October 19 2017 - St Jean de Brebeuf and Isaac Jogues - reflection and homily - Thursday of 28th week in Ordinary Time - Luke 11:47-54

      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 theologian 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.  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 English novelist Graham Greene, suggested that he write a novel based on 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 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, a faith that is so strong and so clear that its voice still resonates in the modern world today.  These courageous Jesuit priests gladly made many 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, the faith of these Jesuit priest indeed speaks very loudly to us. Moore shows the temptations and conflicts that went on in 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.  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 today with a faith that is meant to encourage us and move us to action.