This week, we celebrate two of my favorite saints. On Sunday, October 15, we celebrated St Teresa of Avila, the 16th Century Carmelite nun and Doctor of the Church, a great mystic and Church reformer who lived in the era of the Protestant Reformation. Today we celebrate a group of Jesuit priests who were martyred for the faith in Canada in the middle of the 17th century as they brought the Gospel message to the indigenous people of Canada. When I was serving as a missionary in Canada in the early 1990s, Brian Moore’s novel Black Robe had just been released. Moore’s good friend, the acclaimed English Catholic novelist Graham Greene, suggested that Moore write a novel based on the journals of Jean de Brebeuf and the other Jesuit missionaries who served in Canada in the 17th century as its source material. The violence and coarse language of the novel brought about criticism from some 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 as 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, a faith that is so strong and so clear that this voice of faith still resonates in the modern world today. These courageous Jesuit priests gladly made many sacrifices for the Gospel they loved so much. In a modern world where we cannot imagine being without cell phone reception or the internet for a day, the faith of these Jesuit priests calls out to us. Moore shows the temptations and conflicts that were a part of Brebeuf’s life, how even in his great faith, he had challenges 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 continue on our journey. As Jesus tries to shake up the faith of the scribes and Pharisees today, to wake them from their complacency, Jean de Brebeuf and his companions call out to us with a faith that is meant to encourage us and move us to action.
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