Jul 14 - St. Kateri Tekakwitha

+ Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (born 1656 – died 1680 at the age of 24) is the first Native American to have been canonized. She is known as the “Lily of the Mohawks.” Born Tekakwitha, Kateri or Catherine was her Christian name; she was daughter of a Christian Algonquin mother and a pagan Mohawk chief in Auriesville, New York. She was orphaned at age four. A bout of smallpox left her disfigured and partially blind. At a very young age, Catherine made a vow not to marry, which ran counter to the culture of her people and created great personal difficulty for her.

In 1667, she met Christian missionaries for the first time, but did not seek baptism at that time; it was only eight years later when she met Fr. Jacques de Lamberville, a Jesuit, that she was baptized on Easter Sunday, 1676. Finding life in her village stressful, she walked two hundred miles to settle in a Christian mission in Sault St. Louis, near Montreal, where she made her First Holy Communion in October 1677. For the next three years Kateri led a devout Catholic life, attending Mass twice a day, fasting on Wednesdays and Saturdays, teaching children and caring for the sick and the aged. She died on April 17, 1680.

A number of miracles and appearances were reported after her death and were attested to by the Jesuit missionaries. The Council of Baltimore in 1884 petitioned the Holy See to begin Kateri’s beatification process which bore fruit only in 1980. In October of 2012, this “Lily of the Mohawks” was canonized at the same time in Rome as another saintly personage from Central New York State: Mother Mary Anne Cope, OSF who was both an educator and a worker with lepers with Fr. Damien on the Island of Molokai, Hawaii.

These beloved daughters of the church were true Brides of Christ who were led into the desert by the Lord so that he could speak his love to their hearts, so that he could espouse them to himself forever in right and in justice, in love and mercy and fidelity: so that they should know their Lord.

Let us respond to the same Lord who invites us this very day into an intimate relationship with him, so that having our lives saturated with his grace and his power, (as was Kateri Tekakwitha’s), we can witness to all we meet each day of the magnificence and splendor of the Christ-grounded life that we are all called to participate in.

Young men and women, praise the name of the Lord.