The precious blood of American martyrs
Today is the feast day of the North American Martyrs: St. Isaac Jogues, St. John de Brebeuf and their six companions. All eight died on North American soil, and three – St. Isaac, St. Rene Goupil, and St. John de Lalande – are the only Church-recognized martyrs to shed their blood in what is now the United States.
This past summer my family made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs, built at the location where Jogues, Goupil and de Lalande died. It was a powerful experience, and I wrote about it in OSV Newsweekly:
My family descended into the ravine, following the footsteps of one martyr-saint who had searched there for the bones of another. As we traced the downhill path alongside a small stream, we read the words of St. Isaac Jogues describing his search for the body of his Jesuit companion, René.
Killed at the hands of the Iroquois Indians, St. René Goupil would become the first canonized martyr of the United States. We were passing over the holiest ground in our country, we realized, in this out-of-the-way valley in New York.
North American Martyrs, pray for us!
I LOVE St. Isaac Jogues! I can’t believe what he went through to get Native Americans to heaven. Nowadays it seems we are surrounded by the belief that all religions and cultures and systems of thought, etc, are equally valid ways to get to heaven, and the Native American religions are just as right as we are. I guess it would appear that if you believe that, then you have to also believe St. Isaac Jogues wasted his time and his life. Really makes me think, hard.
I am also very struck by how he, after having at least one of his fingers cut off, he asked Rome for a dispensation of the rule to keep his thumb and forefinger together so he could say Mass. That was apparently to keep crumbs of the Eucharist from falling, because, of course, only the priest could touch the Hosts in those days. Nowadays we have Communion in the hand, and EMs,and nobody seems to worry about such things. My how so much has changed!