MARY, OUR MOTHER

Well, as I said in another place, Fr, Robert has given me permission to start a new MMP Cenacle Prayer Group, so yesterday (Monday) morning after Mass at St. Pat's I met with some of the parishioners who pray the Rosary in church each day and asked who would like to be a member of the Cenacle. Surprisingly, three or four ladies and one man were interested. So then we decided that Mondays after Mass would be the meeting day. I explained that each Cenacle is named after Our Lady such as "Our Lady of the Rosary" etc., and I read off some of the names of other Cenacles in the MMP Directory. One of the daughters of a new member said "How about that name you just said, Mystical Rose?" We all agreed that that was a beautiful name and I guess we will name our Cenacle "Our Lady, Mystical Rose." The the young girl said: "My middle name is Rose!" I thought that was really sweet. By the way, as a coincidence, today is the Feast of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, a missionary Nun to America. Here is a short biography from EWTN:

Rose Philippine Duchesne came to the wilds of North America when anything west of Pittsburgh was considered uncharted wilderness. She came up the Mississippi to Missouri and established a school at St. Charles as early as 1818, while St. Elizabeth Seton was doing her work in the eastern United States. She is the foundress of the American branch of the Society of the Sacred Heart.

She was born in Grenoble, France, in 1769, her father a successful businessman. She was educated by the Visitation nuns and, although her father opposed her decision, she entered the Visitation Order in 1788, in the middle of the French Revolution. She was not able to make her profession because of the disruption of the Revolution and had to return home when the Visitation sisters were expelled from their convents.

During the Revolution, she cared for the sick and poor, helped fugitive priests, visited prisons, and taught children. After the Revolution, she tried to reorganize the Visitation community but was unsuccessful, so she offered the empty convent to St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart, and entered the Sacred Heart Order herself. When the bishop of New Orleans, William Du Bourg, requested nuns for his huge Louisiana diocese, St. Rose Philippine Duchesne came to the United States, arriving in New Orleans in 1818.

She and her four nuns were sent to St. Charles, Missouri, where she immediately opened a school; then at Florissant, she built a convent, an orphanage, a parish school, a school for Indians, a boarding academy, and a novitiate for her order. In 1827, she was in St. Louis where she founded an orphanage, a convent, and a parish school. Her energy and ideas were prodigious. When she was seventy-two years old, she founded a mission school for Indian girls in Kansas and spent much of her time there nursing the sick.

Her last years were spent at St. Charles, a model and inspiration to those around her, facing all the hardships of pioneer work. She died on November 18, 1852, at the age of eighty-three and was canonized in 1988. She was truly the "missionary of the American frontier," one that her beloved Potawatomi Indians called , "Woman-who-prays-always."

Thought for the Day: Setback after setback after setback, even into old age! This woman of bronze—St. Rose Philippine Duchesne—let nothing stop her, nothing discourage her, nothing slow her down. We can do almost anything for God if we refuse to be discouraged and are willing to pay the price: the price is something called holiness.

In imitation to St. Rose, let us also "pray always", especially the Rosary and united with the Marian Movement of Priests world-wide!