Saint of the Day: St. Kateri Tekakwitha

(1656-1680)

Her life

+ Tekakwitha was born around 1656 of a young Christian Algonquin woman and a non-Christian Mohawk chief. Baptized when she was almost twenty, she received the name “Kateri” at baptism, in honor of Saint Catherine of Siena.

+ Shortly after her baptism she took a vow of virginity, offering herself totally to God. Although she desired to enter a religious community, the idea of an established community accepting a Native American woman was unheard of at that time.

+ The last years of her life were spent in prayer and caring for and sick at a Jesuit mission near Montreal, even as she herself was dying of tuberculosis.

+ Saint Kateri Tekakwitha died at Kahnawake, Canada, in 1680; She was canonized in 2012.

+ Nearly every year since 1939, Native American Catholics and those who minster in their communities have gathered for the annual Tekakwitha Conference. To learn more about the Tekakwitha Conference, visit: http://tekconf.org/

For prayer and reflection

“All of us are inspired by the example of this young woman of faith… We are all edified by her complete trust in the providence of God, and we are encouraged by her joyful fidelity to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. In a true sense the whole Church, together with you, declares in the words of Saint Paul: ‘Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever’ (Ephesians 3:21-22).”—Pope Saint John Paul II

Spiritual bonus

On this day we also remember Blessed Ghébrē-Michael. Born in Dibo, West Gojam (in modern-day Ethiopia), he became a Christian in 1844 and later entered the Congregation of the Missions (the Vincentians). Ordained a priest in 1851, he was arrested with four other companions during the persecution of King Negus Theodore II. He died from the abuse he received on July 30, 1855, and was beatified in 1926.

Prayer

O God, who desired the Virgin Saint Kateri Tekakwitha to flower among Native Americans in a life of innocence, grant, through her intercession, that when all are gathered into your Church from every nation, tribe and tongue, they may magnify you in a single canticle of praise. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(from The Roman Missal)

Saint profiles prepared by Brother Silas Henderson, S.D.S.