Happy Kateri Tekakwitha Day!

Tomorrow is my birthday. It is also, I am delighted to discover, the feast, at least in the US, of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha.

Kateri will be familiar, at least, to anyone who grew up in the Catholic Church in Quebec. The “Lily of the Mohawks” was born into the Turtle Clan living along the Mohawk River in upstate New York. She was the daughter of the clan chief and an Algonquin mother. When she was four years old, smallpox hit her village. It left her an orphan; it also disfigured her, and left her nearly blind. Her Mohawk name, “Tekakwitha,” means something like “she who bumps into things.”

The Mohawks were particularly hostile to Christianity—largely because it was identified with their historic enemies, the Algonquins and Hurons. It was the Mohawks who tortured and burned St. Isaac Jogues and the Canadian Jesuit martyrs.

Nevertheless, something in Tekakwitha drew her to this new religion. Perhaps her blindness and her orphanhood did something to cut her ties to this world, the social and the physical world, and compensated her by making her more aware of the spiritual world that envelops it. This is how it seems. She had herself baptized and became a devout practitioner of the new religion, in the face of the opposition of both her family and her tribe. She also refused to marry—no small thing among the Mohawks, and especially for an orphan. She did not want, it seems, that kind of commitment to the here and now.

Eventually, she had to flee for her life. She ended up among more distant relations at the Jesuit missions just outside of Montreal, eventually at Caugnawauga (Kahnawake). The mission was populated with similar exiles, Mohawks and other Iroquois who had converted to Catholicism and therefore had to flee their homes. But even among these devout, she established a reputation for devotion. Watching Kateri—her Christian name, the Mohawk pronunciation of “Catherine”--at prayer apparently became a village attraction. But she was always sickly and in constant pain, and died in 1680 aged only 24.

That seems to have been when her real life began. Her death “agony,” attended by the priests, was remarkable for her apparent peacefulness and the apparent absence of pain. But at the moment of death, her face was also transformed, according to eyewitness accounts.

The words of Father Pierre Cholenec, of the mission:

"Catherine’s face, so disfigured and so swarthy in life, suddenly changed about fifteen minutes after her death, and in an instant became so beautiful and so fair that just as soon as I saw it (I was praying by her side) I let out a yell, I was so astonished, and I sent for the priest who was working at the repository for the Holy Thursday service. At the news of this prodigy, he came running along with some people who were with him. We then had the time to contemplate this marvel right up to the time of her burial. I frankly admit that my first thought at the time was that Catherine could well have entered heaven at that moment and that she had -- as a preview -- already received in her virginal body a small indication of the glory of which her soul had taken possession in Heaven. Two Frenchmen from La Prairie de la Magdeleine came to the Sault on Thursday to be present at the service. They were passing by Catherine's cabin where, seeing a woman lying on her mat and with such a beautiful and radiant face, they said to each other, Look at this young woman sleeping so peacefully and kept going. But, learning the next minute that it was a dead body, and that of Catherine, they returned to the cabin and went down on their knees to recommend themselves to her prayers. After having satisfied their devotion for having seen such a wonderful scene, they wished to show their veneration for the dead girl by constructing then and there a coffin to hold such cherished remains."

Over the next weeks and years, Catherine reappeared frequently to various members of the community—always holding a wooden cross, and always with her body radiating light. The crucifix she favoured in life gained a reputation for miraculous cures.

She continues to appear today. Kateri Tekakwitha was declared venerable by the Vatican in 1940, and blessed in 1980. She is not yet acknowledged by the universal church as a full saint. But in Canada, among Native Americans, and especially in Quebec, few other saints are so beloved.

The stone that was rejected is become the cornerstone of the temple.