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Kateri Tekakwitha (Children's Version)
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Whenever two hard things begin to push or pull at a person, this is where the cross is. Kateri felt pushed by her family to get married and fit in, but she felt pulled by God to live for him alone. Because she had learned the Indian value of loyalty well, she remained loyal to God. She loved to go to the woods alone and spend time with God. There in the tall trees and quiet sounds, He would speak to her heart. All of nature spoke to her about the Creator and she felt at peace. Being in harmony with all creation was an Indian value that she had learned early in her life and she held to it always. Because she felt the "cross" in her life, she used to make a cross of sticks in the woods and it would comfort her to think about how much Jesus suffered for her. Kateri loved the rosary and carried it around her neck always. She used to sing the prayers in the Indian way, as she went around all the beads. 
Gradually, Kateri's health grew worse and worse. Finally she had to go to bed and could not help with the work anymore. People still kept coming to her for advice and stories. They would pray with her, too, and feel the presence of God. They did not want to think that she was going to die. They would all miss her so much. She was like a mother to all of them. She never had children of her own, but everyone felt like a family around her.
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Posted on 06/14/2004 1:14:09 PM PDT by Pyro7480
Kateri sainthood could take a miracle
Supporters fear time is running out for Indian woman to be canonized
AURIESVILLE -- Catholics worldwide have long prayed for a local Indian maiden to be made a saint.
All that's needed is a miracle.
Time may be running out though.
Since Pope John Paul II elevated Kateri Tekakwitha to the ranks of "blessed," in June 1980, the "Lily of the Mohawks" has been a step away from becoming the first Native American woman to achieve sainthood.
The Pope is strongly behind her. But at 84 and in frail health, the chances he'll be around to canonize her are fading. Kateri's supporters are racing against the clock to prove that a miracle resulted through prayers to her.
In his zeal to canonize exemplary Catholics, John Paul has surpassed all his predecessors.
The Pope is "dedicated to providing local saints in many areas of the world so that people will think of sainthood, not as something terribly extraordinary, but as something accessible to ordinary people," said the Rev. Kenneth Doyle of the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese.
At Kateri's beatification 24 years ago, John Paul presided over a spectacular ceremony in Rome that drew hundreds of Americans and Canadians, including an Albany delegation and Bishop Howard Hubbard who read a summary of her life in Latin. Pope Pius XII had declared her "venerable" in 1943, the first step toward sainthood.
Under current rules, proof of two miracles is required for sainthood -- instantaneous cures of incurable afflictions, supported by medical data. They must occur before beatification and after. A panel of doctors in Rome reviews the reports so they must be convincing.
In Kateri's case, the Pope waived the miracle requirement before beatification. It doesn't appear he will do it again.
"We have, since 1980, needed one miracle performed through her intercession," said the Rev. John Paret, the Jesuit who is vice postulator of the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha League, headquartered at the Auriesville Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Montgomery County.
"We haven't gotten it yet. We've had many disappointments."
The Pope waived it once because "he thought it was good for the Indian people to have one of their own as a blessed," but the word now is he's "playing by the rules," said Paret, who senses his own vulnerability at 85.
He lives and works at Auriesville -- once called Ossernenon -- where Jesuit missionaries, who laid the groundwork for converting the Mohawks to Christianity, were martyred and where Kateri was born in 1656.
Her mother was a Christian Algonquin and her father a pagan Mohawk tribal chief. Both died when she was 4 during a smallpox epidemic. She was raised by aunts and an uncle. At 20, a missionary baptized her at Caughnawaga, now Fonda, across the Mohawk River.
She died four years later at a Christian Mohawk village in Canada where she fled to avoid persecution from her people whom she had defied by her conversion. She never realized her desire to become a nun but took a vow of purity before she died.
The Albany and Montreal dioceses, where Kateri was born and where she died, sponsored her for sainthood, citing her virtuous life, devotion to Christ and work among the sick.
"She knew God the way you and I don't," said Paret who in 1990 took over the league and is in the forefront of the worldwide organization pulling for sainthood.
"A person stands a better chance of becoming a saint if he or she were a member of a religious order because the order promotes that candidacy. Kateri has an advantage because it's the Jesuits who embraced her. They baptized her and adopted her cause."
Paret said the biggest disappointment came about six years ago when a woman who had lived on a New Mexico reservation came out of a coma after 16 years. The bishop of the Santa Fe diocese had prayed to Kateri.
But the woman, who was in a nursing home at the time, was given medication for the flu, which doctors said brought her out of her coma. A doctor friend of Paret reviewed the case and agreed.
An earlier disappointment occurred when an 8-year-old Georgia boy was blinded in one eye by a screwdriver. The child wore sunglasses and one day a priest kiddingly asked if he were a movie star.
