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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…
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I love this story. God made her a missionary to the Indians according to His plans. Her commitment to prayer, to spending time meditating on God and God’s will, in both difficult times and good times, allowed her to accomplish her desire, even though she didn’t realize it. Her name will be remembered by the Potawatomi for generations as one who prayed constantly. Mission accomplished.
I’m a graduate of the Sacred Heart Schools, but I never remember to feel all the good that Sr Philippine did for all of us in USA, and probably in the rest of the Americas.
Thank you for this very down to earth article, is also a great teaching to read about her wishes to be a missionary and how God instead used her to teach so many girls, rich and poor, to know and love God.
God in His infinite LOVE gave her a little oportunity to be what she believed: a real missionary. I think she was always a missionary.