Happy Veterans Day! - Nov 13, 2022

First of all, especially for those of you who read this on Friday, Happy Veterans Day! May we all be grateful for the service of all veterans in defending and protecting our country and our liberties. THANK YOU to all Veterans!

Tuesday we celebrate the Feast of St. Albert the Great. Albert was a Dominican who was born around the year 1200 and died on Nov. 15, 1280. He was a teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was also a Dominican and a great theologian. Albert was a philosopher, a bishop, and a scientist, and is regarded as the patron saint of scientists.

Albert was involved in many disputes and controversies in his life, including defending the orthodoxy of his star pupil, Thomas Aquinas. Albert sought reconciliation and peace. But he was not afraid of science and reason, and saw God as the author of both. St. Albert is a great model for us today, especially when we see a conflict between science and religion. Any apparent conflict is due to a lack of reason and more importantly imagination on our part. Both religion and science seek truth, but in different ways with different objects. However, truth is one, and so what seems contradictory to us is due to our failure to see the issue as a whole.

Friday is the Feast of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, one of our American Saints, born on August 29, 1760 in Grenoble, France. Against her family’s opposition she became a nun, showing her strong will. In 1818 with four other nuns she set off to the missionary territory of Missouri, with a strong desire to minister to Native Americans. However, they opened a log cabin convent in St. Charles, Missouri, up the Missouri River from St. Louis. The Sisters opened a school in St. Charles. The demand for education and pastoral work on the frontier kept Rose from being able to work directly with Native Americans however. Finally in 1841 the Jesuits opened a mission in Kansas to serve the Potawatomi tribe. Now 71, Sr. Rose was too old to learn the Native American language, but she asked to go along. Unable to teach, she prayed for the success of the mission, and the Native Americans named her Quahkahkanumad, which means Woman Who Prays Always. St. Rose is buried at the Sisters' house in St. Charles, and I have had the benefit of praying there. Last time I was there the guide told me that every year, on the anniversary of St. Rose’s death, an elderly Native American woman comes to pray at St. Rose’s grave. Apparently the story has been passed down for several generations in the Native American person’s family that when the Potawatomi were forced off their native lands during one of several Trail of Tears events, and shipped to Kansas, one of the very young Potawatomi girls was held and rocked by Sr. Rose Philippine Duchesne, comforting her. And this story of such a simple but profound act of comforting has been passed down in her family. So if you are ever in the St. Charles, Missouri area, stop in and say a prayer at the shrine of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne.

God bless!