The boy explained what happened, and the priest had the congregation pray to Kateri. Some time later, the child said he could see out of that eye. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the records indicating that doctors said he would never see again, Paret said.
The plight of Kateri has captured the fancy of Catholics throughout the United States and the world. The league publishes Kateri holy cards and literature in several languages. On one day last month, Paret got letters about her from Holland and the Philippines.
For years, it was hoped Kateri would become the first Native American saint in North America. But Juan Diego, a Mexican Indian peasant, became the Church's first indigenous saint on July 31, 2002. The Blessed Mother appeared to Diego, born with the name Cuauhtlatohuac, on a hillside at Guadalupe in 1531.
"I think this Pope has a greater global perspective than any previous pope because he's traveled more," Doyle said. He's made "more than 100 trips to other countries ... and ... has seen the impact on nations when he can canonize or beatify someone from a particular locality," he said.
The Rev. Paolo Molinari, the Rome-based postulator of the Kateri league, told Paret that John Paul II is anxious to canonize her.
Consider that from the year 1588, when record keeping began, to 1978 when John Paul was elected, only 296 people were canonized, said Doyle, pastor of Albany's St. Catherine of Siena parish and the diocesan chancellor for public information. Since then, there have been nearly 500.
Each year, thousands flock to Kateri's birthplace off the New York State Thruway in Auriesville and to the Kateri Shrine across the Mohawk River in Fonda. Many visitors realize their hopes of seeing Kateri made a saint are fading.
At the Auriesville gift shop, Joanne Kichton said they "want to know ... what's holding it up." Louis Pollak, 73, of Johnstown, said, "It's been a long time coming," as he arrived at Auriesville for Mass.
John Carriola, 69, and his wife, Dolores, 62, of Amsterdam said Kateri accomplished much for the faith. Hannah Fettinger, 10, of Johnstown, feels she would be "representing her culture."
Henry Schwallenberg, 49, of the Bronx was visiting Auriesville with his family and asked if Kateri had been canonized. "He's making everyone else a saint," he said.
Mother Teresa is on her way. She was beatified within five years of her death, Doyle pointed out. Of course, the Pope knew the nun and what she did for the poor in India.
At the Fonda shrine where Kateri lived for many years after leaving Auriesville, the Rev. Kevin Kenny, 64, the Franciscan director, says of the visitors, "They are impatient, all of her devotees ... because so many other people seem to be getting ahead of her."
Catholic Ping!
I think you are right on no dealine. The reporter is making the story a little more "dramatic" than it really is.
Oops. dealine = deadline.
I know how her followers feel. I felt the same way about the Beatification of Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich.
I was afraid that John Paul, who is favorably disposed toward her would die before he got around to it. Who knows what the next Pope will do? He might think there have been too many beatified and canonized this go round.
I used to go to the Auriesville shrine every summer, and have kissed Bl. Kateri's relic.
They gave her Symmetrel, a drug that fights parkinson's disease but is actually used to prevent flu. I once treated our nursing home with it during a flu epidemic when the vaccine didn't work. No one came out of a coma, but theoretically they could.
Every Catholic Indian in New Mexico knows this story. They held a prayer service for this lady, who had been in a coma for ten years. Then she woke up. Coincidence?
We have a Kateri shrine at one of our local Catholic churches. Everyone knows she was a saint, it's just hard to "prove" it under the present day rules.
I agree that "everyone knows". The recognition of who she is will come about in its own time. Maybe just when we need her the most.
I came to this thread thru the Catholic Daily Caucus. Such a shame that the miracle in New Mexico wasn't credited as such. No matter what the offical rules says, it was a miracle that the woman came out of her coma after 16 years...thru prayers of her faith community.
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Kateri Tekakwitha (Children's Version)
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Mrs. White Bull came out of a "persistant vegetative state" after her family and friends held a novena to Kateri.
Alas, since she had been given Amantidine or a similar anti viral medicine a few weeks earlier to prevent Influenza, and Amantidine type medicines are used to treat Parkinson's disease, it won't be classed as a miracle...
Blessed Kateri bump. I enjoyed reading the children's version of her story, it was most inspirational.
For those who believe that Mrs. White Bull came out of a persistent vegetative state due to fervent prayer and a novena to Kateri...no explanation is necessary. It was a miracle, pure and simple.
