National Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, NY
Centenary of the Beatification of the North American Martyrs
“The North American Martyrs and Christian Heroism”
To listen to an audio recording of today’s conference, please click below:
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The following outline guided the conference:
IntroductionIt’s a joy to be with you today here on these hallowed grounds to celebrate what happened 100 years ago today in the Vatican, when Pope Pius XI, the “Pope of the Missions,” beatified the North American Martyrs: St. Isaac Jogues, St. Rene Goupil and St. Jean de la Lande, who gave their lives for Christ and the Mohawks here, as well as St. Jean de Brébeuf, St. Antoine Daniel, St. Gabriel Lalemant, St. Charles Garnier, and St. Noel Chabanel, who gave the supreme witness of Christian faith, hope and love in Ontario.Little did Saints Rene, Isaac and Jean know as they suffered here, as they were being tomahawked to death here, that they would be celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica centuries later. Little did they know we would convene here today to give thanks to them and to God for them. But how fitting it is that we and the whole Church give that thanks.It was 400 years ago Thursday, on June 19, 1625, that St. Jean de Brébeuf and St. Charles Lalemant arrived in Quebec with Fr. Énemond Massé to begin years of difficult and seemingly fruitless labors trying to plant the Gospel on North American soil. They would labor until 1629, when the British took over the territory and they would have to vacate New France. They had not gained during that time one single convert. But when France gained title over the region once more in 1633, they crossed the Atlantic anew, to try again. In the interim, St. Jean had helped to build a new seminary and was fruitfully forming new Jesuit priests for Christ. He could have continued that work. But he longed to bring Christ and his Gospel to the people here. And with courage and faith, he returned. Waves of others Jesuits joined. They would preach the Gospel with their words. They would preach the Gospel with their witness and example. They would ultimately testify to it by their blood.All of us in the United States rejoice at the election of Pope Leo XIV six weeks ago, the first pope ever born in the United States. But today we celebrate something more significant. When the North American Martys were beatified a century ago today, Saints Isaac, Rene and Jean, became the first from America to be raised to the altars. There had never been a blessed from these shores. Likewise, when they were canonized five years and eight days later, they became the first to be canonized. The hierarchy that matters most is not that in the Church militant but the Church triumphant, and they are the first blessed and saints from the US. They are the first of what God wants to be a multitude. And as are forefathers in the universal call to holiness, they have much to teach us.I’ve entitled this talk this morning “The North American Martyrs and Christian Heroism,” because they have much to teach us about the heroic virtue that sanctity demands. We look to them as true heroes of faith. But we are also urged to look on them as personal heroes, those whom we look up to, those whom we seek to imitate to the extent possible in our own circumstances.You may know that on the road to beatification and canonization, the first step is an investigation of one’s life to determine whether one has lived the Christian faith to an heroic degree, especially that one’s life has been marked by heroic faith, hope and love. When someone dies a martyr, the determination is that one has died with heroic faith, hope and love as others sought to kill in hatred against the Christian faith. In both cases, we look not just for the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, but those virtues lived with heroism, lived when it wasn’t easy, lived in situations where that faith, hope and love would be tested and proven. Few of us will be asked to run the gauntlet, as Saints Isaac and Rene were upon their arrival in 1642 up the hill of martyrs, as they passed through people with sticks and clubs on both sides pummeling their bones, their flesh and their head. Few of us will have our fingers chewed to the bone or thumbs sawed off by a shell. Few of us will be starved and malnourished for years. Few of us will be tomahawked to death. But we will all, eventually, have our faith, hope and charity tested. That’s why we need heroes. Their example can strengthen us in our own circumstances to remain faithful, hopeful and loving at those moments and until the end. So that’s what I hope to focus on today, as we invoke the intercession of the North American Martyrs so that we, imitating their heroic virtues, we might come to share their heavenly reward.So I would like to look at what they teach us about faith, hope and love, as well as about the courage to live them heroically.FaithWe are now celebrating this year the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and the Symbol, or Creed, they formulated and we profess each Sunday.Against Arius, who denied Christ’s divinity. The Council proclaimed that Jesus was God from God, Light from Light, consubstantial with the Father and with the Holy Spirit.We focus on the two aspects of faith.Trust in GodBased on that trust in God, trust in what God revealsFaith is first a total trust in God, a