Virtual Discernment Retreat
	IHM Founders The Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the IHMs as we're often called, come from an unlikely meeting of Louis Florent Gillet, a zealous Belgian Redemptorist priest in Michigan, and Theresa Maxis Duchemin, a founding member of America's first African-American community of sisters, the Oblates of Providence in Baltimore. Gillet occasionally celebrated Mass for the Oblate Sisters as he traveled through Baltimore. He desired to establish a religious school for girls in Monroe, Mich., and determined that if he could not find sisters, he would make sisters. So on one of his trips to Baltimore he invited Duchemin to join him in Michigan and help him found a school and a new community of sisters.  At this time in 1845 Duchemin feared that her Oblate community would be dissolved because of the racism in mid-nineteenth century Baltimore and an unsupportive new bishop. So she accepted Gillet's invitation and made a serious change of identity. She "passed."  She was a light-skinned mulatto, daughter of a Santo Domingan mother working for a wealthy Baltimore family and a British gentleman who had come to visit. As she left Baltimore she took on a new identity as Sr. Theresa Maxis, an apparent white woman. The early foundation, consisting of Theresa, Ann Schaaff, another former Oblate and Therese Renaud, a woman from Grosse Pointe, Mich., established a school and soon attracted other women to join them. However, the new community soon faced many trials including the departure of the Redemptorist priests who were directing them; conflicts with the bishop; and eventually, the banishment of Theresa from Michigan and the painful division of the community into three independent IHM communities. Out of these struggles, however, have grown three strong vital religious congregations, one in Michigan and two in Pennsylvania. IHM Spiritual Roots The spiritual heritage of the IHMs spreads broad and deep. Since they were co-founded by a Redemptorist priest, the sisters eagerly adopted the Redemptorist devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the other spiritual wisdom of the Redemptorist founder, St. Alphonsus Liguori.  Alphonsus was renowned as moral theologian and author of numerous scholarly books. He was an important theological voice for 17th century Spain.   However, his heart was in his missionary outreach to the most abandoned poor. At that time the clerical church ministered predominantly to the upper class in the cities. Alphonsus searched out the poor on the fringes of society to teach them the Gospels and to help them to know and experience God's passionate love for them. IHM commitment to the poor is rooted in our Alphonsian heritage as is commitment to serious theological study. St. Alphonsus chose St. Teresa of Avila as patroness for his community because he loved her deep commitment to contemplation and her prophetic leadership in the Carmelite orders of men and women, urging them to go more deeply and faithfully into their contemplative vocation. Teresa learned from experience that religious life was nothing if it did not spring from a deep relationship with God nourished by daily contemplation. Desire for holiness and commitment to personal prayer and meditation are part of our heritage from Teresa of Avila, as is our firm belief in women leadership in the church. Art by Nancy Lee Smith, IHM, iconographer. All rights reserved. Back to  Virtual Discernment Retreat  E-Mail Sister Mary Bea

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