14 July 2023 - Kateri Tekakwitha - Friday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time - Psalm 67

     In the psalm today, it is proclaimed: “Trust in the Lord and do good, that you may dwell in the land and be fed in security.  Take delight in the Lord, and he will grant you your heart's requests.”  The saint we celebrate today is a native American woman named Kateria Tekakwitha, known affectionately by the faithful as “the Lily of the Mohawks.” I see Kateri echoing the message of today’s psalm, of trusting in the Lord, doing good, and taking delight in the Lord.   She was born in present-day up-state New York in the year 1656, a century before the United States was formed as a country.  When she was 4 years old, her brother and parents died from smallpox, a disease brought to the Americas by the Europeans.  Kateri survived this disease, but it left her disfigured and partially blind. She was assigned to care for one of the Jesuit missionaries who came to her village. She converted to Catholicism at the age of 20; she was shunned and ridiculed by many in her village for her religious piety and devotedness to her faith.  Due to this harsh reaction, she eventually left her village and fled to a Catholic mission in Canada. When Kateri is depicted in icons and in religious paintings, she is shown with a cross in one hand and an evergreen tree in another. She is one of the patron saints of ecology and of protecting the environment.  Kateri often carried a hand-made cross with her when she worked so that she would be reminded of Christ’s journey and the need she had to pray in the midst of her day. Her austere way of life contributed to her death at the young age of 24 in 1680 in the middle of Holy Week.  She was buried on Holy Thursday.  It is told that Kateri was too humble to ask the Jesuit priest for religious instruction herself; it was the Jesuit priest who perceived her piety and gentleness, prompting him to offer her religious instruction and telling her about Jesus. On our own journey of faith, we are called to trust in the Lord, to delight in his ways, and to dwell in his land, as the psalm calls us to do today.  St Kateri Tekakwitha, we ask you for your blessings today: for our own journey, for our country, and for the protection of of God’s creation.