St. Kateri Tekakwitha (1656 – 1680)
Her last days and Beatification

Welcome to INSPIRING LIVES FOR THE YEAR OF FAITH, a series on the lives of Inspiring People and Witnesses of faith in the Catholic Church from around the world. These holy people lived their ordinary lives in extraordinary ways. They are examples of great holiness and virtue, and they invite us to follow their paths to holiness. Their unique stories inspire us to be rooted in our faith. God calls each one of us today to inspire our brothers and sisters and to be witnesses of our faith.
During the last week we listened to the early life of a young and brave lay woman, a Native American named Kateri Tekakwitha [ˈgaderi degaˈgwita], known as the Lily of the Mohawks. She was one of the seven persons canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 21^st October 2012 at St. Peter’s square in the Vatican. These new saints of the church came from various walks of life – lay women, catechist, religious, priests and nuns. Their lives and works help us to look at our lives from God’s perspective especially now when we are celebrating the Year of Faith.
Tekakwitha was born to a Christian Algonquin mother and a Mohawk father in 1656 in New York. She was baptized by a Jesuit missionary in 1676 at the age of 20, and she died in Canada four years later. In June 1980, she became the first Native American to be beatified, and in 2012 she became the first Native American woman to be canonized. Known for her virtue of chastity, and shunned by her tribe for her conversion to Catholicism, she is the first Native American woman to be venerated in the Roman Catholic Church. Today we shall listen to the last days of Kateri Tekakwitha and the veneration that followed soon after.
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Around the period of Holy Week in 1679, friends noted that Tekakwitha was sinking. When people knew she had but a few hours left, villagers gathered together, accompanied by two priests, one of whom gave her the last rites. She died on 17 April 1680 at the age of 24, in the arms of her friend Marie-Therèse. The priests reported that her final words were, "I will love you in heaven."
After her death, the people noticed a physical change. One of the priests later wrote, “This face, so marked and swarthy, suddenly changed about a quarter of an hour after her death, and became in a moment so beautiful and so white that I observed it immediately.”
Tekakwitha is said to have appeared to three individuals in the weeks after her death. They were Anastasia, her mentor, Marie-Therèse, her companion, and Father Chauchetière. Anastasia said that, while crying over the death of her daughter, she looked up to see Catherine "kneeling at the foot" of her mattress, "holding a wooden cross that shone like the sun". Marie-Thérèse reported that she was awakened at night by a knocking on her wall, and a voice asked if she were awake, adding, "I’ve come to say good-bye; I’m on my way to heaven." Marie-Thérèse went outside but saw no one; she heard a voice murmur, "Adieu, Adieu, go tell the father that I’m going to heaven." Chauchetière reported seeing Catherine at her grave; he said she appeared in "baroque splendour; for 2 hours he gazed upon her" and "her face lifted toward heaven as if in ecstasy."
Chauchetière had a chapel built near her gravesite. By 1684, pilgrimages had begun to honour her there. The Jesuits turned her bones to dust and set the ashes within the "newly rebuilt mission chapel." This symbolized her presence on earth. Her physical remains were sometimes used as relics for healing. The priest who were beside her when she died, wrote accounts of her life.
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Tekakwitha's grave stone reads: The fairest flower that ever bloomed among red men. Because of Tekakwitha's notable path to chastity, she is often referred to as a lily, a traditional symbol of purity among Roman Catholics and one often used for the Virgin Mary. Religious images of Tekakwitha are often decorated with a lily and a cross, with feathers or turtle as cultural accessories. Colloquial terms for Tekakwitha are ‘The Lily of the Mohawks’, the Mohawk Maiden, the Pure and Tender Lily, the Flower among True Men, the Lily of Purity and The New Star of the New World. Her virtues are considered an ecumenical bridge between Mohawk and European cultures.
For some time after her death, Tekakwitha was considered an honorary yet unofficial patroness of Montreal, Canada, and Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Fifty years after her death, a convent for Native American nuns opened in Mexico. They have prayed for her and supported her canonization.
The process for Tekakwitha's canonization was initiated by United States Catholics in 1884, followed by Canadian Catholics. On January 3^rd 1943, Pope Pius XII declared her venerable. She was beatified on June 22, 1980 by Pope John Paul II; she was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21, 2012.
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During the Mass for the proclamation of the five new blessed in June 22, 1980, Pope John Paul said, ‘today the whole Church receives the infinite goodness and mercy of the Lord, because she can bow down to worship her five children raised to the honors of the altar by the beatification and, at the same time, it can present them to the imitation of the faithful and the admiration of the world. In them God has lavished His goodness and His mercy, enriching his grace, loved them with a fatherly love. Through trials and sufferings, he invited and called them to heroic holiness. They were taken away from their homelands of origin and sent them to other lands to proclaim, in the midst of untold hardships and difficulties, the message of the Gospel.
About Tekakwitha, Pope John Paul II said, “ this sweet, frail yet strong figure of a young woman who died when she was only 24 years old: Kateri Tekakwitha, the "Lily of the Mohawks", the Iroquois maiden, who in 17^th century North America was the first to renew the Marvels of sanctity of Saint Scholastica, Saint Gertrude, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Angela Merici and St. Rose of Lima, preceding, along the path of Love, her great spiritual sister Therese of the Child Jesus.
She spent her short life partly in what is now the State of New York and partly in Canada. She is a kind, gentle and hardworking person, spending her time working, praying and meditating. At the age of twenty she received Baptism. Even When Following her tribe in the hunting seasons, she continued her devotions, in front of a rough cross made by herself in the forest. When her family urged her to marry, she replied very calmly and serenely that she has Jesus as her only spouse. This decision, in view of the social conditions of women in the Indian tribes at that time, exposed Kateri to the risk of living in poverty and as an outcast. It is a bold, unusual and prophetic gesture. On 25 March 1679, at the age of 23, with the consent of her spiritual director, Kateri took a vow of perpetual virginity, the first time as we know that this was done among the North American Indians.
The last months of her life are an ever cleaner manifestation of her solid faith, straight-forward humility, resignation and calm radiant joy, even in the midst of terrible sufferings. Her simple and sublime words, whispered at the moment of her death, sum up, like a noble hymn, a life of purest charity: "Jesus, I love you ..."By P.J. Joseph SJ