The true American heroes are not sport or entertainment figures, but Catholic saints. We should turn our “lonely eyes” to them and follow their good examples, virtues and works. They are our true friends and are alive in heaven with God. They are models of holiness for us. They can help us just like friends on earth by their prayerful intercession on our behalf. They give us courage and hope.

July 14 is the feast of one of our saints of the states, St. Kateri Tekakwitha. Let our nation turn its lonely eyes to her for courage and hope. Pope Benedict XVI canonized her at St. Peter’s square in Vatican City October 21, 2012.

The blood of the martyrs is often the water that sprouts the seed of the Catholic faith. The blood of the only martyrs of the United States, Saints Isaac Jogues, Rene Goupil and Jean de la Lande, watered the seed of the faith in the Mohawk Village at Auriesville, New York. Kateri Tekakwitha was born there in 1656, ten years after they were martyred there.
 

Kateri lived in the Mohawk Village with her uncle, the chief of the Turtle Clan, after her parents died from smallpox when she was four. The smallpox left her disfigured with impaired vision. “Tekakwitha” in Mohawk means “one who puts things in order” or “one who feels her way”, because Kateri had to feel her way with her poor eyesight in the darkened lodges. She often stayed in the Longhouse because the sunlight hurt her eyes.

She fell in love with Jesus and decided to remain a virgin. Virginity was unheard of amongst the Indians and they pressured her to marry and to work on Sunday, but she refused to do so. When they connived to have her lodge visited by a young warrior in the hopes of their union, she turned him out. Then the Indians treated her as a slave and put her to work for the village.

In 1666, the French attacked and burned down Kateri’s village. The Mohawks built a new village on the north side of the Mohawk River at Fonda (Caughnawaga), New York. Here Kateri first  heard of the Catholic faith from Father Jacques de Lamberville, a French Jesuit, who occasionally visited her village at St. Peter’s Mission. He baptized her on April 18, 1676 and she took the name Catherine that the Mohawks pronounced “Kateri”.

The other Mohawks persecuted her for her faith. They mocked her devotion to Our Lady and her recitation of the Rosary. Kateri was not deterred, but to avoid the persecution she escaped in 1677 with some companions from the village to Canada. She trekked north through New York and paddled Lake Champlain to Sault Saint-Louis, a Christian Indian Mission near Montreal on the St. Lawrence River. Her journey took over two weeks, traveling by foot and canoe about three hundred miles through woods, rivers, swamps and lakes.

 
At the Mission, Kateri lived a life dedicated to prayer, penitential practices and care for the sick and aged. Her day at the Mission began at 4 a.m. each morning in church where she remained for several hours of prayer and Masses. She helped the sick and the poor. She formed a group called the Slavery of the Blessed Virgin and they fasted and endured exposure to the cold in the woods as acts of penance. On March 25, 1679, Kateri was permitted to make a vow of perpetual virginity.

Kateri was a half-blind, pockmarked orphan Indian maiden. She was little more than a slave in her own clan, but in God’s eyes she was His pure daughter and a model for her race. Many Indians followed her good example and converted. Kateri received the Eucharist with the greatest devotion. Father Pierre Cholenec, who prepared her for her First Communion said, “Only God knows what passed between Himself and His dear Spouse.”

Kateri attended daily Masses at 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. and visited the Blessed Sacrament five times daily, after her daily visitations to the sick and the poor. During her own last sickness, she dragged herself to Mass until she could no longer walk. She died at the age of 24 on April 17, 1680 in the presence of Father Cholenec and all of her pox marks disappeared. He said that at the time of her death Kateri’s face “… so disfigured and so swarthy in life, suddenly changed about fifteen minutes after her death, and in an instant became so beautiful and so fair that just as soon as I saw it (I was praying by her side) I let out a yell, I was so astonished.”

Two hundred and ninety three years later on the very same date, April 17, 1973, young Peter McCauley’s hearing was spontaneously restored through Kateri’s intercession. This was the miracle that led to her beatification by Pope John Paul II on June 22, 1980.

Pope Benedict XVI canonized Kateri on October 21, 2012. He called St. Kateri the “protectress of Canada and the first Native American saint” and he entrusted to her “the renewal of the faith in the First Nations and in all of North America.”

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia, who is of American Indian descent, said, “I think many young people today are embarrassed about embracing the Catholic faith because they live in a secular culture that’s hostile toward religious experience. St. Kateri also grew up in a place where there was great hostility toward Christianity, but she resisted all efforts to turn her away from her faith, so in some ways she would be a model of fidelity in the face of persecution on religious freedom grounds.”
 
Kateri’s Feast Day is July 14. Because of her purity, she is known as the “Lily of the Mohawks.” 

 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like to a net cast into the sea, and gathering together of all kids of fishes.  Which, when it was filled, they drew out, and sitting by the shore, they chose out the good into vessels, but the bad they cast forth.  So it shall be at the end of the world.  The angels shall go out, and shall separate the wicked form among the just.  And shall cast them into the furnace of fire:  there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

“You have heard that it was said to them of old:  Thou shalt not kill.  and whosoever shall kill, shall be in danger of the judgement. But I say to you, that whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgement.  And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council.  And whoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

“If therefore thou offer they gift at the altar and there thou remember that they brother hath anything against thee, leave there thy offering before the alter and go first to be reconciled to they brother, and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift.”

