10/19/2013 – Jean de Brebeuf, Isaac Jogues, and Jesuit Companions – Martyrs for the Faith

       This week, we celebrate two of my favorite saints, and both those fell on days where I did not celebrate the daily mass.  Tuesday we celebrated St Teresa of Avila, the 16^th Century Carmelite nun and Doctor of the Church.  Today we celebrate a group of Jesuit priests who were martyred for the faith in Canada in the middle of the 17^th century.  When I was serving as a missionary in Canada, Brian Moore’s novel Black Robe came out, which used the journals of Jean de Brebeuf and other Jesuit missionaries in Canada as its source material.  The violence and coarse language of the novel brought about a lot of criticism from literary critics, but Moore stated that he wanted it to be true to what was recorded in the journals.  As a missionary myself in Canada and in Ecuador, and now that I myself am a missionary priest in Mississippi, I see Jean de Brebeuf and his companions as my heroes and role models.  Brian Moore, a lapsed Catholic himself, saw these Jesuit priests as having a faith that still calls out to us many centuries after they lived, as having a faith that is a revelation to the modern world today.  They gladly made such extreme sacrifices for the Gospel they loved so much.  In a modern world where we go crazy if we don’t have cell phone reception for a day, their faith should indeed speak very loudly to us. Moore shows the temptations and conflict that went on in de Brebeuf’s life, how even in his great faith, it was not easy being a missionary in a culture that was so different from his own.  I pray for the intercessions of these great men of faith, that they help increase our own faith, that they encourage us on those days where we find it difficult to carry one.