KATERI'S VOW ON LADY DAY, AND THE SUMMER OF 1679.
Kateri's soul was indeed of rarest and costliest mould. Of this Father
Cholenec was now fully aware. He also knew her quiet determination of
spirit, and he no longer resisted her pleadings to be allowed to
consecrate herself to God by a vow of perpetual virginity. This she did,
with all due solemnity, on the Feast of the Blessed Virgin, the 25th of
March, 1679.
However others might look upon her act, this solemn engagement with God
gave her a feeling of freedom rather than of thraldom. At last she had
an acknowledged right to live her own life in her own way. She was
Rawenniio's bride. The blackgown had approved of her vow, and no
relative of hers at the Sault ventured afterwards to question or disturb
her. "From that time," says Cholenec, "she aspired continually to
heaven, where she had fixed all her desires; ... but her body was not
sufficiently strong to sustain the weight of her austerities and the
constant effort of her spirit to maintain itself in the presence of
God." She tested her powers of endurance to the utmost. Her constant
companion, Therese, afterwards told of her that on one occasion, as they
were coming from the field into the village, carrying each of them a
heavy load of wood, Kateri slipped on the frozen ground and fell,
causing the points of an iron belt which she was accustomed to wear to
penetrate far into her flesh. When Therese advised her on account of
this accident to leave her bundle of wood until another time, Kateri
only laughed, and lifting it quickly, carried it to the cabin, where she
made no mention of her hurt. When summer came and the others laid aside
their blankets for a time, she continued to wear hers over her head even
in the hottest weather. Anastasia said that she did this, not so much to
shield her eyes from the light, as from modesty and a spirit of
mortification.
Kateri and Therese found a deserted cabin near the village, where they
were now in the habit of going every Saturday afternoon to prepare
themselves in a suitable manner, as they supposed, for receiving the
sacrament of penance.
Chauchetiere relates how this custom of theirs originated, and how they
employed themselves while in this retreat. It was only by questioning
Therese after the death of Kateri that the full extent of their
austerities became known, for they were careful to conceal them from the
knowledge of all. Father Fremin was away at this time, having gone on a
voyage to France, and Father Cholenec had full charge of the mission
during his absence. As his time was filled with new cares and
responsibilities, he had but little opportunity to notice or discover
that Kateri Tekakwitha, the treasure confided to his keeping by Father
de Lamberville, was in all simplicity and earnestness wrecking her
health and strength by undergoing fearful penances. Suggested to her
either by the remorseful and penitent mind of Therese, or the stern
instructions of Anastasia, they were carried out with the utmost
severity by Kateri on her frail and innocent self, as though she bore on
her own shoulders the sins of the whole Iroquois nation.
It may be well to give a full account of how she was accustomed to make
her preparation for confession, and where the plan originated. One
Saturday afternoon while waiting for the bell to ring for Benediction,
she sat in the cabin of Therese, talking confidentially with her friend
on matters of conscience. Therese happened to mention the bundle of
switches with which she had scourged herself on a certain occasion; and
Kateri, quick to put a pious thought into practice, hastened at once to
the cemetery, which was near at hand, and returned with a handful of
stinging little rods. These she hid adroitly under the mat on which she
was sitting, and waited eagerly for the first stroke of the bell. Then
hurrying the people of the cabin as fast as possible to the church, the
two were no sooner alone than they fastened the lodge securely on the
inside, and gave full vent to their devotion. Kateri was the first to
fall upon her knees, and handing her companion the switches, begged her
not to spare her in the least. When she had been well scourged, she in
turn took the switches, and Therese knelt down to receive the blows.
With bleeding shoulders, they said a short prayer together, and then
hastened to the chapel, joyous and happy at heart. Never before had the
prayers seemed shorter or sweeter to them than on that evening. Their
next thought was to choose a place where they might continue this
exercise. The unfrequented cabin already mentioned seemed to them a
most favorable spot. It belonged to a French trader, who only came at
long intervals to the village. It stood always open, and had become
gradually surrounded by graves, so that it was now within the cemetery.
There the two friends went every Saturday. After making an act of
contrition, they proceeded as follows: They recited the Act of Faith,
which they were accustomed to say at the church; then Kateri, who wished
always to be the first in penitence, would kneel and receive the
scourging, begging her companion all the while to strike harder, even
though blood appeared at the third stroke. When they came to a pause,
they recited the chaplet of the Holy Family, which they divided into
several parts, at each of which a stroke was given with the switches.
But towards the end of the exercise, their devotion knew no bounds. It
was then that Kateri laid bare the sentiments of her heart in such words
as these: "My Jesus, I must risk everything with you. I love you, but I
have offended you. It is to satisfy your justice that I am here.
