After her school years, Adeline
went home to her grandmother, Madame St Cyr, but returned to Florissant
as a postulant at the age of fifteen. When she received the habit she
took the name Gonzague, after St. Aloysius Gonzaga. Philippine, then
in St. Louis, wrote to her: “You, more than anyone else, can contribute
to the fervor of the novitiate.” While still a novice, Sister Gonzague
was sent to St. Louis to be formed by Philippine herself. After her
vows, Philippine followed the young nun in letters that reveal the affectionate
side of Philippine’s nature, as well as her unsparing and inspiring
spiritual direction. She guided Gonzague through her probation, the
period of preparation for final vows, which she pronounced on September
30, 1838.
Before long Philippine was
begging Mother Barat to allow her to retire as superior in favor of
Sister Boilvin, for “though quite young she has natural talents for
governing a house.” The request was not granted, but when Elisabeth
Galitzin came to St. Louis as representative of the superior general,
she named Sister Boilvin as one of the foundation stones of the Society’s
works in the eastern United States. In the same year that Philippine
set out for the mission to the Potawatomi, 1841, Adeline Boilvin went
to New York. Here she spent two years teaching music and French in the
day school on Houston Street. She came to know Aloysia Hardey, the superior,
who wrote to Mother Barat: “I gladly consult Mother Boilvin, for the
spirit of God is in her.”
Mother Hardey chose Adeline
to be superior and mistress of novices at McSherrystown, Pennsylvania,
where things were going badly. The remote school was without resources,
and several nuns and children died of tuberculosis within the first
year. The new superior brought the sunshine of her optimistic vigor
to the overshadowed house. Mother Duchesne continued to write: “If
humility is always desirable, generous humility is still more so now.”
And later: “Ever since I learned of the successive blows that have
tested your resignation to God’s will, I have been occupied with you
in prayer.”
McSherrystown was closed in
1846 in favor of a foundation in Philadelphia. Mother Boilvin led the
community to Logan Square; the establishment was transferred within
the year to the property on the Delaware River that became Eden Hall.
She placed her stamp on Eden hall: a warmly welcoming and joyous spirit.
Bishop Kenrick came on July 4 to give the students their first congé
(a holiday at school, traditional at the Sacred Heart). There were outings
from the parish when “piety and pleasure combined to drive silence
from our solitude,” wrote the convent annalist.
Pupils were few, however, and
debts mounted. Mother Boilvin’s health broke under the strain. In
the summer of 1848 Mother Hardey sent her to the bracing air of Canada
and left her in the care of Mother Amélie Jouve, Philippine’s niece.
It was too late: Adeline Boilvin died on her thirty-fifth birthday,
September 24, 1848. The Annals tell of the burial on the Île Jésus
of “a child of Florissant and daughter of Mother Duchesne in pioneer
days, Julie Adeline Boilvin, one of America’s most distinguished Religious
of the Sacred Heart.”
From St. Charles, Philippine
wrote in tribute: “For me Mother Gonzague was a support and a consolation,
for the Society a valuable and edifying member, for God a docile child
and a faithful spouse of the Sacred Heart. It is sweet and consoling
to think about her.”
Adapted from
Margaret Williams, RSCJ, RSCJ Newsletter, May 1988
