From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   October 19th - The Holy North American Martyrs   
      
   (d. 1642-1649)   
      
   The Holy North American Martyrs are eight in number; five died in what is   
   now Canada, three in what is now the United States. All are Jesuits, all are   
   French in origin. They came in the 1640's to New France, to add their   
   strength to that of the Franciscan Recollets, who had preceded them by a few   
   years. There was not yet any bishop to assist them; the first bishop of   
   Quebec, Blessed Monsignor Francis Montmorency de Laval, arrived only in   
   1658.   
      
   Words strive in vain to convey to a comfortable world the virtue of the   
   first missionaries, and to describe the difficulties confronted by these   
   heros desiring to implant Christianity amid the savage nations of the north.   
   Building materials, chapel accessories, everything in effect had to be   
   imported from France; the Indian languages were varied and difficult;   
   customs were at best non-Christian; insects infested the woods where they   
   dwelt; the tribes were migrant and had to be followed from place to place.   
   There were less belligerent ones who responded rapidly to the pacifying and   
   sanctifying influences of the Faith, but the Iroquois of the northeast were   
   dreaded, and it was to them that the eight martyrs all fell victims, over a   
   period of seven years.   
      
   The Martyrs of Canada:   
      
   Father Antoine Daniel was the first to die in Canada, after ten years among   
   the Hurons. The chapel of the village where his mission stood was filled   
   with his faithful Christians, and he had just finished saying Mass, when the   
   Iroquois attacked in July of 1648. The men ran to the palisades; the priest,   
   when the invaders broke through, went to the chapel door and faced the   
   Iroquois, warning them of God's anger. They slew him at once and threw him   
   into the chapel they had already set on fire, still occupied by the women   
   and children.   
      
   Saint John de Brebeuf, "the giant of the Huron missions" was a native of   
   Normandy, noted for his physical height and strength and still stronger love   
   of God. Arriving in 1625, at the age of 32 years, he spent three years with   
   the Hurons of Ontario, winning their love and respect to such a degree that   
   they wept when he was recalled to Quebec City for a time in 1628. "We still   
   do not know how to adore the Master of life as you do!" Political questions   
   obliged him to return to Europe in that year, but he was back in Canada in   
   1633, and among his Hurons the following year. He labored until 1649, in   
   which year the luminous Cross he had seen in the sky the year before,   
   presage of his martyrdom, became a reality for this glorious father of the   
   Faith in America. The Iroquois took him prisoner in the village of Saint   
   Louis near the Georgian bay of Lake Ontario. He was tortured, scalped;   
   pieces of his flesh were removed and eaten before his eyes; boiling water   
   was poured over him, hatchets heated red-hot were placed on his chest, back   
   and shoulders. He did not utter a single cry. His death occurred in March of   
   1649.   
      
   His young companion in the mission, Father Gabriel Lalemant, 39 years old in   
   that year and of a delicate constitution, was martyred the next day; he had   
   been forced to witness the death of his beloved Father Brebeuf. He cried   
   out: "Father, we are given up as a spectacle to the world, the Angels and   
   men!" And he went up to him and kissed his bleeding wounds. Facing the same   
   fate afterwards, he knelt down and embraced the stake to which he was to be   
   tied, to make his final offering to God. He himself survived for longer   
   still, seventeen hours. The Iroquois set fire to the bark they had attached   
   to him; he was "baptized" in mockery of the faith, in boiling water, not   
   once but many times. The savages cut the flesh of his thighs to the bone and   
   held red-hot axes in the wounds. They finally tired of their task and   
   finished him with a blow from an axe.   
      
   Nine months after the martyrdom of these two, Saint Charles Garnier, also   
   missioned with the Hurons, fell victim in his turn. He was a valiant priest   
   who had said: "The source of all gentleness, the sustenance of our hearts,   
   is Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament." He was of a wealthy family, and as a   
   student in the Jesuit college of Clermont, would deposit his weekly   
   allowance in the church's collection box for the poor. In the mission he   
   slept without a mattress, and when traveling with the Indians, would carry   
   the sick on his shoulders for an hour or two to relieve them. He died the   
   day before the feast of the Immaculate Conception, on December 7, 1649,   
   while aiding the wounded and the dying; an Iroquois fired two bullets   
   directly into his chest and abdomen. Seeing a dying man near him, twice he   
   tried to stand and go to him, and twice he fell heavily. Another Iroquois   
   then ended his life with an axe.   
      
   Saint Noel Chabanel had been a professor in France; he suffered the   
   temptation to return to Europe when he saw clearly the state of the souls of   
   the natives. He overcame it and made a vow in writing of perpetual stability   
   in the Huron mission. He died alone when, pursued by the Iroquois in the   
   company of a few of his Huron neophytes, he had to stop, exhausted, in the   
   woods. He told the others to flee. It was later that an apostate Huron   
   avowed he had killed him in hatred of the Christian religion and cast his   
   body into a river. He died on the feast of Our Lady which he particularly   
   loved, that of the Immaculate Conception, one day after the martyrdom of   
   Father Garnier, on December 8, 1649.   
      
   The Martyrs of New York State:   
      
   The great missionary Isaac Jogues was martyred, as it were, twice; after   
   being surprised by the Iroquois while traveling, he might have escaped from   
   the midst of his Hurons who were being seized at the same time, but did not   
   want to abandon them. He was tortured in ways like those we have described   
   for the others, but he survived and was held prisoner under the most painful   
   conditions for long months, by the Iroquois of what is now New York State.   
   He finally escaped and returned to Europe, aided by the Dutch. He was not   
   recognized when he knocked on the door of the Jesuit house in Paris. When   
   the Holy Father Urban VIII was asked for a dispensation for him to say Mass,   
   since his fingers had been badly mutilated, he replied: "Can one deny the   
   right to say Mass to a martyr of Christ?" The Saint returned to Quebec and   
   offered himself for an Iroquois mission, saying he would not return. He was   
   killed in 1646 by a sudden blow of an axe from behind, by a savage of the   
   mission where he stayed.   
      
   During the original captivity of Father Jogues, his assistant, Brother René   
   Goupil, was with him, a prisoner like himself. He was the first of the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)