Discharge upon me, O my God, discharge upon me your wrath." Sometimes
tears and sobs choked her voice so she could not finish what she was
saying. At these times she would speak of the three nails which fastened
our Saviour to the cross as a figure of her sins. When Kateri was thus
touched, she did not fail to move her companion, who with equal fervor
underwent the same voluntary punishment.
Therese assures us that the worst fault that Kateri could ever find to
accuse herself of on these occasions when she opened her heart most
freely, was the carelessness in which she had lived after her baptism.
This consisted in not having resisted those who had forced her to go to
work in the fields on Sundays and feast days; that is, in not having
rather suffered martyrdom at their hands. She reproached herself with
having feared death more than sin. That this saintly girl suffered
everything short of absolute martyrdom in her efforts to keep holy the
Lord's Day, we already know from the record of her life in the Mohawk
Valley. It must be remembered, too, that at that time she had not made
her first communion or been fully instructed.
It would be a long and harrowing task to give a full account of all the
austere fasts and penances that Kateri Tekakwitha underwent during the
course of the year 1679. Many of them belong to the age and the place in
which she lived, and were in common practice then and there. Others go
to prove the rude, Spartan spirit of her race, which gloried in
exhibitions of fortitude under torture. But the tortures that her people
knew how to endure so well through pride, Kateri endured in a spirit of
penance and atonement. Her greatest excesses of self-inflicted pain came
like sparks of fire from her intense love of the crucified Redeemer. She
wished to prove herself the slave of His love. She had seen the Iroquois
warriors brand their slaves with coals of fire; so she could not resist
the impulse which came to her one night to seize a red-hot brand from
the hearthfire, and to place it between her toes. She held it there
while she recited an Ave Maria. When the prayer was over, she was indeed
branded. Such inflictions as these, by their incessant expenditure of
energy, soon wore out her frail body, and brought of their own accord a
speedy answer to her never-flagging prayer,--that Rawenniio, the
beautiful God of the Christians, whom she had learned to love so well,
would take her to His lodge!
"Kateri had great and special devotion both for the Passion of
our Saviour and for the Holy Eucharist. These two mysteries of
the love of the same God, concealed under the veil of the
Eucharist and His dying on the cross, ceaselessly occupied her
spirit, and kindled in her heart the purest flames of love. One
day, after having received the Holy Communion, she made a
perpetual oblation or solemn offering of her body to Jesus
attached to the cross, and of her soul to Jesus in the most
Holy Sacrament of the Altar."[66]
As Kateri knew but two paths while she lived at the Sault,--one leading
from her cabin to the field where she worked, and the other to the
chapel where she prayed,--her friends could easily find her. There, at
the church day after day, and many times a day, any one who chanced to
stray in might see a muffled figure kneeling near the altar-rail, facing
the tabernacle. At such times she saw nothing, heard nothing, of what
was taking place around her or behind her. In front of her was the
sacred Presence she could not leave unless for some urgent call of duty
or charity.
A touch on the shoulder, a whispered word, "You are wanted, Kateri," and
no hand or heart was more willing than hers to assist or relieve, as the
case might be. Often she did not wait for this. A sudden inspiration, an
impulse of sympathy, carried her where she was needed. When the good
deed was done, the love within her heart drew her again to the foot of
the tabernacle. "When she entered the church in taking the blessed
water she recalled her baptism, and renewed the resolution she had taken
to live as a good Christian; when she knelt down in some corner near the
balustrade for fear of being distracted by those who passed in and out,
she would cover her face with her blanket, and make an act of faith
concerning the real presence in the Blessed Sacrament. She made also
several other interior acts of contrition, of resignation, or of
humility, according to the inspiration which moved her, asking of God
light and strength to practise virtue well. In the fourth place,"
continues Chauchetiere, "she prayed for unbelievers, and above all for
her Iroquois relatives. She finished her devotion by saying her beads.
She confided this exercise to her companion, who made it known. Except
for her habit of hiding the beautiful practices taught her by the Holy
Spirit, we might have occasion to admire still more the rapid progress
which faith made in her soul. She had regulated the visits which she
made to our Lord to five times a day without fail; but it can be said
that the church was the place where she was ordinarily found."
Spiritual writers are accustomed to divide the Christian life into three
progressive grades; namely, the purgative, the illuminative, and the
unitive. Chauchetiere declares that Kateri's life at the Sault might
well serve as an example to the most fervent Christians of Europe, and
compares her spirit with that of Saint Catherine of Sienna; then he sums
up in a few words her exalted spiritual attainments by saying that she
was already in the "unitive way" before having well known the other
two.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] Cholenec's letter.