August 13, 2023 - "North American Martyrs"

October 19^th is the day when the Church in the United States celebrates the North American Martyrs.  These eight Jesuit martyrs who were killed in North America between 1642 and 1649 were canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1930.  I want to concentrate on three of these Jesuit martyrs as they were killed in what is now New York State:  Saint Isacc Jogues, Saint Jean de Lalande and Saint René Goupil.
 
Isaac Jogues (1607-1646) was a man of culture and learning.  As a young Jesuit he taught literature in France.  Yet he dreamed of being a missionary to the Native Americans in New France.  In 1636 he and his companions arrived in Quebec under the leadership of John de Brébeuf.  The Jesuits concentrated their efforts among the Wyandot (or Huron) peoples who were continually attacked by the Iroquois.  After a few years of work among the Wyandot, Father Jogues was captured by the Iroquois and imprisoned for thirteen months.  The letters and journals describe how he and his companions were led from village to village.  Along the way the Jesuits were forced to watch their Wyandot converts being put to death, often after savage torture.  Isaac had an opportunity to escape on a Dutch ship.  He returned to France bearing certain marks of his martyrdom.  During the time of his captivity with the Iroquois, several of Isaac’s fingers had been cut, chewed, or burnt off.  Pope Urbain VIII gave his permission to offer Mass with his mutilated hands.  The Holy Father remarked when granting the permission, “It would be shameful if a martyr of Christ would not be permitted to drink the blood of Christ.”  Father Jogues was welcomed as a hero and could have settled into a comfortable life, perhaps returning to life in the classroom.  Instead, he felt restless and wanted to return to his missionary work among the Wyandot.  In a few months he sailed back to New France.  In 1646 Father Jogues and Jean de Lalande, who had offered his services to the Jesuit missionaries set out for the territory of Iroquois in the belief that a recently signed peace treaty would be observed.  They were captured by a Mohawk war party.  On October 18 Father Jogues was tomahawked and beheaded.  Jean de Lalande was killed the next day at Ossernenon, a village near Albany, New York. 
 
The first of the three Jesuit missionaries to be martyred was René Goupil who, with Lalande, had offered his services as an oblate.  He was tortured with Isaac Jogues in 1642 and was tomahawked for having made the sign of the cross on the brow of some children.
 
These three Jesuit martyrs are remembered at the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs located in the hamlet of Auriesville in Fultonville, New York.  Once the seventeenth century Mohawk village of Ossernenon, it is the Roman Catholic Shrine dedicated to Saints René Goupil, Isaac Jogues, and John de Lalande who were martyred there and also to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk/Algonquin woman who was born there. 
 
For 130 years the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs was under the ownership and direction of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), but it is now owned and operated by Friends of Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine, a board of volunteers dedicated to preserving and maintaining both the sanctity and viability of those sacred grounds.
 

Let me conclude this column on these Jesuit missionaries who were martyred in what is now Fultonville, New York with this quotation from Saint Isaac Jogues: “My confidence is placed in God who does not need our help in accomplishing his designs.  Our single endeavor should be to give ourselves to the work and to be faithful to him, and not spoil his work by our shortcomings” (from a letter of Isaac Jogues to a Jesuit friend in France, September 12, 1646, a month before he died).
 
Until next week,
Fr. John