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 ^[1], built at the location where Jogues, Goupil and de Lalande died. It was a powerful experience, and I wrote about it in OSV Newsweekly ^[2]:

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.

Continue reading ^[2]…

North American Martyrs, pray for us!