Vigils Reading – St Kateri Tekaqwitha

A reading by Daniel Sargent on

ST KATERI TEKAKWITHA

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On the fourteenth of October, 1682, a Frenchman living in Canada began

a letter to a Frenchman living in France. He had seen many wonders in Canada,

and was therefore eager to tell about them.

He was a missionary, a priest, a Jesuit, a certain Father Chauchetière, now

only thirty-seven years old, and who had spent seven years already among the

Indians of Canada whom he was trying to Christianize. The great astonishment

of his life as a missionary had not been the size of the St Lawrence River, but the

piety which he had found among the Indians at his St Lawrence Mission.

He had expected to be horrified by the Indians even though he was willing

to give his life for them. Instead he had been edified by them. But how was he

going to convince the Jesuit Superior, to whom he was writing his letter, of this

Indian holiness?… He dwelt on the inconvenience of this fervor: it led the

Indians to adopt immoderate penances, and forced him to step in and restrain

them. Only grudgingly did he add, as the sole flash of his enthusiasm, that “They

would be admired in France if what they do were known there.”

[Then] he came to what was most incredible of all: “During the past two

years their fervor has greatly increased since God has removed from this world

one of these devout savage women who live like nuns, and she died with the

reputation of sanctity. Journeys are continually made to her tomb; and the

savages, following her example, have become better Christians than they were.

We daily see wonders worked through her intercession. Her name was [Kateri]

Tekakwitha.”…

Tekakwitha’s ancestors were an old people. Not merely that they had had

as many ancestors as any other person alive, but they remembered those

ancestors. They carried the past with them in their traditions, from generation

to generation… The ancestors of [Tekakwitha] had been suffering and longing

for ages… The gaining of salvation had been their age-long preoccupation…

If we look at the past of [Tekakwitha’s] ancestors, as Fr. Chauchetière did

not and could not, and if we look at the story of the French missionaries, then

the spiritual blossoming of this [Kateri Tekakwitha] becomes a climax of a long

drama. Instead of exclaiming as Chauchetière did, “How suddenly she has

come,” our sigh is, “How long, how long, the world has waited!”