Title: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha
Authors: Bob and Penny Lord
Publisher: Journeys of Faith
Format: Printed minibook
36 Pages
Saint Kateri Tekakwitha
Lily of the Mohawks
Mystic of the New World
Fruit of the Martyrs
Father Plafcan died in an accident shortly after this interview.
The Lord takes us into the wilderness of a new, uncharted, untouched world, to share with us the beauty of His creation and the power of His works through the first beatified native person born in this country. In our book, Martyrs, They Died for Christ, we wrote about a new breed of Evangelists who came upon the horizon, whose images cast a broad shadow on a new world. These were brave, totally committed men of France, the Jesuit Blackrobes, who came to our continent in the early Seventeenth Century with only one goal - to bring Jesus to the pagans who inhabited the land.
The move by these French priests was spearheaded by an observation made by Samuel Champlain as he traveled the breadth of the St. Lawrence River, which then broadened out to Lake Ontario. He noticed as he sailed past all the Indian villages, there were so many children of God who knew nothing about Our Lord Jesus, our Savior. He wrote, in his journal, how sad it was that most of these people would live their entire lives never having heard the name of Jesus and would die without the grace of having known Him or being a part of His Church through Baptism.
When this word came back to the Church of France, an avalanche of fervor swept across the country. But it was the newly-formed army of Ignatius Loyola, the Company of Jesus, the Jesuits, 1 who took it as a call to spiritual arms. The French contingency of that order accepted the challenge put to them. They embraced St. Paul’s plea to the Christians of another time, the early days of the Church, as a call to arms.
We travel to Fonda, New York, near Auriesville, where the National Shrine to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha stands.
We discuss the village where Kateri lived with the Mohawks and had her ministry. She is the first fruits of the Martyrs.
We travel to Kahnawake, Canada, where Kateri went, lived and died.
We interview Fr. Jacques Bruyere, Promulgator for cause of Canonization of Kateri.
