return of sorts - Bl Kateri Tekawitha July 14

07-16-11
1632

I return to my saints and sons blogging after five month’s hiatus from regular submissions.

My thanks to those who have taken a minute or two to read my muddlings.

My apologies to those who were expecting me to be more persistent in my almost daily additions.

Up until today, my entries to this blog were specifically and purposively addressed to my sons. [Alas, the name of this blog: saintsandsons – the day’s saint(s) eliciting a message from dad to sons.]

I pick up my writing in response to the day’s saint(s), still addressed to Jack and Thom but to these names as my projection of my feeloughts of sons, not necessarily to particular persons; i.e., to help me be in a framework of having an audience qua sons. No doubt, I will slide into feeloughts about these particular boys (yes, at 24 and 22 they are still boys) [see, I just did it.]. I ask your forgiveness for anything that you experience as negative to them in particular. These writings are about me; for me; by me – selfish me blogosphering out from my dwindling world. Ora pro me.

Of course, in reference to the saints, my sources are Angels and Saints, the Catholic Encyclopedia, Butler, et al. from my googling and the myriad of saint books around my abode. I’m not going to use quote marks – in part out of laziness but also not inconsistent with all the other writers who are writing the exact same passages without quotes. I assume the primary source for the lives of the saints in their much abridged form would be the Acta. Would that I read Latin or that all of the saints’ Acta were translated into English.

Videbimus.

Ora pro me.


July 14

Bl Kateri Tekawitha
b. 1656 d. April 17, 1680 (24 years old!)

Kateri is Anglicized Catherine, my mother’s name. I have no doubt that my mother would have a devotion to this blessed were she to have learned about her here on earth. This woman should be part of any anthology of heroic women.

Kateri was born near the town of Auriesville, New York, in the year 1656, the daughter of a Mohawk warrior. 1656? How’s your mid seventeenth century American history? How well do you know what was happening in the Hudson River valley during the last half of the seventeenth century? Indians. French, Dutch, and English settlers. Catholic missionaries. All of that background helps understand the heroism and sanctity of this woman.

I wonder if every Mohawk man were also a warrior? It does matter whether one’s father is a warrior or not. My father was a sailor in WWII – one of the Greatest Generation: a service about which he has rarely spoken. My brother flew in Air Force fighter jets to defend us and our country: a service about which he has said more than my father about his but that’s not saying much.

A warrior is a very different father than a man who is not a warrior. The child’s place in the family and the tribe/clan/community is also affected by the fact that her father is a warrior. There is a big difference when your father goes off to work at the local hospital and you can easily and reasonably expect him to be home for dinner versus when he leaves in the morning to be a jockey in a fighter jet or on a warship and he may not return for months, if at all. There is pride in having a warrior-father. There is also trepidation attenuated by faith, hope, and love.

Kateri’s mother was a Christian Algonquin who had been captured by the Iroquois and saved from a captive's fate by the father of Tekakwitha, to whom she also bore a son. When Tekakwitha was about four years old, her parents and brother died of small-pox, and the child was adopted by her aunts and a uncle who had become chief of the Turtle clan.

Kateri was four years old when her mother died of smallpox. The disease also attacked Kateri and transfigured her face. The only disfiguration I have from smallpox is the mark on my arm up near the shoulder from the immunization. But I have seen the pox-marks caused to victims of smallpox; it’s damn ugly. For Kateri, imagine the combination of losing your mother and being disfigured for life with the reminder of the disease that took her away. Simplify it – try if you can (I can’t) to imagine being a four year old girl, daughter of a warrior father who you’d barely known as the one who went out defending your tribe and coming home with food when he’s been especially skillful or lucky, a four year old girl toddling around the tribe’s camp without your parents!

How does a four year old deal with such a loss? What did she learn from her parents? From her tribe? At four years old, Kateri was adopted by her two aunts and an uncle.

It does take a village! Well, it does take an extended family. We are not here alone – from birth through childhood and old age to dying – and we need our family, we depend on having one another.

[Thus, those parents who do not properly take care of their children are excoriated. Let’s flip that around. Parents who raise their children with love are blessed: as are their children. Siblings who care for one another are blessed. My brother is the best brother in all the world! I have always admired how my father and his siblings love one another and each other’s children. I think we cousins have followed in that model fairly well. Those children who take good care of their aged parents are also blessed. Honor your father and your mother does not have an expiration date. Alas, were my boys also my sons, so far I would be extremely disappointed. Maybe less than they are of me qua father. That is not to say that I am a hotshot son myself. Ora pro nobis.]

As a child, Kateri would circle the cornfield praying the Hail Mary, a prayer her mother taught her. Kateri’s uncle was also the tribal chieftan. The Chief opposed, as he must have as the chief, the new Christianity that infiltrated his tribe and infected his niece.

In 1667 the Jesuit missionaries Fremin, Bruyas, and Pierron, accompanying the Mohawk deputies who had been to Quebec to conclude peace with the French, spent three days in the lodge of Tekakwitha's uncle. From them she received her first knowledge of Christianity, but although she forthwith eagerly accepted it in her heart she did not at that time ask to be baptized. Some time later the Turtle clan moved to the north bank of the Mohawk River, the "castle" being built above what is now the town of Fonda. Here in the midst of scenes of carnage, debauchery, and idolatrous frenzy Tekakwitha lived a life of remarkable virtue, at heart not only a Christian but a Christian virgin, for she firmly and often, with great risk to herself, resisted all efforts to induce her to marry.

