"Lily of the Mohawks"
Fr. Higgins • Jul 13, 2024
On the Calendar of Saints for today we commemorate the feast of St. Kateri Tekakwitha (+1680), who was raised to the altars by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. She is the first Native American so honored and therefore has a special pride-of-place for American sanctity.
Kateri’s mother was a Christian Algonquin who had become enslaved by the Mohawks in a warraid. Her father was the Mohawk Chief Great Beaver who had made the captive-slave his wife. Her parents died from a small-pox epidemic which swept the village when she was a very little girl and she was raised by her father’s family.
When Kateri was eleven Jesuit missionary priests—“blackrobes”— were allowed into the Mohawk village to minister to the Christian Indian captives. In 1675, circumstances converged to make it possible for Kateri to become a catechumen and she was baptized on Easter Sunday, 1676.
In the eyes of her father’s family this was a betrayal and they persecuted her with great cruelty:
Because she found joy in her freedom to live her Christian religion Kateri’s aunts became jealous of her happiness. They would never call her by her Christian name (Kateri = Catherine), and when she tried to observe the Lord’s Day by not doing any servile work, the aunts refused to share their food with her. Kateri remained firm in her resolve though each succeeding Sunday meant a fast day. Since the aunts did not achieve their aim in breaking Kateri’s determination the resorted to new forms of persecution—scolding her and finding fault with all that she did, criticizing and insulting her as well as making her do all the household chores. In all this Kateri never complained. The non-Christian villagers soon began to imitate the aunts in ridiculing her and spitting upon her, and even young braves were told to lie in wait and threaten to kill her if she did not abandon her Christian faith. Kateri realized the purpose of this harassment and bravely bore the humiliations. (Portraits in American Sanctity, ed. By Joseph N. Tylenda, S.J., Franciscan Herald Press, 1982 A.D.)
In August, 1677, Kateri was spirited away to refuge with other Christian Mohawks in a Christian Indian “prayer village” near Montreal. The Jesuit missionary priest sent with her a letter of introduction to her new director:
Kateri Tekakwitha now comes to join your community. Granting her your spiritual guidance and direction, you will soon realize what a jewel we have sent you. Her soul is very close to the Lord. May she progress from day to day in virtue and holiness of life, to the honor and glory of God.
Although it was the practice not to allow Indian converts First Communion until they had given sufficient proof that they were sincere about living a Christian life, Kateri was allowed to receive the Holy Eucharist barely a year after her Baptism. She made her First Communion at Christmas Midnight Mass, 1677.
Kateri had a great desire to live like the French nuns she met at Ville-Marie (the original name of Montreal) and dedicate her life to caring for the sick. When it came time for the winter hunt pf 1679 she stayed behind at camp to care for the sick and elderly as if she were a French nun.
Her own health, however, failed her and after receiving the Sacraments, she died on Wednesday of Holy Week, 1680. She was 24 years old.
In 1715, only 25 years after her death, her missionary Spiritual Director Père Cholenc wrote the following:
All the French living in these colonies as well as the Indians have a singular veneration for her. They come from far off to pray at her tomb and several through her mediation have been cured of their illnesses, and have received from heaven other wonderful favors.
Devotion to Kateri, known as the
Lily of the Mohawks, spread throughout the United States and Canada. As early as 1884, the American Bishops petitioned Rome to consider her cause for canonization. This petition was renewed by the Bishop of Albany, New York, in 1922. Pope Pius XII, in 1943, approved the decree declaring Kateri Tekakwitha “Venerable”. During the 300th Anniversary Year of her death, 1980, John Paul II beatified her. Then in October, 2012, in what would be the last canonizations of his Pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI raised Kateri Tekakwitha, the
Lily of the Mohawks, to the altars.
