October 18, 2019

Editorial

St. Theodora Guérin, a woman of courage, perseverance and deep faith

“What strength the soul draws from prayer! In the midst of a storm how sweet is the calm it finds in the Heart of Jesus.” (St. Theodora Guérin)

Oct. 3 was the feast of St. Theodora Guérin, co-patroness of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis with St. Francis Xavier.

Mother Theodore was a woman whose courage, perseverance and deep faith helped build the Church in the United States. She was an educator, evangelist, pioneer leader and woman of prayer.

She was undaunted by illness, physical obstacles, prejudice, poverty or petty jealousy. She discerned God’s will in her life, and then refused to let anything get in the way of carrying out the mission entrusted to her by our Lord Jesus Christ.

Anne-Thérèse Guérin (1798-1856) entered religious life in her native France at the age of 25 after caring for her widowed mother and her family for

10 years. In 1840, she led a group of five religious sisters on a tumultuous journey from France across the Atlantic Ocean traveling by steamship, railroad, canal boat and stage coach, only to discover that their destination was not a town but just a log cabin in the woods of Indiana.

Here she encountered hostile anti-Catholicism, hunger and privation, and near complete destitution resulting from a fire that destroyed the community’s harvest. In spite of everything, Mother Theodore (as she was known then) persevered. Under her leadership, the Sisters of Providence in the United States flourished, educating thousands of children throughout Indiana and the Midwest.

Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein, who was archbishop of Indianapolis at the time Mother Theodore was canonized in 2006, offered the following reflection on her remarkable achievements:

“Against all odds, in primitive circumstances, St. Mother Theodore founded schools for poor children because she had a vision of their value both academically and religiously. Her example gives us pause these days when maintaining excellent Catholic education is so very difficult for our parish communities. Some wonder if we should give up on our mission of Catholic schools, especially in our more challenged parishes. The courage, valor and generosity of the intrepid

St. Theodora are a timely and needed inspiration. I do not believe we could find a more fitting patroness for our challenged apostolate of Catholic schools and Catholic education in general.”

Mother Theodore’s accounts of her missionary activity describe the struggles that she and her small community experienced in order to find and provide the resources needed to serve Christ’s primitive Church in Indiana. It was hard enough for the sisters to meet their own needs for food, shelter and life’s most basic necessities, but they refused to abandon the needs of the people they had come to serve—especially young women.

Letters written by Mother Theodore describe the transatlantic trips she made in barely seaworthy ships. But as Archbishop Buechlein noted, “She crossed that stormy ocean several times in order to find resources to carry on Christ’s mission in our part of the New World. She summoned the fortitude she needed to overcome her personal fears in order to seek help for the desperate missions in Indiana.”

Mother Theodore looked to wealthy Catholics in Europe—including Queen Marie-Amélie of France—to support the missionary activities of her religious community. The schools that she built here in our country were beneficiaries of the generosity and good stewardship of many people who never saw where their money went, but who trusted in the sisters and their apostolic work.

Archbishop Buechlein cited Mother Theodore’s frustration at the seemingly endless task of fundraising: “But again, I must talk about money. When will the day come that we shall be able to be occupied only with God? Our consolation is that it is for him that we engage in other things.”

Thousands of women and men in the woods of Indiana and throughout the midwestern United States recognized the nearness of God in Mother Theodore’s prayer, in her leadership of the Sisters of Providence, and in the Catholic education she made possible, especially for young women.

There is a wonderful image of Mother Theodore and several of her students by sculptor Nick Ring in the courtyard of St. Joseph School in Jasper, Ind., in the Evansville Diocese. This was Mother’s first school, founded in 1842, and its evangelizing mission continues today.

May the courage and perseverance of St. Theodora Guérin inspire us to keep our Catholic schools vibrant and faith-filled! And may our parishes and schools always maintain the kind of missionary spirit, and trust in God’s providence, that will enable us to serve those in our archdiocese who need it most!

—Daniel Conway

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