In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
My brothers and sisters, today we celebrate the memorial to the eight Jesuit martyrs of
North America, St. John de Bourbeuf, St. Isaac Jogues, and companions.
Truly, this is one of the most heroic of all missionary groups in the annals of the Church.
But it also is...
It's typical of what we see has happened to missionaries throughout the history of
the Church.
But especially because it's so current to us, it's only a few centuries away, in the
same land in which we live, we understand it a little bit.
And we've read many stories about the noble savage, and the Indians, and so on, the noble
redskin, and so forth.
But, as we see from the lives of these...
Jesuit martyrs, it wasn't that way.
It's a society, it's a civilization, the Indian nations, show what happens to a society without
God.
Without God, we're plagued with all kinds of ideas, which, of course, we're unaided
by human help from divine revelation.
The devil always gets in there.
And...
In many ways, influences the society.
In this case, especially with the Indians, they had some very strange practices.
And, of course, there was no love among them.
They were always on the warpath, killing one another.
And, as one of them says, the more killing they did, the more they enjoyed it.
It sort of whetted their appetite.
And, of course, the tamako was the means.
It was the means of killing their enemies, plunging the tomahawk into their heads, like
they did with some of the missionaries.
So, it was very, very difficult.
And, especially difficult for the French.
The French missionaries from France.
France, one of the most cultured of countries, with the most cultured civilization, and a
very cultured language.
They take their pride in their language.
And so, as you know.
When they had...
When they had to evangelize among the Indians, the Indians' language was just so difficult
for them.
Very different in their way they spoke.
They had a very high-pitched voice.
There was no alphabet.
There's no words.
So, they had to learn it themselves.
John de Beboeuf, St. John de Beboeuf, did an unbelievable job to make a dictionary of
the Indian language.
And, they had to evangelize, not knowing the language.
In people who were very difficult with their customs, which were entrenched among them.
Many of these customs were sinful, like polygamy, and like various other customs, where they
would eat the flesh of their people they conquered, and take concubine, and all that.
So, it was certainly a decadent culture.
And, they didn't want to hear anything of the renunciation.
That the Christian faith demands.
And so, the black robes were not really received so well.
And, they all were superstitious.
They were urged on by the medicine men, who told them that the black robes were responsible
for plagues, for death, for war, for famine, for everything caused with the black robes.
And, only through time, and patience, and heroic virtue, were they able...
And, only through time, and patience, and heroic virtue, were they able...
to make any inroads.
Even that, towards the end of their lives, they were all martyred by the Iroquois, especially.
Iroquois Indians.
They mostly worked among the Hurons, who were a little bit more docile.
Had settlements, but then the Iroquois would come, and destroy the settlements, and kill
the missionaries.
St. Isaac Jogues did work among the Mohawks, which were one of the tribes of the Iroquois.
And, had to settle in their long houses, which were almost impossible to live for a white
man.
Long houses, maybe 40, 50 feet long.
The whole tribe in the house, no sanitary conditions, no air, just the warmth of the
fire, and the smells of everybody, and the dogs, and the animals, and everything else.
It was just impossible.
This is how we had to live.
And, one of the things that they did to St. Isaac Jogues, as a punishment, they would
have the children chew off his hands.
So, St. Isaac Jogues had to get a special dispensation when he went back to France,
after escaping, to get his, say, mass.
He came back a third time to France, to New France, to the Indian country, to accept the
Iroquois.
And, he was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
He was a great man.
The martyrdom that was promised him, of course, that's the eventual condition that they would
all have.
They all knew they were going to be martyred.
And, this is, again, another heroic example of what they did.
And, the Indians admired St. John de Bebuff so much that when they did kill him, they
drank the blood from his heart, because they wanted to take some of his spirit.
You wonder why that they didn't, when they saw how good the Indians were, they didn't
the Indians, the black robes were, they didn't convert.
Well, it shows the influence of the paganism and the witch doctors and so on.
There were some inroads.
There were some, especially among the Hurons, who became
holy people. And we know we're going to have the canonization
of Kateri Tekaritha, who was
an Indian of this time and this era, who became
a very holy woman. So we
see here a land of
great suffering that these missionaries had to go through
and romanticize what they do. We think it's so
wonderful and so romantic when you go into the lands, but it wasn't.
It was hard work and difficult and demanded heroic
sacrifices for which these eight men,
John de Beboeuf, Saint Isaac Jogues, gave their lives
so that these nations would know about the
truths of God. Although they didn't have great
success, they did baptize many, many who were
dying, many of the children who were brought up in the
area. They had hoped that the children would be the hope of the future
and so on. They did test the
Indians because they knew the truth.
They did test the truth. They did test the truth.
that they were so hard-hearted they wouldn't baptize them until they were
sure that they would knew the faith and would persevere so it was a very
difficult mission the North American Indian missions and we know from the
annals from the relate Jesuit relations the heroic work of these men tremendous
and in a way when the Jesuits would found the mission they would write back
their experiences which they would send back to France in the generous Jesuit
relations and all of France was fired up in a way to go to North America because
of the work that was there who could expect that in a land too far across the
sea that there'd be thousands hundreds of thousands of people who have never
heard about Christ so this was a wonderful thing and the blood of the
martyrs even though the
where they were not successful the eight North American martyrs their blood
certainly helped develop this land and opened it up for the many Indians who
did who did come to the faith will only know in eternity the good that they did
right now of course we can only speculate but there was much good and
these men were truly heroic men that we should learn from and
men that we should admire and and imitate and live a life of penance and
sacrifice when things aren't so easy for us because they had tremendous
sufferings heat and cold and snow and ice and of course the terrible
punishments and persecutions that they receive from the Indians so let us pray
for missionaries and let us pray that these many people will be saved and that
these people under the influence of the of paganism and the devil would get the
truth of the gospel this is why Our Lady wants us to pray and sacrifice and she
asked us to come when she came to Fatima to pray and sacrifice because she says
many souls will go to hell because no one prays and sacrifices for them so let
us do that and remember the great work of these Jesuit martyrs
for the evangelization of the church may the Lord bless you
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