I recently spent a couple of days in Saratoga, visiting my cousin and his family who have a home there. Not far from their place I noticed a church dedicated to the French Jesuit missionary St. Isaac Jogues. This gave me the idea to look up how far I was from Auriesville, NY, the place where Jogues and his companions were killed by members of the Mohawk tribe almost 400 years ago, as martyrs for the Faith. Since it was only an hour away, I decided to make a morning pilgrimage to the shrine there dedicated to the North American Martyrs. The shrine was built on the site of a Mohawk village, its main feature a round church constructed in 1930 that can accommodate around 6000 people. At the center of the church is a 4-sided sanctuary, built with rustic wooden stockades reminiscent of a 17th century frontier fort. Nearby is a hill, marked with stations of the cross, where Jogues and his companions were made to run the gauntlet, subjected to brutal beatings by the Mohawk natives who had taken them prisoner. The Mohawks deliberately cut off Jogues’ index finger and thumb because they knew these were the fingers Catholic priests used to handle the consecrated Host at Mass. A short walk from there is what’s called “the ravine.” There, along the steep wooded path leading to the Mohawk River, signs display excerpts of Jogues’ journal account of how his friend Rene Goupil was tomahawked to death at that spot before his eyes. Devastated, Jogues tried unsuccessfully to hide Goupil’s body in the nearby river to keep it from being desecrated, hoping to later give his friend a proper burial in secret. It was very moving to contemplate the hills and the river, which remain as silent witnesses to Goupil’s martyrdom, and the tears of his saintly friend who soon would meet the same fate.
My visit to the shrine happened to take place just two days before the 100th anniversary of the beatification of the North American Martyrs. At the Mass commemorating the anniversary, Msgr. Roger Landry reflected on their significance for us today. “Little did [the Martyrs] know as they suffered here… that they would be celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica centuries later. Little did they know we would convene here today to give thanks to them and to God for them.” To be sure, St. Isaac Jogues and his companions did not like suffering or think that suffering itself was good. But they were able to accept their terrible sufferings because “they knew that God was with them in the world,” saturating everything they did with eternal significance and meaning, including their suffering. Though we might not suffer in the same way they suffered, no one escapes trials in this life. Indeed, ours is an age in which many suffer with persistent sadness and hopelessness, where a growing number of people seek escape in addictive behavior, and where assisted suicide and euthanasia are proposed as solutions to human suffering. These things, Landry explains, are signs of a culture of despair, that does not believe God lives with us in the world. In such a culture we need heroes like the North American Martyrs, exemplars of hope, to whom we can look for help during the difficult times that come for us all.
posted 6.28.25
The Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel 