Vigils Reading – SS John, Isaac & Companions

A letter from St Isaac Jogues to

HIS PROVINCIAL

◊◊◊

During my captivity, I would recall my past life, so blameworthy because

of my numerous sins and my infidelity to God. I groaned at being stopped in the

middle of my course, having no good works to send before me, rejected by my

God, and without the sacraments. Truly, in this situation where I wanted to live

and dreaded to die, I would moan with distress, and say to my God: “When shall

there be an end to my miseries and griefs? When will you ‘bring calm after the

storm and fill us with joy and exultation after our tears’? ‘If those days had not

been shortened, my flesh would have perished'”.

I had recourse to the support of Holy Scripture, my usual refuge, certain

passages of which I kept in my memory. It was these that taught me to “think of

the Lord in goodness”, even if I felt no sensible devotion, and to recall that “the

holy one shall live by faith”. I would explore these passages; I would probe the

smallest streams in my efforts to quench my constant thirst. I would “ponder

his law by day and night”. “Were not your law my great delight, I should by now

have perished in my grief”.

Having thus spent two months in that retreat where I had become, like St

Bernard, the disciple of the beech trees, I thought of nothing but God. Because

all the natives hated me and could stand me no longer, they sent me back to the

village before the usual time. During the trip, which took eight days, loaded

under the enormous weight of food that I was carrying, I had become as it were a

beast of burden before God; still I tried to remain always with him, not knowing

what awaited me in the village.

2 An Autobiography of Martyrdom, St Louis 1964, pp 227-229.5

A few of those who had preceded us into the village had spread all sorts of

rumors about me. On the road, since I was almost naked and spent the largest

part of the night outdoors, I suffered very much from the cold, because the

wounds of my fingers, which had only closed up toward the middle of January,

were still not completely healed. In the village they gave me a thin skin to use in

addition to the old coat I was wearing. In this clothing, still rather insufficient, I

went through the streets begging our Lord to let me join his saints, those souls

who had served him “dressed in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, distressed,

mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. And every day I saw the savages

well covered with the woolens and the vestments that had been in great supply

in our baggage, while day and night I was stiff with cold… What bothered me

most was to see those men use for secular purposes the vestments that had been

destined for use at the altar…

Throughout this whole period, which lasted until about the middle of

January, I could say before God: “To this very hour we are victims of hunger and

thirst; we are poorly clad and knocked around; we are vagabonds and wear

ourselves out with manual labor. When they call us ugly names, we speak well

of them. When they persecute us, we bear it patiently. When they insult us, we

speak gently…