total adhesion of our being. The Catholic act of faith is that we believe in God who revealed himself to be Trinitarian, who took on our flesh, who founded a Church, who sent the Holy Spirit to guide that Church into all truth. Because of that trust, we believe in what God says and does, even when it exceeds our human capacity to know by reason.As we mark the centenary of the beatification of the North American martyrs, we see this in Martha’s faith in the resurrection.On this vigil of Corpus Christi, we see it Peter’s proclamation of the Eucharist.The North American Martyrs had this type of faith. The believed in everything the Church taught. It was, and is, the real, real world. It was the light that guided their paths. It was the truth that set them free. It was the rock on which they sought to build their whole life. And because of that faith, they wanted others to come to live by that light, that truth, on that rock.What about our faith? How fundamental is it to the way we look at everything in the world? Do we walk by faith? Do we prioritize the things of faith? How has our faith been tested? Has it been tested by particular moral teachings and temptations? Has it been tested by scandals in the Church? Has it been tested by the presence of other religions or the attacks by those of no religion? How do we respond to those tests?It would have been easy for the North American Martyrs to have their faith tested.It would have been tested when they became Jesuits, when French rationalists, when the still young Protestants and when Catholics who thought they loved God enough opposed their vocations and challenged them as to whether they were throwing their lives away.It would have been tested hard during their seminary years as their Jesuit formators broke them down to build them up again, as they looked at their defects in a magnifying glass and needed to die to themselves so that Christ could live.It would have been tested when they made the decision to give their lives to the missions in an unknown world. When they crossed the stormy seas. When they needed to adjust to the bitter cold winters, canoeing and then portaging or carrying their canoes and supplies over snow and ice.It would have been tested living among those who believed and lived in a vastly different way and showed little receptivity to the Gospel. Three and a half years with no convert! Sowing on hardened soil. Is it possible they suffered temptations to wonder whether it was true for everyone.It would have been tested obviously when they needed to suffer for it.But it was precisely those tests, which they passed, that helped their faith to become heroic.It is similarly going to be the tests our faith faces that will help them to become heroic.God allows us those tests because he wants us to become holy. He allows us to be challenged by our culture, by our classmates, by our friends and family, even sometimes by those in the Church. But he’s with us always in the midst of those trials, perhaps seemingly asleep in the boat, seeking to help us of little faith learn to trust in him more. He wants us, too, to become heroic in faith, because that’s not only what we need but the Church needs. That’s the way we’re going to be able to show the real attraction of our faith in such a way that others can come to the Gospel, just like the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.In this 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, we can look at whether we really live our life on our faith, on what we proclaim for example in the Creed, or whether we really just state the words.Do I believe in God the Father and that he created the world?Do I believe in God the Son, that God himself really entered the world by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, that he suffered and died, rose and ascended, and will come to judge the earth?Do I believe in the Holy Spirit, as Lord and the one who gives us life, who has spoken through the prophets and wants to help us speak with true tongues of fire?Do I believe in the Catholic Church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic?Do I believe in what the Church teaches about baptism?Do I believe in what the Church teaches about the forgiveness of sins? Our sins in the Sacrament? Our forgiving others their sins 70 x 7 times?Do I believe in the communion of saints?Do I believe in the resurrection of the flesh?Do I believe in life everlasting?Do I believe in these articles enough to give my life for them?These questions lead us to the second virtueHopeWe are now in the midst of the Jubilee of Hope.Should have been a Jubilee of Faith but Pope Francis thought a Jubilee of Hope was more urgent. B16 wrote an encyclical in 2007 on hope because he thought it was urgent too.We see the need for hope in high rates of despair, flowing from loneliness, isolation, individualism, fear and anxiety, lack of meaning, broken friendships and families, the problem of suffering and more.We see the consequences of a lack of hope in all those pushing, and taking advantage of, what is euphemistically dubbed Medical Assistance in Dying, Physician Assisted Suicide, and other forms of euthanasiaWe see the need for hope in the drug epidemic and other addictive behaviors, whether games, porn, or social media, all of which are escapes from reality.We’ve seen it in the despair among young people that the world was imminently to cease because of climate catastrophes.We’ve seen it in collapsing birthrates.In the US, we’ve seen it in the results of the CDC’s biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report for 2011-2021, which showed the truly alarming, and rapidly worsening, situation of the mental and spiritual health of high school students in the United States.42% of U.S. high school teens in 2021 said they felt persistently sad or hopeless, 22% seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous year, 18% had come up with a concrete plan on how they would end their life, and 10% actually tried to carry out that plan.It’s worse for girls. 