the next morning and found the grain in the same place.
Her health continued to weaken under the hardships of life at
Sugar Creek. Finally, after only one short year in the Indian mission, to
her great disappointment, she was forced to return under obedience to Florissant,
where she spent the last ten years of her life in poverty, mortifications,
suffering and prayer.
“I feel that I am a worn-out instrument, a useless walking stick
that is fit only to be hidden in a dark corner,” she wrote about these times.
For her sleeping room in the Florissant Convent, she chose a narrow closet
beneath a staircase. Visitors today to the Convent can still see that narrow
sleeping place, a testimony to the humility and mortification of a great woman
who held herself as nothing in eyes of the world.
In fact, Mother Duchesne was
much more highly esteemed and venerated than she imagined. She was almost
transfigured by Holy Communion. A wonderful light was seen to shine from her
countenance after she had received, as if a flame were reflected on her face.
The children used to wait to reverently watch her come out of the chapel after
her thanksgiving.
“The clergy and laity, in fact, everyone who knew her, esteemed
Rev. Mother Duchesne as a saint,” testified Mother Anne Shannon, a former
student at Florissant.” She was gifted with an admirable spirit of prayer
and often spent whole nights on her knees before the Blessed Sacrament, without
any support whatsoever.”
The closet room under the stairway in the Florissant convent
that Mother Duchesne used for her sleeping room the lat 10 years of her life
“Never did I leave her without the feeling that I had been conversing
with a saint,” Fr. De Smet, SJ, repeated in a letter of October 9, 1872.
On November 18, 1852, the heroic life of Philippine Duchesne
came to an end. She had kept the fast and early that morning, made her confession,
received Communion and received Extreme Unction. She was sinking rapidly,
but when she heard the invocation, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph,” she was able to
answer, “I give you my heart, my soul, and my life – oh, yes, my life, generously.”
These were her last words.
When Mother Rose Philippine Duchesne died at age 83 in St. Charles,
Mo., Fr. De Smet wrote her religious Sisters: “No greater saint ever died
in Missouri or perhaps in the whole Union.” He urged them to write a biography,
but it was not done. The apostle of the Sacred Heart who came to America to
work and save the souls of Indians was put aside in death, just as she was
in life. Forty-three years after her death in 1852, Philippine‘s cause was
officially opened at the Vatican and Pope Pius X declared her “Venerable.”
On May 12, 1940, she was beatified by Pope Pius XII, and canonized 44 years
later on July 3, 1988.
A lesson for Americans
What is the message for us, Americans, that Divine Providence provided
by the example of the heroic life of Mother Philippine Duchesne? In my opinion,
her life represented the opposite of the American way of life and points to
the direction we should follow to redress our faults.
Her life was, as she defined it, a sequence of failures. The first order
she entered closed; she did not feel realized in the second institution until
she came to America to convert the Indians. Then, instead of carrying out
this long-desired mission, she was ordered to teach girls and found convents.
The work was more difficult because she never learned to speak English. She
founded one convent that failed, then another that foundered. The girls there
were ungrateful and worldly, and the Sisters chaffed under her governance
and wanted to relax the Rule.
When she finally was permitted to go to work in an Indian mission, she
was already 72-years-old, too old to work or learn the native language. But
after only one year, she was denied even that great consolation - she was
ordered to leave the Indian mission and return to Florissant. She died there,
without having accomplished what she felt called to do.
This constant failures of her planned enterprises and a success only on
the spiritual level is, in my opinion, a lesson for Americans. Often we only
value the immediate success, the practical way of doing things, and a good
appearance in the results.
The life of Mother Duchesne is a call for us to abandon this way of being
that idolizes appearances and success. It is a call to follow the will of
God when we experience incomprehension, darkness, and failure. If we will
turn our eyes to the path of the Cross of Our Lord and walk on it with courage
and confidence, we will transform our mentality, our country, and our people
into an elect nation called to help build the Reign of Mary.
|
Mary Mother of GOD 15
Promises of the Virgin Mary to those who recite the Rosary 
Saints of this Day November
18 Quartodécimo Kaléndas Decémbris
Quote: Pope Paul VI’s
1969 
Benedict XVI met with
Aram I Catholicos of Cilicia, the
highest authority of the Orthodox Church.
The Pope remembered
the martyrs of the Armenian Church and
the Armenian genocide, without explicitly
mentioning it, and denounced the persecution
of Christians in modern times.
Benedict XVI
May 26 1991 