Fr. Elijah Joseph of Our Lady of Guadalupe
with some Benedictine Oblates of the Divine Will 

Benedictine Daughters of the Divine Will

St. Benedict is Founder of the Benedictine Order and Western Monasticism – The Benedictines of Divine Will are little children of Christ the King and Mary the Queen who strive to live in the Kingdom of Divine Will on “earth as it is in heaven.” They live the life of the Holy Family of Nazareth in the New Eden of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Guided by the Holy Spirit and under the protection of St. Joseph they utilize the ancient monastic wisdom of St. Benedict with Eucharistic Adoration and the writings of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta to glorify the Eternal Father.

Click here and here for the Benedictines of the Divine Will Websites

Book of Heaven
7/1/24 – Vol. 17

I felt very oppressed because of the privation of my adorable Jesus. Oh, how my heart bleeds, as I feel subjected to suffer continuous deaths! I felt I could not go on without Him, and that my martyrdom could not be harder than that. And while I was trying to follow Jesus in the different mysteries of His Passion, I arrived at accompanying Him in the mystery of His painful Scourging. At that moment, He moved in my interior, filling all of myself with His adorable Person. Upon seeing Him, I wanted to tell Him of my hard state, but Jesus, imposing silence on me, told me: “My daughter, let us pray together. There are certain sad times in which my Justice, unable to contain Itself because of the evils of creatures, would want to flood the earth with new scourges; and so prayer in my Will is necessary, which, extending over all, places itself as defense of the creatures, and with its power, prevents my Justice from approaching the creature to strike her.”

How beautiful and touching it was to hear Jesus pray! And since I was accompanying Him in the sorrowful mystery of the Scourging, He made Himself seen pouring out Blood, and I heard Him say: “My Father (God the Father), I (God the Son, Jesus) offer You this Blood of Mine. O please, let It cover all the intelligences of creatures, rendering vain all their evil thoughts, dimming the fire of their passions, and making holy intelligences rise again. May this Blood cover their eyes and be a veil to their sight, so that the taste of evil pleasures may not enter them through their eyes, and they may not get dirty with the mud of the earth. May this Blood of Mine cover and fill their mouths, and render their lips dead to blasphemies, to imprecations, to all of their bad words. My Father, may this Blood of Mine cover their hands, and strike terror in man for so many evil actions. May this Blood circulate in Our Eternal Will in order to cover all, to defend all, and to be a defending weapon for the creature before the rights of Our Justice.” …

Book of Heaven
7/14/23 – Vol. 15

As I (Servant of God, Luisa Piccarreta) was in my usual state, my good Jesus came, but all afflicted.  It seemed to me that He could not detach from me, and, all goodness, told me:  “My daughter, I have come to make you suffer.  Don’t you remember when I wanted to chastise man and you did not want Me to, wanting to suffer yourself in their place, and in order to make you content, I told you that instead of doing ‘ten’, for love of you I would do ‘five’?  Now the nations want to fight against one other, and those which believe themselves to be the most powerful are taking up arms to their teeth in order to destroy the weak nations.  This is about total destruction, my daughter.  This is why I have come to make you suffer – to give you that ‘five’ which I promised you.  My justice will give to fire and water the power of the office which they contain, in order to destroy peoples and entire cities; therefore, a little bit of your suffering is necessary in order to reduce the chastisements by half.” 

Now, while He was saying this, He moved in my interior, as though holding many instruments in His hands; and as He moved them, sufferings and pains were formed, with such tearing of all my members that I don’t know how I remained alive.  And when He would see me moaning and shivering because of the intensity of the pains, with the air of one who has triumphed over everything, Jesus would say to me:  “You are my Life, and with my Life I can do whatever I want.”  And He would continue His crafting to make me suffer.  May everything be for the glory of God, for the good of my soul, and for the salvation of all.

Then, afterwards, He added:  “My daughter, the whole world is upside down, and everyone is awaiting changes, peace, new things.  They themselves gather to discuss about it, and are surprised at not being able to conclude anything and to come to serious decisions.  So, true peace does not arise, and everything resolves into words, but no facts.  And they hope that more conferences may serve to make serious decisions, but they wait in vain.  In the meantime, in this waiting, they are in fear, and some prepare themselves for new wars, some hope for new conquests.  But, with this, the peoples are impoverished, are stripped alive, and while they are waiting, tired of the sad present era, dark and bloody, which enwraps them, they wait and hope for a new era of peace and of light.

The world is exactly at the same point as when I was about to come upon earth.  All were awaiting a great event, a new era, as indeed occurred.  The same now; since the Great Event, the New Era in which the Will of God may be done on earth as It is in Heaven, is coming – everyone is awaiting this New Era, tired of the present one, but without knowing what this new thing, this change is about, just as they did not know it when I came upon earth.  This expectation is a sure sign that the hour is near.  But the surest sign is that I am manifesting what I want to do, and that turning to a soul, just as I turned to my Mama in descending from Heaven to earth, I communicate to her my Will and the goods and effects It contains, to make of them a gift for the whole of humanity.