57% of high school girls felt persistently sad or hopeless, 30% of girls seriously contemplated suicide in the previous year, and 24% had a suicide plan.Since 2011, persistent sadness and hopelessness among girls had grown from 36 to 57%, suicidal thoughts from 19 to 30, and suicide plans from 15 to 24, a 60% increase in each category in a decade.The CDC looked at some factors that might be contributing causes to the crisis, but noted that, over the course of the last decade, bullying, drug use, promiscuity and sexual violence all decreased or stayed about the same. It likewise looked into students’ sense of connectedness in school, their housing situation, and communication with their family, but none of these situations correlated to the swiftly growing problem.It’s obvious that there is a crisis of hope underneath the persistent sadness and the consideration of ending one’s life. This is linked to a crisis of meaning, of the “why” of living, of what gives motivation to be able to change own circumstances for the better, not to mention change one’s environment and the world.This crisis of hope is linked to a crisis of faith. Gen Z, those born between 1999 and 2015, are experiencing a rapid decline of faith in God.Since 2010, religious practice among high schoolers has dropped 27 percent.Thirteen percent now define as atheist, 16 percent as agnostic.These are all reasons why we need a Jubilee of Hope.It’s a time in which we are called to grow in hope, to rejoice in hope, and to give others, always, the reason for the hope we bear.It’s a time for us Christians to be men and women, master-teachers and missionaries of hope.What does it mean to hope?Pope Benedict, in his 2007 encyclical called “Saved in Hope” (Spe Salvi) didn’t define hope, but he gave us a clear indication of what it is based on St. Paul’s words to the Ephesians. St. Paul said that prior to the Gospel, those in Ephesus were “living without God and without hope in the world.” To be hopeless is to live without God. Therefore, he argued, hope is really to “live with God in the world.”We know that, no matter what we’re facing, when we confront the situation with Christ, everything changes. Everything is possible for him.When we see Jesus visibly at our side, smiling at us, telling us not to be afraid, your our would is totally different. That’s what it means to live with hope.It’s to live with “Christ Jesus our Hope,” as St. Paul defines him in his first letter to St. TimothyThe Catechism does define hope as “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relyingnot on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (1817).The Catechism focuses our attention, first, on our trust in Christ’s promises.That’s why Pope Benedict, for example, links hope to faith, saying they’re almost the same thing, because when we really believe in Jesus, we trust in his words and works, and therefore place our hope in him and in themSecond, the Catechism focuses us on God’s help in ordinary circumstances. We trust in the God the Holy Spirit helping us. We no longer rely on ourselves or on other human beings but on God.Third, the Catechism turns us to the kingdom of heaven and eternal life. The kingdom of heaven is not just something later, but it means living with Christ the King here and now, living by the virtues and values of the kingdom he describes in his Parables and other teachings. The Kingdom of God is ultimately God, that he’s the most decisive reality of our life, one that gets us to look at everything differently. This hope leads us to desire heaven.Pope Benedict said one of the reasons why many begin to lose hope is by substituting this “great hope” of eternal life with God by lots of lesser hopes, short-term, and worldly. These hopes are not necessarily bad in themselves, but even if we get them, the joy we receive can be fleeting. Either way, our appetite for the great hope wanes.The North American MartyrsThey did not just have hope but were heroic in hope.They never gave up hope when they struggled to get anyone to accept the faith and baptism.They never gave up hope when they were in captivity or nursing their wounds or preparing to die.They knew that God was with them in the world.They desired the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as their happiness. They placed their trust in Christ’s promises and relied not on their own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.And they were ready, and wanted, to give an explanation of the reason for their hope to everyone, including the indigenous.Our hopeWhat about us? Do we live by hope? Do we live it heroically?Are we conscious of God in the world? Do we abide in the presence of God? When we face challenges, do we trust in him, that we can do all things in him who strengthens us?Do we desire to live in Christ’s kingdom here on earth and forever? Do we seek eternal happiness? Or are we satiated