Throwback Thursday: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha
Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI opened the Year of Faith and convoked the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization in 2012, he canonized Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, the first indigenous woman of North America to be declared a saint. Fittingly, Saint Kateri – whose feast day is July 14 – is a role model not only for Native American Catholics, but for the New Evangelization, showing us the importance of deepening and sharing our faith.
Kateri was born in 1656 in what is now upstate New York to a Mohawk father and a Christian Algonquin mother. At the age of 20, she was baptized by French missionaries, and to escape hostility in her village, she fled to a mission in Canada.
Known as the “Lily of the Mohawks,” Kateri led a simple life of prayer, teaching children the faith and performing acts of charity. She was known for her devotion to the cross and the Eucharist, and her statue in the Hall of American Saints at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception shows her holding a small cross.
The Jesuit missionaries documented her sanctity, and instead of dying in obscurity at the age of 24, Saint Kateri has been venerated by generations of Catholics. Her canonization brought particular joy to the approximately 600,000 Native American Catholics who come from more than 300 tribes and nations, and thousands of these indigenous peoples traveled to Rome for her canonization.
On that very day, the Piscataway community in Southern Maryland gathered before a statue of Saint Kateri in the woods near Saint Francis Xavier Church in Chapel Point to honor their “northern sister.” Their Piscataway ancestors have been faithful Catholics in that region since 1640, and that very afternoon, a baby of Native American descent was baptized in that small country church.
Kateri is their saint, and our saint, too. She is a role model for Catholics today who face hostility from a secular culture, but who must stand strong in their faith in a time when their religious freedom is threatened.
We can likewise learn from Saint Kateri’s devotion to Jesus. How beautiful would it be if our night prayers included her reported last words, “Jesus, I love you.”
This saint can be a role model for young adults as well. She was compared to a lily because of her chastity, and that is a virtue that Catholic young adults need to cling to in our sexually permissive society. Anyone who has ever faced teasing or bullying can also look to Kateri for strength, because she bore scars from childhood smallpox, and she later was an outcast because of her faith.
In a world that is too often hostile or indifferent to religion, Saint Kateri shows us how living a holy life can inspire many others to know and love Jesus. That is the enduring gift of the “Lily of the Mohawks.”