Homily for Memorial of North American Martyrs

Homily for the Memorial of the
North American Martyrs
Monday, Week 29 of O.T.

Oct. 19, 2026
Eph 2: 1-10
Salesian HS, New Rochelle

Today we’re celebrating the memorial of 8 French Jesuit missionaries who were killed by Iroquois Indians in the mid-17th century—5 of them in what is now Ontario in Canada, and 3 in upstate New York at a Mohawk village a little west of Albany.  They were among many dozens of priests, brothers, sisters, and lay volunteers who came to New France to make Jesus Christ known and loved among the colonists, fur trappers, and native tribes.

One of the 3 martyred in New York was Fr. Isaac Jogues.  He was the 1st priest to set foot in New York City, which was still New Amsterdam at the time.  An image of him is on the great bronze main door of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (photo above), along with 5 other saints.[1]

Fr. Jogues came to New Amsterdam as a refugee in 1643.  He’d escaped from captivity among the Mohawks, where his companion, a lay missionary, had already been killed.  Fr. Jogues had been horribly tortured, including having several of his fingers sawed off by clamshells.  Once he was back in France, he needed special permission from the Pope to celebrate Mass again because, at the time, it was a rule that a priest had to have all his fingers in order to handle the sacred Host and the chalice.  The Pope said, “Someone who has shed his blood for Christ should not be prohibited from drinking the Blood of Christ.”  Until the liturgy was reformed 55 years ago, only priests could drink the Precious Blood.

In spite of that awful experience of captivity and torture, Fr. Jogues, after he returned to Canada, volunteered to return to the same Mohawk village as a missionary with another lay volunteer in 1646.  They didn’t have much success preaching the Gospel and, in fact, were blamed for an epidemic in the village and for a bad harvest.  So the 2 missionaries were tomahawked and their bodies thrown into the Mohawk River.

That’s the sort of faith and courage that all 8 of these missionaries showed in New France and among the native tribes.  There were others, too, who sacrificed themselves to bring Christ to the Indians as well as to French settlers on the frontier.  They suffered from brutal winters, from dangerous travel in river rapids, from hunger and mistreatment, and from loneliness.  They loved Jesus so much that they endured such difficulties and dangers.  And they did plant the Gospel with some success in many places.

The missionary martyrs challenge us to live our faith in Jesus with perseverance and with courage:  to get to church on Sunday, to be faithful to our duties at home and in school, to be honest, to be pure, to be patient, to treat everyone with respect.  Sometimes that’s hard.  Being a martyr means, literally, being a witness—giving witness to Jesus by how we act and speak.  All of us are supposed to do that.  As St. Paul says in today’s 1st reading, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph 2:10).

[1] Sts. Joseph, Patrick, Frances Cabrini, Elizabeth Ann Seton, and Catherine Tekakwitha.