and numbed by seeking this worldly small-h hopes in this world?Do we persevere with hope heroically when we face challenges, or do we easily surrender hope?If our parish church is closed, do we move to the next with hope? If one of our family members or friends loses faith or begins to live contrary to the Gospel, do we maintain hope, and particularly in God’s desire for their conversion, and ours?Do we look long-term to the horizon to get our bearings, confident that all things work out of the good for those who love God?The North American Martyrs were heroic in hope. They did everything to bring hope to the peoples here. Not only did the threat of death not shake their hope, but strengthened it! They are interceding for us now.LovePaul tells us in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” And the North American Martyrs were great, indeed heroic, in love.Jesus called us to heroic love when he summoned us to love others as he has loved us. His love was heroic. He said, “No one has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends,” and that’s the type of love on which he acted on Good Friday.He gave us the grounds for love on Holy Thursday.Just as the Father loves me, so I love you.Remain in my loveYou will remain in my love if you keep my commandments, just as I have kept the Father’s commandments and live in his love.This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you.Love is not a feeling, but a sacrifice, a gift. It leads us to do heroic things for the one we love. Jesus loves us in a total self-giving way to enable us to love God and others with that same total self-giving.The North American Martyrs loved like thisWe can of course comment on this by turning to the six priests among the eight North American Martyrs, who showed their love for Christ by sacrificing worldly desires and becoming not just religious, not just priests, but missionaries.But I’d like to focus on the two non-priest Jesuits who were martyred here, St. Rene Goupil and St. Jean de Lalande.Both of them were called “donnés,” literally, “given” or better “gifts.” They gave themselves over to the missions.Rene Goupil wanted to become a Jesuit but because of hearing impairments he wasn’t able to. Instead, he became a medical doctor and came to the missions as a physician. St. Jean left France at the age of 19 to serve in the missions as a donné. He came here with Isaac on his third visit. When Isaac was tomahawked on October 18, 1646, he was killed the following day trying to bury his body.Their love for God, and their love for each other, were the characteristics of their life.Our loveWhat about us?Are we donnés? Have we given ourselves as a gift to God in love? Have we given ourselves as a gift to the Church, no matter our state of life? Have we given ourselves as a gift to others, especially those who don’t yet know the love of God in their life?For us to make that gift, we first must know of the love of God. In this is love, St. John the Evangelist says, not that we have loved God but that he has loved us and given his life as a ransom for our sins. Do we realize how loved we are? That God has given himself to us? That he gives himself to us each day in the Eucharist? That he is the first donné?Do we remain in his love? Not just visit there but build our dwelling, our house, there in his loving us, pondering it every day, letting our whole existence be characterized by it?Do we love him back? Do we make time for him? Prioritize him? Choose him over other loves? Do we keep his commandments, which are not arbitrary means to love God but the truth pathway to love God and others? Do we seek to give our life for others like he gave his life for us? Or do we try to hold ourselves back? What do we do to share the gift of the Given, of the God who is love, with others? Would we be willing to give our whole life to the missions if God really asked? Even if he doesn’t want us to leave our native land, like the North American martyrs, and go to the 5.5 billion who don’t believe in God of the 8.0 billion out there, what types of sacrifices are we willing to make to share and spread the faith? Would we sacrifice 10 percent of what we earn for the missions? Would we sacrifice more, leaving, for example, most or all of what we’ve earned to spreading the faith?Is our love heroic? Is it willing to sacrifice and sacrifice all?The North American Martyrs show us that it is possible to love this way and they’re interceding for us now that we might.CourageThe last virtue I want to speak about this morning is courage. The North American Martyrs were capable of believing, hoping and loving to an heroic degree because they were courageous. Courage made their theological virtues heroic and those virtues inspired and strengthened their courage.Courage does not mean fearlessness, but rather than strength to do what one ought despite their fears. The North American Martyrs were not masochists, but they were capable of steering down the threats of torture and death, of remaining faithful, hopeful and loving even for those who had made themselves their enemies, because they were courageous.We live in an age in which we need courage.The popes have spoken about this repeatedly.John Paul II, in his inaugural homily that began his papacy, addressed it, thundering famously in St. Peter’s Square October 22, 1958: Non abbiate paura! He saw that fear was eating man alive. He saw that so many demagogues were exploiting that fear. He saw that the Church was weak because of fear, and so he said: “Brothers and Sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. … Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. … Do not be afraid. Christ knows ‘what is in man.’ He alone knows it. So often today man does not know what is within him, in the depths of his mind and heart. So often he is uncertain about the meaning of his life on this earth. He is assailed by doubt, a doubt that turns into despair. We ask you therefore, we beg you with humility and trust, let Christ speak to man. He alone has words of life, yes, of eternal life.”Pope Benedict returned to the theme of fear in his own inaugural homily in 2005, because the problem had not disappeared. He developed John Paul II’s thought.“My mind goes back to 22 October 1978, when Pope John Paul II began his ministry here in Saint Peter’s Square. His words on that occasion constantly echo in my ears: ‘Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ!’ The Pope was addressing the mighty, the powerful of this world, who feared that Christ might take away something of their power if they were to let him in, if they were to allow the faith to be free. … [But] the Pope was also speaking to everyone, especially the young. Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life. Amen.Pope Francis similarly has been speaking like a broken record about “parrhesia,” the boldness that comes from the Holy Spirit, with which we’re called to speak up, to persevere, to love and, as he likes to say, to get “dirty” in caring for others.Pope Leo when he gave his first Regina Caeli address added it, “Do not be afraid.”One of the most common phrases in Sacred Scripture is “Be not afraid!” It appears 104 times in the Old Testament, 44 times in the New. Against our fears, God insistently tells us to take courage.Jesus tells us not to be afraid of his call (Lk 5:10), of drowning at sea (Mt 8:26), of wars and insurrections (Lk 21:9), of the death of loved ones (Lk 8:50), of those who can only kill the body but can’t harm the soul (Mt 10:28), or of what will happen to him in his Passion (Jn 14:1).To believe in him, to trust in his accompaniment, to have faith in his victory over suffering and death, he suggests, is to be filled with courage. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to do what we ought despite our fear — because of the strength that we receive from God.If one can’t help becoming more Marian visiting Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima or more Eucharistic at Lanciano or Orvieto, one also can’t help growing in holy audacity here, as we pray, as we traverse the sacred spots fertilized by the blood of Isaac, Rene and Jean, as we ponder the faith and love that made them dauntless until the end, as we convene in this place fittingly called the “Colosseum” after the Flavian Amphitheater in Rome where so many early Christian martyrs proved that they had more valor than the greatest gladiators.We can’t help but grow in courage here in this place that Saints Isaac and Rene needed ran the gauntlet, as people beat them with clubs. We can’t help but grow in courage here in this place that Saint Isaac had his fingers cut off at the bone. We can’t help but grow in courage here in this place that they were tomahawked, where St. Rene’s body was dragged into the ravine and later the bodies of Saints Isaac and Jean were tossed into the Mohawk river.The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians. The Iroquois wanted to drink the blood of St. Jean de Brébeuf’s heart so that they might obtain some of his valor. The soil here is drenched in martyrs’ blood. It’s what helped make St. Kateri Tekakwitha, born here a decade after Jean’s and Isaac’s martyrdom, courageous in faith despite sufferings and threats because of her conversion.Our pilgrimage here today helps us breath the air of audacity and bolster us with the courage needed to remain faithful on the pilgrimage of life as we seek to live that courage in the way we trust in God and what he teaches, in the way we hope against hope, in the way we love to the end.One hundred years ago today the heroic faith, hope and love of the North American Martyrs was celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica built over the tomb of the courageous fisherman from Galilee who was crucified in imitation and in love of the one who was crucified for us. The North American Martyrs knew that in becoming Christian, they were signing up to follow that crucified God-man to Calvary, to deny themselves, pick up their cross each day and follow him. At Jesus’ right side in heaven, they, with gratitude for our presence today and our trust in their prayers, are interceding for us that we might, by the power of the Holy Spirit in the love of God the Father, imitate their heroic trust in Jesus and all that he and his Church have taught, live with Christ in the world with the values of his kingdom and hope in all his promises that after death, whether peaceful or violent, he wants to bring us to live with him forever, and allow his love in us to overflow to the extreme.Saints Isaac, Rene and Jean, pray for us, that we might be for those in our age and after, witnesses of heroic Christian faith, hope and love, like you are for us! Amen!The post The North American Martyrs and Christian Heroism, Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, Auriesville, New York, June 21, 2025 appeared first on Catholic Preaching.