Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was born in 1656 in the Mohawk
village of Ossernenon, in northern New York. When she was about four years
old, her parents and younger brother died in a smallpox outbreak. Kateri
survived the illness but remained sickly and was left with facial scars and
damaged eyesight. So she was nicknamed Tekakwitha - “she who bumps into things.”
Kateri became fascinated by the work and message of the
Jesuit missionaries, and she was baptized at the age of twenty. And
just as Jesus predicts this morning, she endured ridicule from neighbors in her
village; Kateri was undaunted. It seems, my sisters and brothers, that Kateri
Tekakwitha, “she who bumps into things” had bumped into Jesus and was
completely taken with Him, with his Beauty and Truth.
Very soon, perhaps with more ardor than good sense, Kateri
became attracted to extreme asceticism; nothing was too difficult for her to
endure for the One she loved. This undermined her already poor health, and at
the age of twenty-four Kateri passed to the Lord. Everyone who witnessed her
death told how within minutes her smallpox scars disappeared and her skin
became radiant.
Kateri Tekakwitha had been completely transformed, soul and
body, as she gazed upon the Face of Christ.
Let us allow him to gaze upon us in his mercy.
