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Rose Phillipine... a desire... a long wait... longing in hope!
Sainte Marie d'en Haut (France),
the Visitation monastery where Philippine lived - M. Cameron rscj
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Florissant (USA), Philippine's room
M. Cameron rscj
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A desire that awakens early:
to bring God's love to the confines of the world to those confined by the world
to give her life for that love, if need be... Young as she is, she has martyrdom on her mind.
A desire that takes shape in a daring scheme, precocious, a precursor of what is to come.
A challenge to family norms, to her father's anticlericalism, so that she may "live in the House of the Lord all the days of her life"...
She becomes a Visitation nun: "Your face, Lord, do I seek", I desire, I yearn for your face"...
Defying the revolutionary decrees, risking political persecution, so that she may take care of prisoners, of martyrs for the faith...
She founds an association of Ladies of Mercy and even works underground: "I discover your face, O Lord, in the persecuted, I want to bear witness to you"...
Confrontation with traditional customs, with the conventions of the time...
As an independent woman, she devotes herself to the care of children who have to work for their living; she sets out to re-establish the Visitation convent of Sainte Marie d'en Haut, and invents a new way of being an educator, acting freely and fearlessly: "I find your face, Lord, in the humble, I want to contemplate and serve you in them"...
Questioning religious life itself, the false notion of "settling in" and leading an easy life, as the sisters at Sainte Marie had done, and the mistaken worldly judgement that does not understand the freedom of voluntary enclosure: "I desire, Lord, to follow you with or without grilles, in perfect freedom, led by your Spirit"...
A desire that is permanently transformed into spiritual life.
Waiting that is hard to bear:
years of patience, though desire is as keen
years of uncertainty, though direction is not lost
years of frustration, though the Spirit is never stifled.
A desire that can wait without despair will bear more fruit;
a desire that grows and keeps on growing while waiting is the seed of the hundredfold.
A hope that guides us infallibly:
Rose Philippine's desire is
no empty promise,
no hollow inspiration,
no vain word;
it is convincingly real, rich, exemplary;
it is creative action, dynamic, rock-solid, pregnant with the future;
a dream already come true, yet still to be realised.
Rose Philippine, our holy sister, had a heart so like your own Lord; you kept feeding the spring that welled up in her, and we ask you to do the same in us. Arouse in us the same fiery, impulsive desire, the same passionate longing for your Kingdom, the insatiable thirst and hope of always being able to find you; give us, too, hearts like your own.
Rosario Valdeavellano rscj
from Peru, Comunidad Internacional, Roma
Original in Spanish
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