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On Monday, July 15th, amidst the rumors that Pope Francis was on the point of issuing new restrictions upon the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, an open letter was published, signed by a group of prominent cultural and intellectual personalities in the United States, both Catholics and nonCatholics. The Letter was entitled: An Open Letter from the Americas to Pope Francis. The Letter was a plea for the Mass as a part of the patrimony of human civilization: We come to you with humility and obedience but also the confidence of children, telling a loving father of our spiritual needs … To deprive the next generation of artists of this source of mystery, beauty and contemplation of the sacred seems short-sighted … All of us, believers and non-believers alike, recognize that this ancient liturgy, which inspired the works of Palestrina, Bach, and Beethoven and generations of great artists, is a magnificent achievement of civilization and part of the common cultural heritage of humanity. It is medicine for the soul, one antidote to the gross materialism of the postmodern age. The “Open Letter” was organized by the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia. Among other signatories: Morten Lauridsen, composer (“O Magnum Mysterium”, “Les Chansons des Rose”, “MidWinter Songs”) , Nina Shea (international religious freedom advocate), composer Frank LaRocca (Mass of the Americas), David Conte (Chair and Professor of Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music), Larry Chapp (theologian and founder of Dorothy Day Workers’ Farm), Eduardo Verástegui (film producer and actor), and public intellectual Andrew Sullivan. Their plea to Pope Francis: “[That] no further restrictions be placed on the Traditional Latin Mass so that it may be preserved for the good of the Catholic Church and of the world.” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco singled out this Open Letter for praise on his social media account. A week earlier, in an essay published in the National Catholic Register , His Excellency said that the beauty of the Latin Mass in an important part of the Church’s ministry in “a de-Christianized age that is becoming increasingly inhospitable to any traditional sense of religion.” The Second Vatican Council sought to “read the signs of the times.” “One sign staring at us right now in large block letters is: BEAUTY EVANGELIZES.” “We live in an age when we need to leverage the power of beauty to touch minds, hearts, and souls for beauty has the quality of an inescapably real experience, one that is not subject to argument … In an age of anxiety and unreason, beauty is thus a largely untapped resource for reaching people, especially young people, with the Gospel message of hope.”
In the wake of the very moving commemorations of the D-Day landing of June 6th, 1944, I would like to highlight two aspects of memory which have come forth. The first was expressed in the Houses of Worship essay, “God’s Place in D-Day’s Great Crusade” (Michael Snape, The Wall Street Journal, Friday, June 7th, 2024). C urrent-day cynicism and secularism have projected back an atmosphere of widespread religious indifference to the time of World War II. This is historical amnesia. That was not the reality of the time. General Eisenhower’s order to the troops on the eve of D-Day “hailed the cross-channel invasion as a ‘Great Crusade’ and invoked ‘the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking’…” And, “As news of the D-Day invasion spread, house of worship filled for services, perhaps ‘the greatest wave of mass intercession in history,’ as one magazine described it.” “For our own generation, D-Day may seem to have scant connection with religion, beyond its lingering association with some terminology embarrassing to modern ears. Yet to many contemporaries, it marked a decisive moment in a life-or-death struggle between the JudeoChristian democracies of the West and the malignant pagan forces of Nazi Germany. The success of D-Day, like that of the Dunkirk evacuation four years earlier, was naturally and widely taken as providential.” Also in The Wall Street Journal , there appeared on the 80th-anniversary day itself an essay about the 20th Anniversary documentary Dwight D. Eisenhower had done with Walter Cronkite, broadcast in June, 1964. (Rob Greene, “Ike Returns to Normandy”, June 6th, 2024.) As described, Eisenhower is driving a jeep along the Normandy beach and he says to Cronkite: “You see these people out sailing in their pleasure boats, and you see them all along here. And the people have been swimming … taking advantage of the nice weather and the lovely beach. It is almost unreal to look at it today. There’s no smoke and fire and all the rest of it. It’s a wonderful thing. To remember this was what the fellows were fighting for, and sacrificing for. That these people could do this.” For Eisenhower, to behold the ordinary pleasures of human life on a summer beach was a tangible fruit of victory. He knew how not to underestimate the value of the blessings of peace and the tranquility of order. G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “The end of all human endeavor is to be happy at home.” Let us not take for granted the blessings of such a post-war peace as we now still enjoy, 80 years on. And as we remember the war-dead and all of the veterans who returned but whose time is passing on, may we pray for wars to cease wherever they now rage around the globe, and may we pray with real fervor that petition we make after the Lord’s Prayer at Mass: “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days …”
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The singing of the Solemn Te Deum on Trinity Sunday, as we are doing at our 9 AM and 11 AM Masses, is a way of expressing our praise and thanks to God on this Feast which celebrates the Trinitarian Mystery of God as He is in Himself: a Trinity of Persons in a Unity of Being. We praise God for His Excellence and we thank God for all of His many gifts and benefits to us, even as we are aware that we can never, ever praise or thank Him enough. The Te Deum is also known as the Ambrosian Hymn , as it is attributed to the composition of St. Ambrose (+397). Let us be drawn in to the mystery of these great phrases: Te Deum laudamus … We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord: all the earth doth worship Thee: the Father Everlasting. To Thee all Angels cry aloud: The Heavens and all the Powers therein. To Thee all the Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry. Holy, Holy, Holy: Lord God of Sabaoth. Reliquary Busts on the High Altar I have had many questions about the four new statuettes which are now on the reredos above our high altar. They are “reliquary busts” with a small relic of the saint placed in it. The four new saints’ relics are of St. Francis de Sales (+1622), +St. Charles Borromeo (+1584), St. Philip Neri (+1595), and St. Cajetan/Gaetano (+1547). (N.B. Today, May 26th, is the Feast Day of St. Philip Neri.) The presence of relics near our altars is a cheering reminder of the communion we share with all of the blessed in Heaven even as we are still part of the timebound earth.
