Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (sometimes called the Lily of the Mohawks) was a Native woman of mixed origin, both Mohawk and Algonquin heritage. In 1656, she was born in a Mohawk village in what is presently North Eastern New York. 

Saint Kateri was known for being kind and mild mannered. Her Mohawk name (“Tekakwitha”) translates roughly to clumsy or “girl who bumps into things”.  

 Around the age of four, a smallpox epidemic killed her family and left her face scarred. She was sent to live with relatives and took to wearing head covers and scarves to cover her face. When she was 11, St Kateri met a group of three Jesuit priests who introduced her to Christianity. She tried to adopt their teachings and apply them to her own life, which was not taken well by her uncle and the people of her tribe. 

As Tekakwitha approached the age of 13, she was pressured by others to find a husband. She refused, even telling one priest "I can have no spouse but Jesus."

Despite her great homemaking skills, she remained uninterested in marriage and preferred instead, to dedicate her time and talents elsewhere. When she reached 17, her adoptive mother attempted to arrange a marriage for her but Tekakwitha refused and hid in a field.   

At 19, she was able to continue her religious education with the Jesuit priest Fr. Jacques de Lamberville.

It was then that she was finally baptized into the Catholic faith and professed a vow of perpetual virginity.  

When she was 18, the Jesuit priest Jacques de Lamberville, visited her village. His journals recount her struggles with living as a Christian among a tribe that rejected and ridiculed her for it. She faced accusations of sorcery, threats of violence, and actual violence, with some even throwing stones at her, but she refused to compromise and continued practicing her faith. 

With increasing hostility from her tribe, she eventually fled, moving nearly 200 miles away to a Native Christian mission. She joined the community in 1677, living among other Native American converts. 

There, was able to make friends and at one point, even attempted to begin the first Native American Catholic religious order though it ultimately never came to fruition.    

While living in this community, Tekakwitha was said to have embraced several methods of physical mortification, some which aligned with her cultural practices, such as piercing her skin to draw blood. The priests felt this was too extreme but she refused to compromise. St. Kateri continued to practise physical mortification and routinely offered her suffering for the conversion of her relatives and God’s mercy on them. She passed away just a few years after joining the community. 

St. Kateri was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, Pray for us!