Homily of Bishop Hubbard of Albany, NY

It is with great joy that we gather here at the North American College in Vatican City for the Mass of Thanksgiving for the Beatification of Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be declared Blessed by the Church on June 22 of this year, 1980.

It was the bishops of the United States, assembled at the Third Council in Baltimore in 1884, who first petitioned the Holy See to consider Kateri's cause. More recently, in 1976, as part of the Church's observance of our bicentennial as a nation, it was our Conference of Catholic Bishops which again urged the Holy See to advance Kateri's cause. Two years later, that same petition was included in the ad limina reports of most of our nation's bishops.

The bishops of the United States worked with the Jesuit community, the Indian people, the Canadian hierarchy, and the thousands of devoted followers of Kateri over the years, to obtain this well-deserved recognition.

At first, one might wonder what, if anything, the life of this idealistic Indian maiden, who lived in an historical and cultural context so radically different from our own, might have to say to our contemporary Church and society.

Yet, despite the simplicity of the civilization she experienced and the rather drab ordinariness of her life, there, are I believe, some lessons to be drawn from her pilgrim journey of faith.

Kateri's Life Story

Her life story can be captured quite succinctly. Tekakwitha was born in 1656 of an Algonquin-Christian mother and a Mohawk warrior at Ossernenon (now known as Auriesville, in upstate New York). Tekakwitha was left orphaned at the age of four, when her mother, father, and baby brother were fatally stricken by a smallpox epidemic which ravaged the tribe in 1659 and 1660. Tekakwitha was also stricken with the dreaded disease and was left with facial pock marks and weakened eyesight, physical infirmities which were to plague her for life.

She was adopted by her uncle, chief of the neighboring village where she was taken and raised in accordance with ancestral beliefs.

Although Tekakwitha was not baptized as an infant, she had fond memories of her good and prayerful mother and of the stories of Christian faith that her mother shared with her in childhood. These remained indelibly impressed upon her mind and heart and were to give shape and direction to her life's destiny.

At the age of eight, in keeping with tribal custom, Tekakwitha was paired by her foster parents with a boy of the same age with a view to eventual marriage. Tekakwitha, however, made it clear that she did not want to marry, but desired to give her life to the great Manitou (that is, true God ), to whom she prayed frequently in the quiet of the wooded area near her village. Such unusual, indeed almost incomprehensible behavior under the circumstances, can only be explained by the powerful influence of her mother's memory and by the impulse of God's call in her life.

Tekakwitha had only a superficial contact with Christianity during her childhood and adolescence when the Jesuit missionaries would stop by her village en route to other destinations.

In 1674, however, when Tekakwitha was 18, Father James de Lamberville, SJ, established a permanent mission in the village and inaugurated a catechumenate program. Despite intense pressures from her foster parents and other villagers, Tekakwitha zealously pursued initiation to the Christian life, and on Easter Sunday, 1676, she was baptized and given the name Kateri, the Iroquois word for the Christian name, Catherine.

This event of joining the religion of the white man only intensified the ridicule, calumny, and hostility to which she was subjected by family and community alike, to the extent that her life was threatened so that in 1677, upon the advice of Father de Lamberville, and with the assistance of three Christian catechumens, she escaped from her homeland and migrated north to Caughnawaga, Canada, a Christian settlement where she was able to practice her religion in more tranquil surroundings.

Her virtue flourished in her new surroundings under the direction of the Jesuit fathers. On Christmas Day 1677, only twenty months after her baptism, Kateri was privileged to receive the Eucharist for the first time. According to the sacramental practice of the seventeenth century, this was an unusual privilege to receive the two sacraments within such a short interval of time.

Kateri lived just three years after this, spending most of her time caring for the sick and elderly in the village. In 1679, with the permission of her spiritual director, she made a vow of perpetual virginity; according to her biographers, she was the first woman of the Iroquois Nation to bind herself to such a commitment. However, the poor health which plagued her throughout life consumed her with violent pain and effected her death in 1680 at the tender age of 24.