Thursday of this week, May 9th, is the Ascension of Our Lord. In anticipation of this triumphant entry into Heaven of the Risen Christ, we dedicate ourselves to the spirit of Rogation in these days of “Rogationtide”. This year we are going to offer the celebration of Rogationtide in full, holding a special Mass on Tuesday, May 7th, at 12:30 PM, as well as the regular parish daily Mass at 12:30 PM on Monday and Wednesday. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week we shall hold the Rogation Procession at 12:30 PM, followed by the offering of the Rogation Mass. Please join us in this communal petition for Divine Mercy. If you cannot join us in person please consider praying the Litany of the Saints privately on each of these three Rogation Days or of offering 5-decades of the Rosary.
Three of the Seven Sacraments of the Church are known as the Sacraments of Christian Initiation . They are Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Eucharist. When an adult catechumen is baptized, the other two Sacraments of Christian Initiation should be part of that event. On Easter Eve at our Easter Vigil three of our new parishioners received Sacraments of Christian Initiation. Robin Anastasia Thérèse Hollins received all three as she was re-born in Baptism. Two other men were welcomed into full-Communion with the Catholic Church, having been baptized in Protestant churches. They received Confirmation and Holy Communion thus completing their Christian Initiation. Together with Robin we welcome Julian Pereira (Confirmation name: Thomas Aquinas) & Peter Bauer (Confirmation name: Louis Martin [the father of St. Thérèse]). These accompanying photos are of the Baptismal Regeneration part of the Easter Vigil Ceremony. Just prior to the Baptism and Confirmations, all received the sprinkling of the newly blessed Easter water, a symbol of our Baptism.
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Christmas Day, December 25th, 800 A.D., is one of the watershed dates in Western History. It was on this day that the Sovereign Pontiff and the Successor to St. Peter, Pope Leo III, crowned Charles the King of the Franks with the Crown of Imperial Rome and the people of Rome hailed him as “Augustus”. It had been 324 years—since 476 A.D.—that there had been a Roman Emperor for “Old Rome”. And here we might stress how great a hold the idea of Imperial Rome still had on Latin Catholic Christianity after so many centuries. Pagan, persecuting Rome had become, by the mysterious Providence of God, Christian Rome. And so we find in the writings of the Patristic Fathers of the Church the belief that it will be the definitive fall of the Roman Empire which willsignal the days of Anti-Christ: hence, the End-of-the-World and the Second Coming of Christ. But since the great Anti-Christ had not appeared and the world went on living, then that must mean that the Roman Empire lived on. Tenuously, it could be maintained that the Roman Empire lived on in the “New Rome” of Constantinople to the East. Also, the residence of the Popes in Rome gave the Roman Pontiffs the stature of spiritual Emperors of the West. But it was the coronation of Charlemagne which made the continuation of the Roman Empire a concrete fact. Here at last was a Roman Emperor who realized the political unity of Christendom and who in his person actually acted to further the spread of the Gospel and more deeply Christianize the people under his sceptre’s rule. Charlemagne fit the role of a true Christian Emperor far better than Constantine ever had in the 4th Century A.D. We might consider this work of Charlemagne from various aspects, but let us focus on this one: his love for the Church’s sacred music as it was practiced in Rome. He decreed that all of the clergy of his vast Empire should learn the Cantus Romanus. “The sons of nobles of his empire and of his vassals were expected, by imperial command, to be instructed in grammar, music, and arithmetic, while the boys in the public schools were taught music and how to sing, especially the Psalms. The Emperor’s agents and representatives were everywhere ordered to watch over the faithful carrying out of his orders regarding music. He not only caused liturgical music to flourish in his time throughout his vast domain, but he laid the foundations for musical culture, which are still potent today.” (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Charlemagne And Church Music”, A.D. 1908) So much did he love the Gregorian chant that Charlemagne himself would participate in the chanting of the choir (although, as his biographer says, “in a subdued voice”. ) Another picture of him left by his contemporaries is the happiness he found in being with his children, joining in their sports, particularly in his own favorite sport of swimming. When we think of how much the traditions which have come down to us from the Age of Christendom have to do with the gold-standard of a righteous and just King whose reign was a golden age of justice, honor, piety where the royal might would vindicate the good and punish the bad, and how much the return of that golden age is longed for in later evil days, then we can appreciate better the magnitude of Charlemagne’s influence on the whole of our civilizational ideals across the centuries. We might think, for example, as a point of comparison, of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece of story-telling, the Lord of the Rings. Charlemagne died on January 28th, on the Second Feast of St. Agnes, in 814. He was in his 72nd year. He was buried in the octagonal Byzantine-Romanesque church at Aachen (French: Aix-la-Chapelle) which he had had built and decorated with marble columns from Rome and Ravenna. In the great Jubilee year of 1000 A.D., 186 years after Charlemagne’s death, Otto III, who then wore the imperial crown, had Charlemagne’s tomb opened. There, they were struck by an awesome sight. Charlemagne was found as he had been buried, “sitting on a marble throne, robed and crowned as in life, the Book of the Gospels open on his knees.”