BTTT on the Memorial of Blsd. Kateri Tekakwitha on July 14, 2006!
| BLESSED KATERI TEKAKWITHA (Also known as Catherine Tegakwitha/Takwita.) |
| Feast: July 14 |
| Known as the "Lily of the Mohawks", and the "Genevieve of New France" an Indian virgin of the Mohawk tribe, born according to some authorities at the Turtle Castle of Ossernenon, according to others at the village of Gandaouge, in 1656; died at Caughnawaga, Canada, 17 April, 1680. Her mother was a Christian Algonquin who had been captured by the Iroquois and saved from a captive's fate by the father of Tekakwitha, to whom she also bore a son. When Tekakwitha was about four years old, her parents and brother died of small-pox, and the child was adopted by her aunts and an uncle who had become chief of the Turtle clan. Although small-pox had marked her face and seriously impaired her eyesight and her manner was reserved and shrinking, her aunts began when she was yet very young to form marriage projects for her, from which, as she grew older, she shrank with great aversion. In 1667 the Jesuit missionaries Fremin, Bruyas, and Pierron, accompanying the Mohawk deputies who had been to Quebec to conclude peace with the French, spent three days in the lodge of Tekakwitha's uncle. From them she received her first knowledge of Christianity, but although she forthwith eagerly accepted it in her heart she did not at that time ask to be baptized. Some time later the Turtle clan moved to the north bank of the Mohawk River, the "castle" being built above what is now the town of Fonda. Here in the midst of scenes of carnage, debauchery, and idolatrous frency Tekakwitha lived a life of remarkable virtue, at heart not only a Christian but a Christian virgin, for she firmly and often, with great risk to herself, resisted all efforts to induce her to marry. When she was eighteen, Father Jacques de Lamberville arrived to take charge of the mission which included the Turtle clan, and from him, at her earnest request, Tekakwitha received baptism. Thenceforth she practised her religion unflinchingly in the face of almost unbearable opposition, till finally her uncle's lodge ceased to be a place of protection to her and she was assisted by some Christian Indians to escape to Caughnawaga on the St. Laurence. Here she lived in the cabin of Anastasia Tegonhatsihonga, a Christian Indian woman, her extraordinary sanctity impressing not only her own people but the French and the missionaries. Her mortifications were extreme, and Chauchtiere says that she had attained the most perfect union with God in prayer. Upon her death devotion to her began immediately to be manifested by her people. Many pilgrims visit her grave in Caughnawaga where a monument to her memory was erected by the Rev. Clarence Walworth in 1884; and Councils of Baltimore and Quebec have petitioned for her canonization. On 22 June 1980, she was beatified by Pope John Paul II; her feast day is celebrated on 14 July. Blanche M. Kelly From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright © 1913 by the Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright © 1996 by New Advent, Inc. |
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Thanks for this ping! Here's hoping that another miracle will be confirmed to help her candidacy for sainthood.
Amen to that.
Yes, but we can also take comfort that a person is a saint the moment they walk through Heaven's gates. I mean, it's not like the person doesn't get the keys to the saints' washroom just because their papers haven't come through from Rome yet.
It's so true: Fervent prayer on the part of believers availeth much.
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July 14, 2007
Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
(1656-1680)
The blood of martyrs is the seed of saints. Nine years after the Jesuits Isaac Jogues and John de Brébeuf were tortured to death by Huron and Iroquois Indians, a baby girl was born near the place of their martyrdom, Auriesville, New York. She was to be the first person born in North America to be beatified.
Her mother was a Christian Algonquin, taken captive by the Iroquois and given as wife to the chief of the Mohawk clan, the boldest and fiercest of the Five Nations. When she was four, Kateri lost her parents and little brother in a smallpox epidemic that left her disfigured and half blind. She was adopted by an uncle, who succeeded her father as chief. He hated the coming of the Blackrobes (missionaries), but could do nothing to them because a peace treaty with the French required their presence in villages with Christian captives. She was moved by the words of three Blackrobes who lodged with her uncle, but fear of him kept her from seeking instruction. She refused to marry a Mohawk brave and at 19 finally got the courage to take the step of converting. She was baptized with the name Kateri (Catherine) on Easter Sunday. Now she would be treated as a slave. Because she would not work on Sunday, she received no food that day. Her life in grace grew rapidly. She told a missionary that she often meditated on the great dignity of being baptized. She was powerfully moved by God’s love for human beings and saw the dignity of each of her people. She was always in danger, for her conversion and holy life created great opposition. On the advice of a priest, she stole away one night and began a 200-mile walking journey to a Christian Indian village at Sault St. Louis, near Montreal. For three years she grew in holiness under the direction of a priest and an older Iroquois woman, giving herself totally to God in long hours of prayer, in charity and in strenuous penance. At 23 she took a vow of virginity, an unprecedented act for an Indian woman, whose future depended on being married. She found a place in the woods where she could pray an hour a day—and was accused of meeting a man there! Her dedication to virginity was instinctive: She did not know about religious life for women until she visited Montreal. Inspired by this, she and two friends wanted to start a community, but the local priest dissuaded her. She humbly accepted an “ordinary” life. She practiced extremely severe fasting as penance for the conversion of her nation. She died the afternoon before Holy Thursday. Witnesses said that her emaciated face changed color and became like that of a healthy child. The lines of suffering, even the pockmarks, disappeared and the touch of a smile came upon her lips. She was beatified in 1980. Quote:
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