North American Martyrs
Oct. 19, 2019
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y. |
| The Jesuit martyr-saints as depicted at their shrine in Auriesville, N.Y. |
I’ve heard that Canada tries to claim these 8
heroic Jesuits as “the Canadian martyrs.”
In truth, they were all Frenchmen on the Jesuits’ Canadian mission. Some, like Jean de Brebeuf, had been in
Canada for over 20 years; others had been there only a year or 2. 6 were priests, 2 lay missioner volunteers.
5—Brebeuf, Anthony Daniel, Charles Garnier,
Gabriel Lalement, and Noel Chabanel—shed their blood in what’s now Ontario, and
there’s a beautiful shrine to them at Midland, along with a re-creation of a Huron
village and Jesuit mission. As we know,
the other 3—Isaac Jogues, René Goupil, and Jean de Lalande—died at Auriesville,
N.Y.
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| Coliseum chapel at the Martyrs Shrine in Auriesville (Wikimedia Commons) |
You’ve probably all heard a news story
introduced with a caution like, “Some listeners may find the details
disturbing.” That’s true of the tortures
to which several of these priests and laymen were subjected: running the gauntlet, fingernails torn out,
parts of fingers sawed off with clamshells, being “baptized” with boiling
water, having a necklace of red-hot tomahawks put upon them. Being dispatched by arrows like Fr. Daniel or
tomahawk like Lalande almost sounds merciful.
These missionaries didn’t suffer all that for
love of the forests, rivers, and lakes of New France but for love of God and
zeal for souls.
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| The martyrdom of Frs. Brebeuf and Lalement |
Shedding one’s blood so gruesomely wasn’t the
only witness to love for Christ that Jesuit, as well as Franciscan, missioners
displayed in Canada and lands that we know today as New York, Maine, and the
American Midwest. You may remember a
line in Don Bosco’s introduction to our Constitutions about religious suffering
a martyrdom of endurance in contrast to the intensity which blood martyrs
suffer. A good many of the Franciscan
and Jesuit missionaries endured at length during their service in New
France—endured insufferable cold, hunger, choking smoke in Indian longhouses,
insects, days of travel by canoe, fatigue, the loneliness of going months
without seeing a confrere, struggles with language, insults, the poor moral
example of some of their countrymen trapping and trading among the Indians.
Some missionaries died heroically without
shedding their blood. Fr. Anne de Nouë
froze to death in a winter storm while trying to reach a French outpost to
celebrate the sacraments for the soldiers.
Fr. Jacques Marquette, renowned for exploring the Mississippi River and
what’s now Illinois, died almost alone on the shore of Lake Michigan and was
buried in an unmarked grave. Another
whose story I couldn’t locate in Parkman’s history of the Jesuit mission[1]
drowned in the rapids of the St. Lawrence near Montreal.
Some shed blood without having their cause as
martyrs put forward. Fr. Joseph Bressani
was captured by the Iroquois and horribly mutilated and tortured but not
killed; eventually he was ransomed by the Dutch at Albany—and after recovering
from his wounds, returned to the Huron mission.
[2]
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Death of Father Sebastian Rale of the Society of Jesus
Thomas W. Strong, lithograph publisher, 98 Nassau Street, New York
|
Fr. Sebastian Râle was a missionary among the
Abenaki in what’s now Maine for 30-something years. He converted all or most of the tribe and was
totally devoted to them. Their territory
was in the borderlands between New France and New England, and he defended
their independence from both French and British intrusions during the
interminable colonial wars. The
Massachusetts English blamed Fr. Râle when the Abenaki sided with the French in
the wars and, with their passionate hatred for both the French and Catholics,
put a price on his head, eventually slaying him in 1724 in a military assault
on his Abenaki mission.[3]
Truly, all of these priests and lay
volunteers were North American martyrs, even if only 8 have been canonized. They were witnesses to the Lord Jesus in
their daily hardships and struggles to bring the Catholic faith to the many
nations that they might become children of Abraham (cf. Rom 4:13-18).
And that’s their example to us who don’t
expect to be tortured or tomahawked. In
the collect we prayed “that thru their intercession the faith of Christians may
be strengthened day by day.” Every day
we have the opportunity to witness to the Lord Jesus and to the faith in our
daily struggles—struggles with our various personalities, with perceived
shortcomings, with the weather, with household breakdowns, with plans that go
awry, with impatience with our own sins and failings, with trying to get to chapel
on time, with the effort to be faithful to our vows, with the hard work of
teaching or administering, etc. Our
witness helps support our brothers—and also the lay people who see and hear us
and count upon our good example as well as our prayers. Several nites a week we hear the names of
deceased confreres whom we lived with and whose heroic example we
admired—because they were contemporary North American martyrs, witnesses to the
Lord Jesus and our faith. May the grace
of Christ so strengthen us that we may be genuine witnesses to him.
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