Jesus' Marines

Venerating and imitating the North American Martyrs

10/19/2019

Luke 12:8-12 Jesus said to his disciples: "I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God. "Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. When they take you before synagogues and before rulers and authorities, do not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say."

I love reading books about the lives of the saints and their singular dedication to Jesus. But what I love even more is reading books about the lives of saints who were martyrs for their faith in Jesus. The holy martyrs not only lived for Jesus, they were eager to die for Jesus. If all the saints serve in the Lord’s Army, then the martyrs are like the Marines, “the few, the proud, the Martyrs.” In a sense, the martyrs are the elite saints of the Catholic Church, and they deserve our admiration, our veneration and our imitation, if possible.

October 19, we honor the North American Martyrs, eight Jesuit missionaries who came to share the Good News with the native Americans. By the way, Fr. Martin studied theology in Rome and the American seminarians had a soccer team that played against teams from other countries. The U.S. seminarians attended North American College, and called their team, the “North American Martyrs,” maybe because they got killed all the time. But in his office, Fr. Martin has a picture of all his teammates holding the championship trophy from 2018. The North American Martyrs won the Clericus Cup last year.

In 1625, a Jesuit missionary named Fr. Jean de Brebeuf arrived in modern-day Quebec, called New France back then, to start evangelizing the native peoples. He was eventually joined by Frs. Rene Goupil, Isaac Jogues, Jean de Lalande, Anthony Daniel, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier, and Noel Chabanel. They enjoyed great success in converting the Huron nation to the Catholic faith. After he baptized his first Huron baby, Fr. Jean de Brebeuf exclaimed: “I would travel halfway around the world to baptize one baby so he might become a child of God!”

But another native American people, the Iroquois, were not peaceful at all, and they captured and tortured the Jesuit missionaries. One of their more exquisite tortures was to cut-off the “canonical digits” of the Jesuit priests’ hands – the thumb and forefinger. Why? In those days, a priest could only touch the consecrated Host at Mass with those two fingers. Presumably, without them, a priest could not say Mass. The Iroquois knew enough theology so that it was not only a physical torture, it was intended to be a spiritual one as well. But the Iroquois had not learned about a Catholic loophole called a “dispensation.” The pope gave special permission for the Jesuits to celebrate Mass using their remaining fingers. From 1642-1649, one by one, these eight holy Jesuits, these Catholic Marines, gladly died for their Captain, Jesus.

Reading the life and death of the North American Martyrs reminds me of the bravery and bold faith of Blessed Stanley Rother of Oklahoma City. He went to Guatemala and shared the Good News of Jesus among the native people there. It finally cost him his life, too, when people hostile to the work of the Catholic Church broke into his home and murdered him. Did you know every year we conduct a week-long mission trip to Honduras to share the Catholic faith with the people in that beautiful country? We are not quite as eager as the Jesuits or Fr. Stanley Rother to die for Jesus, but we are at least willing to give up a week of our life and endure some discomfort and pain for the sake of the Kingdom of God. If I come back after one of those trips without my two canonical digits, you’ll know it was a little harder than we had expected. But no worries, we Catholics always have dispensations.

Today, take a little time to read about the North American Martyrs, and their faith and fortitude. The holy martyrs are the Marines in the Lord’s Army, and their life and death may inspire us at least to be better foot soldiers.

Praised be Jesus Christ!