|
|
It was what she looked like, as much as how she lived her life, that secured her place in mythic legend. Her physical appearance - in life and in death - brought influential Catholic men of her day to their knees and set her on the road to sainthood.
In 1660, when Tekakwitha was 4 years old, a smallpox epidemic struck the Iroquois nations, killing thousands. Tekakwitha was among the victims who survived, but her face was terribly disfigured with the hideous scars associated with smallpox and her sight was damaged.
Originally she was a dutiful daughter adhering to the hardships of wilderness life and subsuming her affliction in an overlay of Native American spiritual beliefs and Christian prayer.
Her mother Kahenta was a Catholic Algonquin, captured by the Mohawks in one of the continual tribal wars. As the captors, the Mohawks erased all references to the Algonquin tribe, marrying the young Kahenta to a Mohawk warrior, who was a relative of a powerful chief. The couple would have two children, one boy and Tekakwitha.
The Mohawks distrusted the French Catholics and priests and Catholic rituals were unwelcome in the villages. Captivity might have ended Kahenta's Catholic practices, but biographers don't think so. They depict Tekakwitha as a child who knew the solace of Christian prayer and report prayers and songs that the girl learned as a small child.
At her mother's death the chief took charge of Tekakwitha. Then a momentous thing happened. The French defeated the Iroquois League - the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora nations - becoming the governing body in the Mohawk Valley of Upstate New York. They opened the territory to any Jesuit priest hardy enough to endure the weather and the terrain.
When three Jesuit brothers made their way to the Mohawk village, located at the far most western boundary of the six nations, the subjugated chief assigned his afflicted niece to take charge of the food and other needs of three priests, who were now free to sing their songs and offer prayers to the Native Americans.
As Tekakwitha approached womanhood and her uncle arranged for her marriage to a warrior, Tekakwitha resisted, saying she did not want to marry. She then took the only action open to her, fleeing the village.
Undoubtedly with the help of the priests she had befriended, the teenage girl made her way to Kahnawake, Quebec, where she learned of a group of women who did not marry. They were the Ursuline Sisters of Quebec village. She began to work with the nuns and care for the sick and the poor. She began to study and was baptized on Easter Sunday, 1676, and took the name Kateri, French pronunciation of Catherine.
Only three years after becoming a nun, Tekakwitha died at the age of 24. It was what happened after her death that kept her legend alive for the next three centuries.
Father Pierre Cholenec, the priest who administered the last rites, reported that in death the wrinkles and pockmarks on her face disappeared revealing leathery skin tightly drawn over fine facial features. She became unbelievably beautiful. Believing that at that moment she had been accepted into heaven and had become beautiful in the presence of God, the priest shouted for joy and called for other priests to see the transformation.
Two Frenchmen from La Prairie de la Magdeleine, who had come to the church for Holy Thursday celebration, were so taken by the beauty of the dead nun that they knelt beside the mat where she lay to pray and constructed a coffin to contain the cherished remains.
What the men saw and wrote eventually made its way to Rome along with the prayer that Native Americans needed a patron saint.
There are many categories of saints in this world, saints called on to protect nations, to bless harvests or to deliver toys to children.
In the Roman Catholic Church, it takes three miracles to make a saint. It can be a long slow process.
In 1880, some 200 years after her death, a request to make Kateri Tekakwitha a saint was sent to the Vatican. Some 63 years later, on Jan. 3, 1943, Pope Pius XII declared Kateri Tekakwitha venerable, evidence of the first miracle.
On June 22, 1980, Pope John Paul declared her blessed, evidence of the second miracle, elevating her to the distinction of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be so honored.
Now Native Americans pray for the third miracle that would enable the sitting Pope to name Tekakwitha a saint.
While they've waited and prayed they have built monuments to her legend. At least six book titles bear her name. A bed and breakfast in Ithaca, N.Y., in the Mohawk Valley is named for her.
Three North American shrines and seven U.S. Catholic churches bear her name. Numerous statues have been created including one at the Basilica of Sainte Anne de Beaupre near Quebec City in Canada, where she met the nuns.
At the mission church at San Juan Capistrano, Calif., Tekakwitha shares a spot in back of the altar next to Blessed Junipero Serra, the Spanish Franciscan friar who converted Native Americans up and down California, developing the string of missions.
To my mind, the most beautiful depiction of Tekakwitha is the bronze painted statue that stands outside the Cathedral of St. Francis at Santa Fe, N.M.
A tiny lake in Langlade County, Wis., like our little lake in northwest Jefferson County is named for her. Our Lake Tekakwitha was developed in 1948 on the former Susie McNamee O'Brien farm, in the heavily Catholic community, known as Little Ireland.
It was Brother Roch, of nearby St. Joseph Hill Infirmary, who suggested that the developers name the new lake for Tekakwitha. The feast day for Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha in the United States is celebrated on July 14.
The Catholic Encyclopedia and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, were consulted for the Kateri Tekakwitha story.
I have to tell you . . . I still murmur an occasional prayer to some of those saints whose names were removed from the calendar. They've got to be up there somewhere.
