Julie Baaki and Beth Lynch carry on Saint Kateri’s legacy as they bring ‘The Lily of the Mohawks’ alive to pilgrims who show up from all over.
Endure like Kateri.
Watch some of the women who work and volunteer in Auriesville, N.Y., in action for even an hour of their lives, and you won’t doubt they live that mantra. And with an all-important sense of perspective — as they are on missions to find a relic of the True Cross for veneration to make a pilgrim’s miracle thanksgiving complete or to pick up hot dogs and buns for an anniversary event barbecue — which makes it all the more powerful. Never mind the countless other behind-the-scenes drama that goes into keeping a Catholic shrine in some might consider the middle of nowhere open and thriving.
These women are commonplace at the Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine in Auriesville, N.Y. It’s where Saint Kateri Tekakwitha was born. In the 17th century, it was the grounds of Ossernenon, a Mohawk village. She was sick and died at 24 long after surviving a smallpox outbreak that orphaned her at four. In that short life, she was committed to the Christianity she inherited from her Algonquian mother (her father was a Mohawk chief). She eventually had to flee north and is buried at the St. Francis Xavier Mission on Mohawk territory about 15 minutes from the Montreal airport.
Endure like Kateri comes from a line on a T-shirt that sells in the shrine bookstore. The whole message is:
Sacrifice like Jogues
Forgive like Goupil
Serve like Lalande
Endure like Kateri
Isaac Jogues, René Goupil, and Jean de Lalande were French Jesuit missionary priests who lived and died on those holy grounds, for the love of Christ, sharing His love.
The Gospel message took in the heart of Kateri at a young age, despite the objections of the family members who were raising her. They wanted to marry her off, but she declared herself for the Lord. In other circumstances, she might have joined a convent. But during her young life, she took a private vow, under the spiritual — and physical — protection of priests who documented some of her devotion.
Endure like Kateri.
Love Christ despite the ridicule and persecution. Give God your life because He gave it to you, along with every good gift. Endure the pain because Jesus endured worse for us.
Upstate New York may not be a hotbed for Christian persecution today, but it is a shrine to all those who suffer for the faith as Kateri did. As the Jesuit martyrs did. As they do, throughout the world today.
“Just a drop.” On her July 14 feast day, Monday, I was too lazy to make the short trek to Auriesville from downstate. (Track work in Manhattan and a train from Canada making the Amtrak journey longer are my excuse. In my defense, I was just there and have this rant to prove it.) So I went to a Mass in New Jersey that was convenient, and a Eucharistic minister warned me that the chalice didn’t have much left in it. Just a drop of the blood of Jesus. Every drop was for me, as they beat Him and crucified Him. And for you, Christians believe. I thought of how Kateri might talk about that amazing truth. What would be unbelievable without the gift of faith she was given — along with a call to be a tender force in a violent culture with radiant joy.
The women — and men — here carry on her legacy as they, day in and day out, especially during the shrine’s open season, bring Saint Kateri alive to pilgrims who show up from all over. (As a member of the board at the shrine, I can attest that we New Yorkers who have to travel more than an hour are often the worst at making it.) But when you go there, you see lay dedication to the shrine on the most holy grounds in the United States. I think of Isaac Jogues in particular. Father Jogues had his fingers cut off, needing special permission to celebrate Mass because of his lack of digits, and came back to the people who already tried to kill him because he loved. It’s that kind of love that inspired Kateri to stand out, not for herself, not to make a name or be an influencer or assure the Kateri brand had staying power. It’s precisely in Kateri’s courageous humility that we find inspiration to live truth, despite all the obstacles and incentives to do otherwise, and with something of that tremendous, infinite love of God on the cross of His execution, the most intimate love letter to us about how much we matter to God the Father.
It may not be obvious if you happen upon Auriesville on a beautiful day in the fall, as the leaves are changing color and the elements are a retreat leader, drawing you into contemplation by their beauty and reminding you why the Blessed Sacrament has a home on the grounds (in the open season, from mid-spring to the martyrs’ feast day in late October, at three locations — the Coliseum, the Kateri chapel, and the Mary, Undoer of Knots chapel in the Visitors’ Center). Even when the place is overrun with pilgrims, there are places to hide with Jesus in prayer. And the beauty seems to be God beckoning you to Him.
Kateri, “The Lily of the Mohawks,” has been described as a mystic. But she’s not a Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross who left us volumes to meditate on. Instead, it is the knowledge of her life that she gave to God, finding union with Him in the unlikeliest of places — an Indian tribe that was known to tomahawk His messengers.
John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis all commended Kateri’s witness to the world. (I can’t wait to hear from the Chicago-born pope about our continental sister in heaven.) To the young. What hope she gives that courage is possible. A violent culture, it also had a not-small degree of sexual possession of women by men. And what else is porn, but that? And, now, with AI porn leaving an actual woman’s body unsatisfying to the otherwise natural desires of the flesh perverted and fueled by the dehumanizing anti-intimacy of technology. Knowing Kateri means knowing that purity is possible. That doesn’t mean everyone in a confused hypersexualized culture becomes celibate, but chastity — knowing the sexual gift is good for good — is a courageous necessity and possible, with God’s grace.
And commitment. You make a commitment to Christ — a desire for which came from Him — and He gives you the grace. Commitment and love radiate from the place — historically, and in the present. All for the greater glory of God, as the founder of the Jesuits, Saint Ignatius Loyola, would put it. That’s why Kateri endured. That’s why we must. Wherever we are. Whatever our call.
And if you are in a few-hours’ vicinity of Auriesville, get yourself there, already, and pray for us all.
(Note: In addition to her roles with National Review and National Review Institute, Kathryn Lopez is on the board of directors of the Auriesville shrine and is director of Catholic studies for Mary Eberstadt’s new Center for Cultural Restoration, dedicated to preserving and reinvigorating the rich history of upstate New York.)
This has been edited since posting.