At the end of our last Conference, we saw Charlemagne consecrated as “first champion” of the Catholic Church on Easter Day, 774 A.D. there at Rome, where he had delivered Pope Adrian and the Patrimony of Peter from the menace of the King of the Lombards. He had not used his immense military power to conquer Rome nor to make the Pope submit to him: rather he had made himself and his mighty force the sword and shield of the Church, ready to protect her against aggressors of any kind. Moreover, he had made himself the protector of the Roman Pontiff, as a loyal son of the Church. After his consecration in Rome, for the next twenty years, Charlemagne’s life was one of continuous warfare. There were 53 distinct military campaigns, almost all of them in connection with his role as wielding the royal defensive sword on behalf of the Catholic Church. There were 18 campaigns against the heathen Saxons in Germany, who were trying to eradicate Christianity with violent attacks. It was not until 785 that Wittekind, the Saxon warrior-chief, acknowledged, in his utter defeat, that the God of the Christians was stronger than his god Odin. He submitted at last to Baptism, and it was Charlemagne who stood as his godfather. In our very first Conference, we recounted Charlemagne’s siege of Mirambel Castle in the Pyrenees and the submission of the Muslim commander Mirat, who took the baptismal name Lorus, from which derives the town-name “Lourdes”. This was in the year 778, when Charlemagne had launched a campaign against the Muslim rulers of Spain. During this campaign there occurred the ambush of the Franks at the Pass of Roncesvalles (Roncevaux) where Roland blew his horn to summon Charlemagne and the rest of the army to their rescue, even as they were fighting valiantly to their death. This is the inspiration for the famous medieval epic poem, the “Chanson de Roland” (the “Song of Roland). On Christmas Day, 795, Pope Adrian I died, a man whom Charlemagne had revered as a spiritual father. The next day, December 26th, St. Stephen’s Day, on the very day in which Pope Adrian was buried, his successor was elected as Leo III. The new Pope immediately sent to Charlemagne the keys of the Confession of St. Peter and the standard of the city of Rome. In return, Charlemagne sent Leo a warm letter of regard and much treasure which enabled Leo to be a great benefactor to the churches and charitable institutions of Rome. Sadly, the new Pope Leo was bitterly hated by many relatives of his predecessor Pope Adrian. On April 25th, 799, during the Procession of the Greater Litanies, the Pope was attacked by a body of armed men. They seized him, flung him to the ground, and tried to mutilate him by pulling out his tongue and gouging out his eyes. Panic ensued. People fled away. Leo was left unconscious and bleeding on the street for some time. At night he was rescued and hidden in a monastery. In a miraculous manner he recovered the full use of his tongue and eyes. He then escaped from the city and went to seek Charlemagne, who was in Paderborn, Germany. The King received him there with the greatest honor. Charlemagne vindicated Pope Leo (whom the Church now honors as Pope St. Leo III). He had the Pope escorted back to Rome and re-installed, to the joy of the people and to the terror of his false accusers. The next year (800 A.D.) Charlemagne himself came to Rome. On Christmas Day, at St. Peter’s, after the Gospel had been sung, Pope Leo approached Charlemagne, who was kneeling before the Confession of St. Peter, and placed the imperial crown upon his head. Then he did him the formal reverence after the manner of ancient Rome and saluted Charlemagne as both Emperor and Augustus. Finally he anointed him. The Roman people in the assembly burst into acclaim, three-times repeating: To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, to our great and pacific Emperor, life and victory!” By this act on Christmas Day 800 A.D. the Roman Empire in the West was revived. Leo, Successor to Peter and Roman Pontiff, had declared that the whole world was now subject to one temporal head as Christ had made the world subject to one spiritual head. And the first duty of Carolus Augustus, the new Roman Emperor, was to be the faithful protector of Holy Roman Church and of Christendom itself against the heathen aggressor.