Kateri became converted as a teenager. Kateri was baptized at the age of twenty and incurred the great hostility of her tribe. I was baptized as an infant. Thus, my ‘conversion’ was mostly my journey of faith. A faith planted at inception and nourished in an Irish Catholic family – mother, father, all my extended families. My faith was further nourished by Catholic Schools, even when we lived in very non-Catholic Portland Maine.

[Thus it might be easier to be understanding of my boys’ unconversion. Their being ripped from my life at an early age, they continued to have the pro forma Catholicism of their mother as well as excellent Catholic schools through eighth grade. Unfortunately, their pfcm raised them with non/anti Catholic caregivers. In the non-Catholic/AntiCatholic cities of Nashville and Greensboro, their mother not only went non-Catholic again (her third plus change in religion/lack thereof) but she also sent them to an anti-Catholic/antiReligions high school wherein they incurred the great hostility of her tribe and that of the school community. As much as their mother is responsible for these tragedies, the boys have their piece of the action as well. I pray to St Monica, as well as my great aunt Monica for their re-conversion to the one True Faith. Once a Catholic, Always a Catholic. Closing one’s eyes and sticking one’s fingers in one’s ears does not change one iota of Truth.]

When she was eighteen, Father Jacques de Lamberville arrived to take charge of the mission which included the Turtle clan, and from him, at her earnest request, Tekakwitha received baptism. Thenceforth she practiced her religion unflinchingly in the face of almost unbearable opposition, till finally her uncle's lodge ceased to be a place of protection to her and she was assisted by some Christian Indians to escape to Caughnawaga on the St. Laurence.

[It is possible and expected for each of us to be unflinching in our faith and religion in the face of almost unbearable opposition.]

Here she lived in the cabin of Anastasia Tegonhatsihonga, a Christian Indian woman, her extraordinary sanctity impressing not only her own people but the French and the missionaries. Her mortifications were extreme, and Chauchtiere says that she had attained the most perfect union with God in prayer.

[Find for yourself the proper Catholic home/community in which you can live the sanctity available to you.]

How does a teenager convert? At eighteen in 1674, Kateri was a woman in her society. She, unlike teens today, or even today’s college students, made an adult decision. She made the decision to reject the religion of the tribe and the tribe excoriated her. Kateri persisted in The Faith.

No doubt my mother, Catherine, had many challenges to her faith – growing up sans father, in the depression, through the war, with her marriage and children, post divorce and annulment. I have less than no doubt that she embraced her faith, our faith, throughout those trials and tribulations.

[The boys’ being cut off from my family, my mother, my aunts and uncles and cousins was an act of purposeful detriment for them. Were they not cut off from family and faith they would be much better off vis a vis faith, Church, and religion today. Rejecting God and leaving The Church to imitate one’s mother or accommodate one’s schoolmates is a perilous choice. However, Augustine and Monica et al. prove to us there is much hope for their redemption.]

Although Kateri had to suffer greatly for her Faith, she remained firm in it. Kateri went to the new Christian colony of Indians in Canada.

[Unfortunately, my boys had an opposite experience and so far an opposite outcome. They were not brought to a Catholic community. Their unconverted mother took them to an anti-Catholic community and put them in an anti-Catholic school and home. Alas, they are young and have the time necessary to remake the right decisions.]

When one suffers, period, a community of faith is necessary to not only offer up the suffering but to also shore up one’s beliefs in the One True God of Love and His Church.

In the Canadian Catholic Community, Kateri lived a life dedicated to prayer, penitential practices, and care for the sick and aged. The new faith community nurtured Kateri’s faith and devotions and piety as well as her decision to not marry. This is how one person lives a daily Catholic life. Let us often ask Blessed Kateri, as well as my mother, Catherine, to pray for us to live our faith more like they did.

Every morning, even in bitterest winter, Kateri stood before the chapel door until it opened at four and remained there until after the last Mass. She was devoted to the Eucharist and to Jesus Crucified.

I have had multiple periods in my life when daily Mass was a routine. Going to the first Mass was one way to get me out of bed in the morning. Each hour I spent at Mass, every minute I was in church, the less likely I was to be doing something wrong during that time – plus getting some residual benefits.

Bitterest winter? How about Portland Maine walking from Alba Street to St Patrick’s Church? After having walked a morning paper route that took me almost that far and before trudging on to Cheverus H.S. Or the morning Mass in Columbus, OH. It wasn’t a matter of snow and cold: getting out of bed is my challenge.
A devotion? Find a greater purpose for one’s life. Give over oneself to the greater good.

Kateri apparently had not only great devotions but also a balance within them. Jesus Crucified? The Crucifix to help the imagery and the focus. A large swatch of my Ignatian spirituality includes a devotion to Jesus Crucified.

To a devotion to the crucifix, Kateri also had a devotion to the Eucharist. The real presence of Jesus. To Jesus feeding us His Bread of Life. We all must find our devotions to not only express our Love of Jesus but to also nurture and sustain that love.

Kateri died on April 17, 1680 at the age of twenty-four. She is known as the "Lily of the Mohawks".

Kateri was declared venerable by the Catholic Church in 1943 and she was Beatified in 1980. Bl. Kateri Teckakwitha is the first Native American to be declared a Blessed.

Blessed Kateri is the patroness of the environment and ecology as is St. Francis of Assisi.

AMDG,

wtn
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