Rose Prince

If you do not know about Rose Prince, you should. Canada has few enough saints, and few enough miracles.

As, no doubt, does the rest of the world.

Her life was rather unremarkable. She lived most of it at the Lejac Residential School, near Fraser Lake in Northern BC. She entered at age 6. After she graduated, for whatever reason, she chose not to leave. She joined the school staff, and spent her days quietly at the work of her hands: cleaning, sewing, embroidering, and mentoring the students. She suffered from curvature of the spine. And she died of tuberculosis in 1949, at the age of 33.

Those present at her deathbed claim that her body remained warm.

In 1951, her grave was exhumed to allow for new construction, and her corpse was found to be uncorrupted. She looked as though she had only fallen asleep, but with a slight smile. Those present say there was a scent of flowers when the coffin was opened.

Since then, her grave in Fraser Lake has become the destination for an annual pilgrimage. Some go every year. Some say there is still a floral scent around her tomb. And many have reported miraculous cures.

I know what you are thinking.

You are thinking there must be some divine mistake, or just human imagination. This must all be some coincidence. Why, after all, would God single out this particular person for such special attention? Rose Prince did not go to Calcutta to rescue street children. She did not get beheaded for the faith. She did not write some inspiring book. She did not even take any religious vows. Nor did she have a widespread reputation for holiness in life, like a Brother Andre or Kateri Tekakwitha. She was just Rose.

Surely, though, God is making a point.

Recently, on a Facebook feed, we subscribers were asked which religious order seemed to speak least to us—not most, but least. Most chose the Jesuits, and so did I.

What the early Jesuits did was superhuman. I visited St. Francis Xavier’s uncorrupted body in Goa. He is credited with converting and baptizing 300,000 people in India alone, before he set off for Malaysia, and Japan, to die trying to enter China.

In Canada, Jean de Brebeuf was tortured, disabled, and enslaved by the Mohawks, then ransomed by a Dutch Protestant minister. He found his way back to France, and, once recovered, he headed back to Canada, volunteered for the Mohawk mission, and they finished the job.

All incredibly admirable. Yet there is also something excessive here.

Did God need St. Francis or St. Jean de Brebeuf to do these things? Obviously not. He is God. Weren’t they being a bit presumptuous to suppose so much depended on them? It smacks of spiritual pride.

I have felt the same way reading St. John of the Cross, the great hero of the Carmelites. All very admirable, his turning away completely from the world of the senses. He says, at some point, that one should live as though there are only two persons in the universe: oneself, and God.

Yet I had to put the book down then. Isn’t that also presumptuous? Doesn’t that assume for yourself some special place and privilege with God? What about other people?

To my mind, Rose Prince may have gotten it right. You do what is set before you, and you do it with a full and open heart.

The pilgrims.

The goal.

Lejac Residential School