– Then I give in.
The next day was Holy Friday. The missionaries preached the passion of Christ Jesus to an audience seized with the deepest emotion. They wanted to weep for longer time. They wouldn’t let the celebrant get past the first two words of the Vexilla.
– Vexilla re–
– No! No! Sob! Arrgghh!
– Vexilla regis–
– Stop! Time! Sob! Please!
That whole day and the next day, the priests witnessed the most excessive mortifications that they had ever seen.
– They’re tearing themselves apart!
– It’s happening!
On Friday night a woman rolled on thorns until the morning. Four or five nights later another woman did the same.
– Bring the fire closer.
They beat themselves until they bled. They crawled on their bare knees through the snow. Widows vowed never to remarry. Young married women took the vow and renounced remarriage should their husbands die. Married couples separated and promised to live as brother and sister. Le P. Chauchetière cites the good François Tsonnatoüan, who turned his wife into a sister. He made a little rosary which he called “Catherine’s Rosary.” It consisted of a cross on which he said the Credo, two “grains” for the Pater and the Ave, and three other “grains” for the three Gloria Patri. The news was passed from fire to fire, from convert to convert, from convert to heathen, from heathen to heathen, across the land of the Iroquois.
– La sainte est morte.
– The saint is dead.
In the early Church this type of popular recognition was called la béatification équipollente. Look down, look down, see the snowy mandala, see the whole village, see the figures writhing on the white field, try and see through the opaque prism of personal blister of accidental burn.
20
Here is the testimony of Captain du Luth, commandant of Fort Frontenac, a man after whom a Montréal street is named. He was, says le P. Charlevoix, “un des plus braves officiers que le Roy ait eus dans cette colonie.” He also gave his name to an American city on Lake Superior.
I, the undersigned, certify to whomever it may concern, that, having been tormented with the gout for twenty-three years, with such pain that for a space of three months I had no rest, I addressed myself to Catherine Tegahkouita, Iroquois virgin, deceased at Sault Saint-Louis a saint in the general opinion, and I promised to visit her grave, if God would give me back my health because of her intervention. I have been so perfectly cured, at the end of a novena which I arranged to be done in her honor, that for fifteen months now I have not suffered a single attack of gout. Fait au fort Frontenac, ce 15 août 1696.
Signé J. du Luth
21
Like a numbered immigrant in the harbor of North America, I hope to begin again. I hope to begin my friendship again. I hope to begin my rise to President. I hope to begin Mary again. I hope to begin my worship again to Thee who has never refused my service, in whose flashing memory I have no past or future, whose memory never froze into the coffin of history, into which your children, like amateur undertakers, squeeze the carelessly measured bodies of each other. Not the pioneer is the American dream, for he has already limited himself by courage and method. The dream is to be immigrant sailing into the misty aerials of New York, the dream is to be Jesuit in the cities of the Iroquois, for we do not wish to destroy the past and its baggy failures, we only wish the miracles to demonstrate that the past was joyously prophetic, and that possibility occurs to us most plainly on this cargo deck of wide lapels, our kerchief sacks filled with obsolete machine guns from the last war but which will astound and conquer the Indians.
22
The first vision of Catherine Tekakwitha appeared to le P. Chauchetière. Five days after the girl’s death, at four o’clock in the morning of Easter Monday, while he was hard at prayer, she came to him in a blur of glory. At her right was a church upside down. At her left was an Indian burning at the stake. The vision lasted two hours, and the priest had time to study it in ecstasy. This is why he had come to Canada. Three years later, in 1683, a hurricane hit the village, tipping over the 60-foot-long church. And in one of the attacks on the mission, an Iroquois convert was captured by the Onnontagués and burnt slowly while he proclaimed his Faith. These applications of the vision may satisfy the Church, dear friend, but let us beware of allowing an apparition to leak away into mere events. A useless church, a tortured man – are these not the usual factors in a saint’s flourishing? Eight days after her death she appeared to the old Anastasie in a blaze of light, her lower body beneath the belt dissolved in the brilliance, “le bas du corps depuis la ceinture disparaissant dans cette clarté.” Had she lent her other parts to you? She appeared also to Marie-Thérèse when she was alone in her cabin and gently reproached her for some of the things she was doing.
– Try not to sit on your heel when you’re beating your shoulders.
Le P. Chauchetière was favored with two more visions, one on July 1, 1681, the other on April 21, 1682. On both occasions Catherine appeared to him in her beauty, and he heard her say distinctly:
– Inspice et fac secundum exemplar. Regarde, et copie ce modèle. Look, and copy this model.
Then he painted many portraits of his visionary Catherine, and they worked perfectly when placed on the head of the sick. At Caughnawaga today there is a very ancient canvas. Is this the one that le P. Chauchetière painted? We
