Kathryn Lopez
Today’s the feast of Kateri Tekakwitha — holy New Yorker! — and first Native American saint.
1. When Pope Benedict XVI canonized Kateri Tekakwitha in 2012, he said:
Kateri Tekakwitha was born in today’s New York state in 1656 to a Mohawk father and a Christian Algonquin mother who gave to her a sense of the living God. She was baptized at twenty years of age and, to escape persecution, she took refuge in Saint Francis Xavier Mission near Montreal. There she worked, faithful to the traditions of her people, although renouncing their religious convictions until her death at the age of twenty-four. Leading a simple life, Kateri remained faithful to her love for Jesus, to prayer and to daily Mass. Her greatest wish was to know and to do what pleased God. She lived a life radiant with faith and purity.
Kateri impresses us by the action of grace in her life in spite of the absence of external help and by the courage of her vocation, so unusual in her culture. In her, faith and culture enrich each other! May her example help us to live where we are, loving Jesus without denying who we are. Saint Kateri, Protectress of Canada and the first native American saint, we entrust to you the renewal of the faith in the first nations and in all of North America! May God bless the first nations!
2. From a 2012 story on her pending canonization:
Countless small miracles have been attributed to Blessed Kateri, who is said to have appeared to Polish prisoners during World War II to tell them that she would secure their release. She was declared “Venerable” by Pope Pius XII in 1943 and beatified on June 22, 1980, by Blessed Pope John Paul II. She was also named a patroness of World Youth Day in 2002 in Toronto.
“Her life was such an unbelievable life,” said Msgr. Paul Lenz, the vice postulator for Blessed Kateri’s cause and the former executive director of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. Msgr. Lenz said in a telephone interview that the 17th-century Jesuit missionaries who knew Blessed Kateri kept detailed records that tell modern readers many facts about her life.
“Their records, before and after her death, show she was a saintly woman,” Msgr. Lenz said. “She loved the Church. She practiced all kinds of penances. She loved the Blessed Sacrament. She would pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament whenever she could.”
“There is no question about it,” Msgr. Lenz said. “She was known to the Jesuits and all the people who knew her as a saintly person.”
Father Wayne Paysse, executive director of the Black and Indian Mission Office in Washington, D.C., said that he and Msgr. Lenz were both filled with emotion when they learned of Blessed Kateri’s upcoming canonization.
“The first thing we said is that we’re both so happy for the Native Americans of the United States,” Father Paysse said. “This has been a great, great gift, an early Christmas gift, not only for the people in this office, but for Native Americans and our Catholic community.”
“Like all saints, all holy people, her simplicity of spirit — she was so genuine, so authentic in the spiritual life,” Father Paysse said. “When she heard the story of Jesus Christ from those missionaries, her heart was captured. The saints model for us what it means to be a Christian, to give our hearts to Christ.”
3. Cardinal Timothy Dolan shared at the time:
I’ve pretty much been praying the same morning offering since my first Holy Communion.
Every once in a while, I’ll make a change or addition to my memorized prayer … and that happened this very day at 6:00 a.m.
When my niece Shannon was diagnosed with cancer a dozen years ago at age nine, I addedBlessed Kateri Tekakwitha to the litany of my favorite friends in heaven whom I beseech at the opening of each day, figuring that she, who herself battled a life threatening illness when she, too, was a little girl, would have a special solicitude for Shannon.
Well, today, for the first time in 12 years, I invoked Saint Kateri Tekakwitha!
4. From the Liturgy of the Hours today:
How beautiful you are, virgin of Christ;
– the Lord has given you the gift of perpetual virginity.Nothing can rob you of your reward
or separate you from the love of the Son of God.
– The Lord has given you the gift of perpetual virginity.
5. From Archbishop Chaput in 2013:
Kateri was born nine years after the martyrdom of
Sts. Isaac Jogues and John de Brebeuf. Born around 1656 into the Mohawk tribe in what is now
upstate New York, she lost her parents and brother to smallpox as a young child. She was raised by
relatives after she survived the disease, though it damaged her eyesight and left her permanently
scarred. She declined to marry, despite natural pressure from her family, and through contacts with
French Jesuit missionaries, she developed a love for Jesus. Despite strong resistance from her tribe and
extended family, she was baptized in 1679, moved to a Christian community of Indians where she
studied the catechism and helped minister to the poor and aged. The zeal of her young faith had a
profound impact on the Jesuits who oversaw her conversion, and stories of her miracles began within
months of her premature death in 1680, at the age of 24. She understood the cost of being an outcast
from personal experience, and she overcame the pain of exile and misunderstanding by an unrelenting
commitment to unselfish love.
6. While celebrating Mass anticipating the canonization of Junipero Serra this fall in Washington, D.C. this May, Pope Francis invoked her during a litany of saints of the Americas, pairing her with Juan Diego, as “humble workers in the vineyard of the Lord.”
7. A prayer from her shrine in upstate New York.
Kateri Tekakwitha, pray for us! (Here she is @ @marysshrine by @catholicuniv pic.twitter.com/QsmF8iOBaY
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) July 14, 2015
And:
8. Prayer to the Lily of the Mohawks
Blessed Kateri, you are revered as the mystic of the American wilderness. Though orphaned at the age of four, and left with a scarred face and damaged eyesight from illness, you were esteemed among the Mohawk tribe. When you asked to be baptized a Christian you subjected yourself to abuse by your people and were forced to run away. You endured may trials but still flowered in prayer and holiness, dedicating yourself totally to Christ. I ask you to be my spiritual guide along my journey through life. Through you intercession, I pray that I may always be loyal to my faith in all things. Amen
9. Also, today’s Mass readings.
10. And from Magnificat today:
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