A Forgotten Founding Father:
St. Isaac Jogues
In narrating the birth of our country, no one would forget figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and, of course, George Washington. Yet Catholics know that it is truly the spiritual that forms and shapes the external reality.
In this sense, when we look for the true spiritual fathers of our country, we would be absolutely remiss to forget the figure of St. Isaac Jogues (1607-46).
Though on mission to French Canada, his captivity brought him deep inside the present territory of the United States; he may have been the first white man to traverse the Adirondack Mountains on foot and was one of the first to sail down the Susquehanna River through central Pennsylvania.
If only his christening of the present day Lake George had stuck as Lake of the Blessed Sacrament! St. Isaac Jogues, along with his other fellow Jesuits, sanctified our nation with their blood, laying the true spiritual foundation for our country, one that we need to take up and make our own.
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Unlike most martyrs, we could say that Jogues was martyred twice.
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Unlike most martyrs, we could say that Jogues was martyred twice.
After a successful stay with the Hurons (where he made the consecration described above), he surrendered himself to the Mohawks, who had captured or killed most of his travelling party. He was subjected to excruciating torture, running the gauntlet of Indian clubs, suffering from fire and knife, hanging by his arms, extreme hunger and cold, constant fear of death, and even having several of his fingers cut and bitten off.
Kept alive as a slave, after more than a year he was able to escape with the help of the Protestant Dutch settlers.
He returned to France and received a dispensation from the Pope Urban VIII to celebrate Mass without the use of the proper fingers (the Pope reportedly said “It would be shameful that a martyr of Christ be not allowed to drink the Blood of Christ”). Jogues’s vow of self-offering, however, was not complete without a second and complete martyrdom.
He returned to the Mohawks first as an ambassador of the French and then as a missionary, when he was killed with the blow of a tomahawk.
America’s history can be seen as an enduring conflict between the Christian faith and pagan savagery. Jogues’s ministry powerfully manifests both the power of the faith in this conflict and also the cruelty of its opposition. His ministry among the Hurons bore abundant fruit, birthing Christians of extreme patience, humility, and virtue. The story of their deaths, also at the hands of their rivals, the Mohawks, can move the reader to tears. On the other hand, the Mohawks, though not universally, manifest a deliberate embrace of cruelty and aggressive domination of others. Nonetheless, the site of Jogues’s martyrdom, the village of Ossernenon, became the cradle of a saint: St. Kateri Tekakwitha. The hallowing of the soil America was not in vain, as the blood of the martyrs planted the seed of sanctity, literally bringing forth a great Saint from the midst of savagery.
Although the Jesuit martyrs tilled the soil for a new Christendom in America, we can honestly say that the conflict with savagery in America continues, though in new forms. We not only face brutal violence, especially against the unborn, but also widespread ignorance and hatred of the faith. This is all the more reason to turn back to the foundation of our martyrs, looking to them as a model of witnessing to Christ through charity, patient endurance, and even suffering.
America’s history can be seen as an enduring conflict between the Christian faith and pagan savagery. Jogues’s ministry powerfully manifests both the power of the faith in this conflict and also the cruelty of its opposition. His ministry among the Hurons bore abundant fruit, birthing Christians of extreme patience, humility, and virtue. The story of their deaths, also at the hands of their rivals, the Mohawks, can move the reader to tears. On the other hand, the Mohawks, though not universally, manifest a deliberate embrace of cruelty and aggressive domination of others. Nonetheless, the site of Jogues’s martyrdom, the village of Ossernenon, became the cradle of a saint: St. Kateri Tekakwitha. The hallowing of the soil America was not in vain, as the blood of the martyrs planted the seed of sanctity, literally bringing forth a great Saint from the midst of savagery.
Although the Jesuit martyrs tilled the soil for a new Christendom in America, we can honestly say that the conflict with savagery in America continues, though in new forms. We not only face brutal violence, especially against the unborn, but also widespread ignorance and hatred of the faith. This is all the more reason to turn back to the foundation of our martyrs, looking to them as a model of witnessing to Christ through charity, patient endurance, and even suffering.
As Jogues himself said of America: “This kingdom held for thousands of years in the power of Satan, could not be taken except by the passage of time and the invincible constancy of the soldiers of Christ.”
- Are we willing to offer ourselves as Jogues did?
- Are we willing to risk our lives to say that Christ is really needed by the people of America?
- Can we follow the courage of the martyrs, even in little ways of persecution, from family, at work, and by the attempt to marginalize us?
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