eLumenate: Rose Hawthorne - Third Order

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ATE THE HEART AND MIND OF ROSE HAWTHORNE Growing up in Wayside, Concord Massachusetts Rose grew up in a house that knew the footsteps and mighty presences of the founders of American literature: the Akotts, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, the hermit of Walden Pond, and Orestes Brownson….With a loving family atmosphere and great intellectual and artistic stimulation, the Haw‐ thorne home became an ideal background for the formation of Roseʹs young mind. 1 An Unexpected Blessing Fall 2012 There was an interesting little incident during this Rome visit. Rose and her mother were taking a walk through the Vatican Gardens, and Rose, as usual, was dashing about, peering first at one flower and then another. She bumped sud‐ denly into someone walking toward her. To her surprise and alarm she saw that the person she had hit was the Holy Father himself, strolling about his small domain. Mrs. Hawthorne looked up at her daughterʹs explosive ʺOh!ʺ and came forward to apologize. But Pius IX only smiled at her little girl. He put his thin white hand on the tumbled red curls and gave her his blessing. 2 “She never put herself above others, but was always the servant of those she was called to aid. Even in her role of religious superior of her fellow Dominican Sisters, her love was never hidden. Reputed to be strict in expecting careful observance of the rule of life the Sisters followed, she was always loving.” – Fr. Gabriel B. O’Donnell, O.P. Postulator of the Cause of Rose Hawthorne3 Who was Rose Hawthorne? She was an American woman ‐ tracing her ancestry to the original Massachusetts Bay Col‐ ony. She was surrounded by the American literary world. Rose loved America! ‐ She had a portrait of George Washington at the entrance of the Rosary Hill. Rose was a wife who loved her husband but suf‐ fered from his excessive drinking. Rose was a mother who loved her son and suffered tremendously from his death as a young child. Rose was a convert to Catholicism. She struggled to find the Truth and to find her role in the Church. Rose was a Dominican! Nathaniel Hawthorne Her acts of charity comforted, consoled and taught the sanctity and the dignity of the human person. Rose was a woman of deep prayer. Rose loved and cared for people, seeing in them the suffering Christ, and wished to give them the dig‐ nity they deserved. Rose was the foundress of a congregation and said that the purpose of the congregation was ʺto fit itʹs members for the beatific vision.ʺ Rose was a woman of great trust in Godʹs Provi‐ dence. Her last dollars went to others and were al‐ ways replenished. ______________________ 1 The Anthonian, Saint Anthony’s Guild, Rose Hawthorne Edition 2 Ibid. 3 The Rose Hawthorne Guild Newsletter. Vol. 2, No. 1 eLumen ate Page 12
ATE In all of the above, so many people can identify with her and perhaps feel that she might inter‐ cede to God on their behalf. And so Rose is a gift to the Church and all people seriously striving for holiness, looking for support and a model to follow. 4 Rose’s attitude for caring for the poor: Rose closed her newspaper appeal with the follow‐ ing: “Let the woman who begs for care have com‐ fort, and bestow on this representative of Christ a little gentle attention until she dies. This is all, yet it requires the sacrifice of your life. But that is why Christ asked it, and blesses with unending reward the simple choice.” This statement was the one that drawn Alice Huber to look for Rose; and when they met, Alice decided to join her. 5 Rose Hawthorneʹs piety ʺwas completely dominated by her concern for the work to be done: the needs of the patients. When Rose wrote in her diary that she wanted to be of the poor, she knew what that desire implied. Her original concept of the ministry was one that the sisters were never to change. They were to be servants with all that the concept necessi‐ tated.ʺ 6 Rose Hawthorne served as a servant. In one of her newspaper appeals for funds, Rose wrote: ʺI am trying to serve the poor as a servant. I wish to serve the cancerous poor because they are more avoided than any other class of sufferers; and I wish to go to them as a poor creature myself.ʺ Rose Hawthorne moved into a three‐ room cold‐water flat on New York Cityʹs im‐ poverished Lower East Side and began to nurse the poor with in‐ curable cancer. She said at the time: ʺNo HEART AND MIND CONTINUED Fall 2012 description had given me a real knowledge of how dark the passages are in the daytime, how miserably inadequate the water supply, how impossible that the masses of poor in tene‐ ments should keep themselves or their quarters clean.ʺ But keeping her focus on God, she re‐ solved ʺ... to take the lowest class we know both in poverty and suffering and put them in such a condition, that if our Lord knocked at the door we should not be ashamed to show what we have done.ʺ7 Mother Alphonsa insisted that all of the nurs‐ ing was to be done by the Sisters. There was to be no hired help. (Eventually male orderlies were employed for assistance with men pa‐ tients.) Referring to the Sistersʹ work, Rose Hawthorne wrote: ʺA surgeon among hun‐ dreds of wounded soldiers brings a cup of wa‐ ter and a little care to a few of them ‐‐ all he can do he does ‐‐ with a groan of appeal to Heaven; and in this feeble though devoted way a few women see and succor suffering women who are agonized and forlorn.ʺ8 Of her religious and charitable beliefs, she wrote ʺA great deal is involved in listening to our Lord, and certainly an active obedience to His teachings may be regarded as of the first necessity.ʺ9 10 _____________________ 4 Mother Marie Edward, O.P. “What does it matter that the world know She is a Saint?” Hawthorne Happenings (Winter 2002/2003) 5 The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne 1900 – 2000 Centennial Celebration Booklet, Editions du Signe 6 Sr. Culbertson, O.P. editor of Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Selected Writings, Paulist Press, 1993 7 http://www.concordma.com/magazine/autumn05/ rosehawthorn.html 8 Ibid. 9 Rose Hawthorne…A woman Ahead of Her Time, Hawthorne Happenings, Spring 1994 10 Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Selected writings, Edited with an introduction by Diana Culbertson, O.P. eLumen ate Page 13
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Page 3 and 4: ATE BIOGRAPHY OF Mother Mary Alphon
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Page 7 and 8: ATE Fall 2012 BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONOLO
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Page 17 and 18: ATE Hyacinth M. Cormier, O.P: Now B
Page 19: ATE CANONIZATION PRAYER FOR ROSE HA

eLumenate: Rose Hawthorne - Third Order

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