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Vocation
What does vocation mean?
"An inclination, as if in response to a summons, to undertake a certain
kind of work", especially a religious career; a calling.
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St. Philippine Duchesne
was born on August 29, 1769, in Grenoble, France. She was the daughter
of Pierre Francois Duchesne, a successful lawyer and an intelligent,
practical, Christian woman.
When Philippine turned
twelve years old, she was sent to boarding school at Ste. Marie
d'en Haut. Here she was educated by nuns and drawn to their life
of contemplation.
She entered their congregation
at eighteen years of age, but the Revolution in France forced
the
Nuns to disperse. For eleven years, Philippine nursed prisoners,
found shelter for orphans, and helped give food to the poor.
She
gained a title to her old convent and with several other nuns,
opened a boarding school. Upon meeting Madeline Sophie Barat
in 1804, Phillipine
Duchesne joined the Society of the Sacred Heart.
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Here is an example of
a grill that Phillippine wanted to take down to show that nuns
were part of the world and not seperate from the society.
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Here is the garden in
the Convent Ste. Marie d'en Haut where St. Philippine and
Madeleine Sophie first met.
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Here was
where Madeline Sophie started her home for novices in Poitiers.
Novices are young girls training to be nuns.
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Above is
the picture of a section of one of the hundreds of little cubical
where the pigeons nested in the attic in the novitiate building.
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Philippine left Bordeaux
with four other nuns on a boat called the Rebecca.The Atlantic crossing
was a stormy and hazardous journey which lasted seventy days, until
finally, on May 29, 1818, they anchored in New Orleans. From there
they continued on to St. Louis.
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For information on boat
www.dodsonboatyard.com/news.html
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www.tcha.mus.in.us/images/large/potawatomi.jpg
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Upon arriving in St. Louis,
Philippine Duchesne discovered that Bishop Du Bourg had rented a
small house for her. Phillipine Duchesne started the first free
school west of the Mississippi. Although Pillipine enjoyed teaching,
she still desired to work with the Indians. Finally in 1841, at
the age of seventy-one, frail and poor healthed, Philippine got
the chance to do a real mission and she set out to work with the
Potowatomi Indians at Sugar Creek. Although she could not speak
their Native language, she set a lasting impression on them, and
the Potowatomi Indians named her 'the woman who prays always'.
http://www.latin-mass.org
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