October 19
Sts. John de Bréboeuf, Isaac Jogues and Companions
Life. (1607-1646)
When France laid claim to Canada, she sent over missionaries to preach the Faith to the Native Americans. Most numerous of these missionaries were the Jesuits, who began their official apostolate in 1633. Some of the Jesuits who were working among the Indians north of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River eventually crossed the border into New York State, and established missions among the Iroquois nations. Their sojourn here eventually had some success, but it was inaugurated in bloodshed. Father Isaac Jogues and his two lay companions, killed on New York State soil by the Iroquois, are today honored as martyrs by the Church.
Isaac Jogues was born in Orleans, France, in 1607. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1624, taught literature in Rouen, France, for a few years, and in 1636 was sent on the Canadian Mission. Destined for work with fellow Jesuits among the Hurons near Georgian Bay, Ontario, he first spent some time traveling through the Great Lakes country to see where to project future Indian missions. Thus he and his companions were apparently the first white men to view Lake Superior. On the basis of what he saw, he proposed, on his return to Quebec, that mission centers be set up among the Indians of the western Great Lakes, and even among the Sioux, near the headwaters of the Mississippi. Leaving Quebec for the Huron country, Father Jogues and his party, on August 3, 1642, were attacked and seized by a band of Iroquois guerrillas raiding the St. Lawrence River. The Indians tortured them and marched the priest and his lay assistant, Rene Goupil, all the way down to the Mohawk capital Ossernenon, near the present Auriesville, N.Y. Here they were again cruelly tortured, and their forefingers chewed off. On September 29, Goupil, a “paramedic” (born May 13, 1608), was killed by an Iroquois for making the sign of the cross on the forehead of a native child. Father Jogues was allowed to live, but as a slave. Ready for martyrdom, he was also ready to accept slavery, for it gave him at least an opportunity to baptize 69 dying children and to stand as a symbol of Christianity.
After 13 months, however, Dutch Protestant traders from Albany (Fort Orange) warned him that his death was being planned. He therefore accepted their help in escaping. The Dutch sent him down the Hudson River to New Amsterdam. (He thus became the first priest to set foot in Manhattan.) They shipped him thence to France, where he landed on Christmas morning 1643. France hailed the tortured missionary as a hero, and the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria, received him with honor. Pope Urban VIII also gave Jogues permission to say Mass despite the loss of his fingertips. “It would be unjust,” the pope said, “that a martyr for Christ should not drink the blood of Christ.” But Father Jogues ached to return to Canada, and he was able to do so finally in 1644. In 1646, the Iroquois sought peace with the French. The missionary was sent back to his old “killing field” on the Mohawk River as a government representative. (On the trip downward he viewed and gave the name “Lake of the Blessed Sacrament” to the lovely body of water now called Lake George.) When he arrived at Ossernenon his former captors received him well, and an agreement of peace was reached. Jogues then started back to Quebec on June 16. But since he planned to come back as an accredited missionary, he left at Ossernenon a box of religious articles. That box was to be his doom.
