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.

+ 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 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

“Kateri impresses us by the action of grace in her life in spite of the absence of external help and by the courage of her vocation, so unusual in her culture. In her, faith and culture enrich each other! May her example help us to live where we are, loving Jesus without denying who we are.”—Pope Benedict XVI

Spiritual bonus

On this day we also remember Blessed Dorotea (Gertrudis) Llamanzares Fernández. A member of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood, she was martyred on July 14, 1936, in Cerezales del Condad, León, Spain, during the anti-Catholic violence of the Spanish Civil War. She was beatified in 2013.

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, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(from The Roman Missal)

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