Today we celebrate the Feast of our foundress, St. Rose Philippine Duchesne. While Academy of the Sacred Heart families and alumni celebrate November 18 with joy each year, there’s cause for added fervor in 2014, for two reasons.
The Academy joins the entire metro area in celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the City of St. Louis. Our 9:30 a.m. Feast Day liturgy in Rauch Memorial gym has been added to the STL250 Event Calendar. There, it is noted that “St. Louis had existed for only five years when Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in Grenoble, France. Forty-nine years later, in 1818, she and four other Sacred Heart nuns disembarked in the frontier town of St. Louis, and opened a school for girls in nearby St. Charles. The Academy of the Sacred Heart was the first formal, and currently the longest running, school in the St. Louis area. Celebrate the feast day of this remarkable pioneer woman—Missouri’s adopted daughter and one of the first North American saints—with the Academy school community on Tuesday, November 18.” The public is welcome to join us in celebrating Philippine’s life and the impact she had on our region.
Secondly, in conjunction with our every-five-years Sacred Heart Commission on Goals (SHCOG) process, a visiting team of Sacred Heart educators from Houston, New Orleans, Chicago, Princeton, N.J. and Halifax will be with us for Philippine’s Feast. We welcome them and look forward to hearing on Wednesday their reflections on how we can more deeply live our mission as a Sacred Heart school, as expressed in the Goals and Criteria of Sacred Heart Education.
Read more about Philippine. In addition, visit the Shrine of St. Philippine Duchesne website.
Photo: John Storjohann
