14 July 2017 - Friday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time - Psalm 67

     One of the verses of our psalm stood out to me today - “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.”  She was born in present-day up-state New York in the year 1656, more than 100 years before the United States became a country.  When she was only 4 years old, her brother and parents died from smallpox, a disease brought to the Americas by the European explorers and colonists.  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 and 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, fleeing 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 has been named as 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.   The austere way she lived her 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 shy and humble to ask the Jesuit priest for religious instruction herself; it was the Jesuit priest who saw a piety and a gentleness in her that offered her religious instruction and started telling her about Jesus.  Often on our own journey of faith, we need to trust the Lord, to delight in his ways, to dwell in his land, as the psalm calls us to do today.  St Kateri Tekakwitha, we ask for your blessings today - for our own journey, for our country, and for the protection of all of God’s creation.