(C.D. Stampley Enterprises, Charlotte, NC 2001). Used with permission.

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When mocked for Christian living

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680)

Feast Day: July 14

From the beginning Christians have endured mockery and scorn for practicing a faith that is contrary to what the larger society around them believes. Their patron is Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha who was so severely abused by her relatives and fellow tribesmen that she could only find peace by leaving her home in New York and traveling 200 miles to a Christian Indian village in Quebec.

If any place in the United States is holy ground it is the site of the Mohawk village of Ossernenon in the Mohawk Valley near Auriesville, New York. Three Jesuit martyrs died here—St. Rene Goupil in 1642, and St. Jean de la Lande and St. Isaac Jogues in 1646. Ten years later Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha was born in the same village.

Her mother Kahenta was a Christian Algonquin who had been captured near Trois Rivieres, Quebec, during the incessant war between the Hurons and the Iroquois. She might have been killed if a warrior of the Turtle clan had not volunteered to take her into his lodge as his wife. Kahenta bore two children, a girl whom they named Tekakwitha, and then a boy. We do not know the names of Kateri’s father and brother.

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In 1660 when Kateri was only four years old a smallpox epidemic struck Ossernenon. Smallpox, unknown in the Americas until the arrival of the Europeans, had a devastating effect on the Native American tribes who no natural resistance to the disease. Kateri’s mother, father, and baby brother all died in the epidemic. Kateri also was infected and although she survived the disease severely weakened her eyesight and left her face badly scarred.

Her two aunts and an uncle gave the orphan a home, but for all the good intentions of her relatives Kateri grew up self-conscious and shy. She was only a girl when she decided never to marry. Since she was not a Christian at this time and there was no Mohawk equivalent of the consecrated life of a nun, Kateri’s biographers have wondered what prompted this unusual resolution. Some attribute it to divine intervention, a secret prompting of her heart that she did not yet understand. It may be that Christ was calling her to be His alone. It is also possible that Kateri, who felt awkward even among relatives who wanted to help her, could not imagine being intimate with a man, nor bear the anxiety of having children who might die in the next epidemic.

When Kateri was eleven years old three French Jesuit priests arrived in her village. Fathers Jacques Fremin, Jacques Bruyas, and Jean Pierron had traveled with the Mohawk deputies who were returning home from Quebec after making peace with the French. These priests, whom her uncle welcomed as guests into his lodge, were the first missionaries Kateri had even seen. No doubt the Jesuits discussed the basic principles of Christianity with their hosts, but no one in the family, Kateri included, converted. After three days the priests moved on. Nearly eight years would pass before another missionary came to the village.

It was during those year that Kateri’s relatives and tribesmen learned that she adamantly refused to marry. At first the village was confused. Then their confusion turned to Anger, and their Anger to mockery. By now repeated epidemics had forced the Turtle clan to abandon Ossernenon and built a new village, Caughnawaga, north of the Mohawk River near the modern town of Fonda, New York.

Father Jacques de Lamberville, S.J., arrived in the new village in 1675. Kateri, his first and only convert, he baptized on Easter 1676. She took the name Kateri, Iroquois for Catherine. Although she was the only Christian in the village, she practiced her faith with fervent determination and devotion. Her uncle and aunts looked for any excuse to beat her. They refused to give her any food on Sundays because she refused to do any work on the Lord’s day. When she walked outside her relatives’ lodge, children threw stones at her. Once when a warrior ran toward her brandishing a tomahawk Kateri thought she was about to be killed. Life for this lonely convert had become unbearable.

Father de Lamberville urged her to leave Caughnawaga for the Christian Indian village of Saint Francis Xavier Mission at Kahnawake opposite Montreal on the St. Lawrence River. The mission was 200 miles away yet Kateri walked the entire distance alone. She left her home on July 14 and arrived in October 1677. A Christian Indian, Anastasia Tegonhatsihonga, who had known Kateri’s mother, welcomed the girl into her cabin.

Safe at last among people who shared her faith and respected her vow of virginity, Kateri practiced her faith with new zeal. She attended two Masses every morning, at the end of the day she returned to the chapel for Vespers or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. In addition to the meatless Fridays that were customary at the time, she fasted on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On Christmas Day 1677, she made her First Holy Communion. Her spiritual director Father Pierre Cholonec, S.J., said for the last three years of her life Kateri tried “to preserve throughout the entire day the good sentiments she had experienced in the morning at the foot of the altar.” She showed such profound devotion when she received the Sacred Host that other Christian Indians jostled each other for the privilege of kneeling beside her at the Altar Rail.

Kateri’s genuine sanctity, her desire for spiritual knowledge and her eagerness to apply as much of it as she understood, impressed not only the Christian Indians and the French colonists, but also the French missionaries. The priests worried how much of the Catholic faith the Indians understood and accepted. In Kateri they found a true believer. In 1679 she formalized her life-long resolution never to marry by taking a private vow of perpetual virginity.

At the end of Lent Kateri became seriously ill and died on Wednesday during Holy Week, April 17, 1680 at Kahnawake. Father Cholenc who witnessed her death and remained in prayer beside her body testified the smallpox scars that had disfigured Kateri’s face disappeared “suddenly about a quarter of an hour after death, and [her face] became in a moment so fair and beautiful that noticing the change I cried out in surprise.” Two French settlers also saw the miracle and honored the Mohawk saint by making a wooden coffin for her (most of the dead, French and Indian, were buried wrapped in a shroud). When the mission moved several years later the Jesuits considered the bones of Kateri too valuable to leave behind. The coffin enabled them to identify her remains.

Devotion to Kateri began immediately, but the process toward Kateri’s canonization has moved slowly. {ln:Pope} John Paul II declared her Blessed on June 22,1980, in the presence of hundreds of Indians from North America. She is the first Native American beatified by the Roman Catholic Church and a model for all those who endure ridicule for their faith.

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