18 November 2014
Memorial of Saint Rose Phillipine Duschene, Religious
Today, we commemorate Rose Phillipine Duschene, a woman who braved the frontier areas of the French Louisiana territory to tend to the people there. She dreamt of bringing the Eucharist to every corner of the New World. To this end, she endured winters in a log cabin in Missouri, among other hardships. Even when old age and sickness had made her unable to do much physically, the Jesuit priest in charge of the mission in Sugar Creek, Kansas wanted her there simply so that she could pray for them. By the end of her life, the Potawatomi Indians in the area called her “She Who Prays Always.”
She is a woman who is totally free from the reproach of “lukewarm” that God gives to some Christians in today’s reading from Revelation. Often, we are concerned with what is good enough, what will be satisfactory in God’s eyes. But when St. Ignatius urges us to the magis, he urges us to ask what will be magnificent in God’s eyes. The lukewarm are portrayed as downright nauseating to God in Revelation. Even if we do not suffer all of the same hardships that Rose Phillipine Duschene did, we should still examine our lives so that we too may avoid being lukewarm and be worthy of the title of one “Who Prays Always.”