On September 27, 1646, the priest set out for Ossernenon once more, with another lay aide, John Lalande. Meanwhile sickness and blight had stricken the Mohawks. Although the other clans refused to think that Jogues’s box was to blame for the pestilences, the Bear Clan insisted that Isaac was a sorcerer. A band of Bear clansmen captured the priest, his aide, and a Huron, near Lake George, tortured them, and brought them back to Ossernenon. On the evening of October 18, 1646, one of the Mohawks invited the priest to dine in his lodge. As soon as Isaac stepped inside, a brave split his skull with a tomahawk. They then cut off his head and mounted it on a pole facing north. John Lalande was killed in the same way on October 19. His body was thrown into the river. Five Jesuits working within the present Canada were likewise martyred in 1648-49, during the course of the Iroquois-Huron War. In 1930 Pope Pius XI canonized these five, along with SS. Isaac Jogues, Rene Goupil, and John Lalande. The blood shed at Ossernenon may not have produced a great harvest, but out of that reddened soil there sprang, a decade later, the wonderful little Mohawk saint, Kateri Tekakwitha. --Father Robert F. McNamara
Scripture (2 Cor 4:7-15)
Writings
(Year A). The Hurons have remained very friendly to us, on account of the promptitude we showed in assisting them. We have told them also that henceforth they should make their forts square, and arrange their stakes in straight lines; and that, by means of four little towers at the four corners, four Frenchmen might easily with their arquebuses or muskets defend a whole village. They are greatly delighted with this advice, and have already begun to practice it at la Rochelle, where they eagerly desire to have some of our Fathers. God employs all means to give an entrance to those who bear the Gospel. On the twentieth of October, an old man of our died in his unbelief; his end frightened some, and awakened in them good resolutions to become converted. It seems that our Lord had communicated to him, a year ago, several good impulses. He was willingly present at all our Assemblies, listening to our instructions; he was the first to make the sign of the Cross; [41] but afterwards he tried to blend our creed with their superstitions and nonsense, and said that he wished to go with his Ancestors. Some dream seemed to have inclined him to good; but as he liked to live well, and to have his say, God punished him. Being sick for the last time, he made his Athataion or farewell feast, in a large Assembly, where he partook of the best, after their fashion, renewing his indulgences after each syncope which came upon him. We went to see him, and he again sought our good offices,—threatening that, if we did not satisfy him by singing in our way, he would overturn everything in our Cabin after his death, and even carry it away. One day he asked us for Baptism; but, as he seemed to be recovering, we distrusted his mood. When we returned in the evening, he was sleeping. Scarcely were we outside his Cabin, when he expired; and God did not permit that what he had scorned during life should be granted him at death. Judicia Dei abyssus multa. On the fourth of November, we set out to instruct this household, and to consider more exactly their disposition towards the Faith. On the way we baptized two sick persons whom. we believe to be now in Heaven. We remained away seven days, during which we instructed the whole family in all the important points of the Christian Religion. Louys served us in this as interpreter, as he is well acquainted with our mysteries, and explains them with enthusiasm. They all approved and enjoyed greatly the Christian truths; and, far from judging any of the commandments of God difficult, they even found them easy. Conjugal continence, and the indissolubility of marriage, seemed to them the most serious obstacles in the progress of the Gospel; and indeed this will be, among other things, a stumbling-block. However, they said that, in view of a life of eternal happiness or of eternal misery, nothing ought to seem difficult. " And then," said Louys's father, "if you said that we must pass two, three, or more days without eating, we might find that a hardship; but there is none in all the rest." He said that the French who had been here had never spoken to them of God, but had been as much addicted as they to run after and dally with the women. Moreover he urged Father Pijart, who was with me, to learn the language quickly, that he might settle in their village, and be there the Superior of a house. On this visit I noticed two or three things. Louys's father, hearing that it was necessary to learn the sign of the Cross, the Pater, the Ave, and the Apostles' Creed, said that all that was a small matter, and that he would have little intelligence if he could not learn it; that, having gone to various Nations, he had sometimes been entrusted with more than twenty different kinds of business, and that on his return he had reported them all faithfully; and consequently he could very soon learn and remember the little we asked. Yet this intelligent man had to work hard to learn the sign of the Cross. It is wonderful how prompt and wide awake men are in worldly affairs, and how dull they are in Spiritual things. I took pleasure in hearing Louys explain our Mysteries to his relatives; he did it with grace, and showed that he had understood them and made them his own. Ah! how I wish I could speak Huron as well as he does, for indeed in comparison with him I only stutter; and yet the way of saying a thing gives it an entirely different meaning. When I brought forward the burning of the five wicked cities, and the preservation of Lot and his family, to show how God chastises severely even in this life the wicked and vile, and how he saves the good, Louys drew the conclusion from it for his relatives that, if they served God faithfully, their Cabin would not be burned even if all the village were afire. (Jesuit Relations)
Musical Selection
Collect
Holy Father,
who consecrated the first beginnings of the faith in North America
by the preaching and martyrdom
of John de Brébeouf, Isaac Jogues and their companions:
with the help of their prayers,
may the Christian faith continue to grow throughout the world.
We as this in the name of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, now and for ever. Amen. (English Missal)