THE MISSIONS OF THE MARTYRS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 2, 1 May 1885, Page 19

THE MISSIONS OF THE MARTYRS.

R. H. CIAEKE, L.L.D., well and favourably known to the Catholic reading public, through his admirable " Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the United States," contributes to the current Catholic World a paper on the beatification, proposed through a committee of the Jesuit Fathers through several tribes of Christianised Indians, and, finally, last November, through the assembled hierarchy of the Church in America, of the Jesuit martyrs, Father Isaac Jogues and novice Rene Goupil, and the Indian virgin, Catherine Regakwita. The Old World has many a sacred, miracle-favoured shrine. The New, poorer in this respect, has still some spots where human sanctity has won special heavenly honour. New York State boasts one of these. Stopping at Auriesville, a station on the West Shore Railroad, one is very near the Pilgrim Shrine ->f Our Lady of the Martyrs— the old Indian village of Ossernenon— s ie of the martyrs* dom of Rede Goupil, killed in the act of teaching young Indian to make the sign of the Cross; and that of Fath Jogues, who, suffering in the same place cruel wounds and mutiL ' on, accepted ransom and revisit of his native land only as a respite in which to attract new followers to his arduous missionary field. Thither he soon returned to receive his death-blow, and become the secoad martyr of the Mohawk Valley. Even the non-Catholic historian Bancroft, testifies to the heroism of the sons of St. Ignatius. " When," he asks, disinterestedly enough, " did a Jesuit missionary seek to save his own life at what he believed to be the risk of a soul ? "

At Ossemenon, in 1656, JO years after the martrydom of Father Jogues, was born Catherine Tegakwita, first flower of the northern spiritual wilderness, as St. Rose, of Limae, was of the southern. She practised the Christian virtues and the counsels of perfection in a heroic degree ; and for more than 200 years her memory has been venerated in the Northern United States and Canada.

American Catholics, especially, looks prayerfully forward to a happy termination of the cause of Father Jogaes, Bene Ooupil, and Catherine Tegakwita, as well as that of the saintly German-American bishop of a later day, the Rt. Rev. John Nepomucen Neuman. While accounting all the saints "our elder brothers and of one blood," patriotic as well as religions motives might impel us to desire the Church's formal recognition of the sanctity of those who have watered our native soil with their blood, or edified our ancestors corontemporaries with their holy example, — Pilot.