Kateri and Thérèse found a deserted cabin near the village, where they were now in the habit of going every Saturday afternoon to prepare themselves in a suitable manner, as they supposed, for receiving the sacrament of penance.
Chauchetière relates how this custom of theirs originated, and how they employed themselves while in this retreat. It was only by questioning Thérèse after the death of Kateri that the full extent of their austerities became known, for they were careful to conceal them from the knowledge of all. Father Fremin was away at this time, having gone on a voyage to France, and Father Cholenec had full charge of the mission during his absence. As his time was filled with new cares and responsibilities, he had but little opportunity to notice or discover that Kateri Tekakwitha, the treasure confided to his keeping by Father de Lamberville, was in all simplicity and earnestness wrecking her health and strength by undergoing fearful penances. Suggested to her either by the remorseful and penitent mind of Thérèse, or the stern instructions of Anastasia, they were carried out with the utmost severity by Kateri on her frail and innocent self, as though she bore on her own shoulders the sins of the whole Iroquois nation.
It may be well to give a full account of how she was accustomed to make her preparation for confession, and where the plan originated. One Saturday afternoon while waiting for the bell to ring for Benediction, she sat in the cabin of Thérèse, talking confidentially with her friend on matters of conscience. Thérèse happened to mention the bundle of switches with which she had scourged herself on a certain occasion; and Kateri, quick to put a pious thought into practice, hastened at once to the cemetery, which was near at hand, and returned with a handful of stinging little rods. These she hid adroitly under the mat on which she was sitting, and waited eagerly for the first stroke of the bell. Then hurrying the people of the cabin as fast as possible to the church, the two were no sooner alone than they fastened the lodge securely on the inside, and gave full vent to their devotion. Kateri was the first to fall upon her knees, and handing her companion the switches, begged her not to spare her in the least. When she had been well scourged, she in turn took the switches, and Thérèse knelt down to receive the blows. With bleeding shoulders, they said a short prayer together, and then hastened to the chapel, joyous and happy at heart. Never before had the prayers seemed shorter or sweeter to them than on that evening. Their next thought was to choose a place where they might continue this exercise. The unfrequented cabin already mentioned seemed to them a most favorable spot. It belonged to a French trader, who only came at long intervals to the village. It stood always open, and had become gradually surrounded by graves, so that it was now within the cemetery. There the two friends went every Saturday. After making an act of contrition, they proceeded as follows: They recited the Act of Faith, which they were accustomed to say at the church; then Kateri, who wished always to be the first in penitence, would kneel and receive the scourging, begging her companion all the while to strike harder, even though blood appeared at the third stroke. When they came to a pause, they recited the chaplet of the Holy Family, which they divided into several parts, at each of which a stroke was given with the switches. But towards the end of the exercise, their devotion knew no bounds. It was then that Kateri laid bare the sentiments of her heart in such words as these: "My Jesus, I must risk everything with you. I love you, but I have offended you. It is to satisfy your justice that I am here. Discharge upon me, O my God, discharge upon me your wrath." Sometimes tears and sobs choked her voice so she could not finish what she was saying. At these times she would speak of the three nails which fastened our Saviour to the cross as a figure of her sins. When Kateri was thus touched, she did not fail to move her companion, who with equal fervor underwent the same voluntary punishment.
Thérèse assures us that the worst fault that Kateri could ever find to accuse herself of on these occasions when she opened her heart most freely, was the carelessness in which she had lived after her baptism. This consisted in not having resisted those who had forced her to go to work in the fields on Sundays and feast days; that is, in not having rather suffered martyrdom at their hands. She reproached herself with having feared death more than sin. That this saintly girl suffered everything short of absolute martyrdom in her efforts to keep holy the Lord's Day, we already know from the record of her life in the Mohawk Valley. It must be remembered, too, that at that time she had not made her first communion or been fully instructed.
It would be a long and harrowing task to give a full account of all the austere fasts and penances that Kateri Tekakwitha underwent during the course of the year 1679. Many of them belong to the age and the place in which she lived, and were in common practice then and there. Others go to prove the rude, Spartan spirit of her race, which gloried in exhibitions of fortitude under torture. But the tortures that her people knew how to endure so well through pride, Kateri endured in a spirit of penance and atonement. Her greatest excesses of self-inflicted pain came like sparks of fire from her intense love of the crucified Redeemer. She wished to prove herself the slave of His love. She had seen the Iroquois warriors brand their slaves with coals of fire; so she could not resist the impulse which came to her one night to seize a red-hot brand from the hearthfire, and to place it between her toes. She held it there while she recited an Ave Maria. When the prayer was over, she was indeed branded. Such inflictions as these, by their incessant expenditure of energy, soon wore out her frail body, and brought of their own accord a speedy answer to her never-flagging prayer,—that Rawenniio, the beautiful God of the Christians, whom she had learned to love so well, would take her to His lodge!
"Kateri had great and special devotion both for the Passion of our Saviour and for the Holy Eucharist. These two mysteries of the love of the same God, concealed under the veil of the Eucharist and His dying on the cross, ceaselessly occupied her spirit, and kindled in her heart the purest flames of love. One day, after having received the Holy Communion, she made a perpetual oblation or solemn offering of her body to Jesus attached to the cross, and of her soul to Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar."[66]
As Kateri knew but two paths while she lived at the Sault,—one leading from her cabin to the field where she worked, and the other to the chapel where she prayed,—her friends could easily find her. There, at the church day after day, and many times a day, any one who chanced to stray in might see a muffled figure kneeling near the altar-rail, facing the tabernacle. At such times she saw nothing, heard nothing, of what was taking place around her or behind her. In front of her was the sacred Presence she could not leave unless for some urgent call of duty or charity.
A touch on the shoulder, a whispered word, "You are wanted, Kateri," and no hand or heart was more willing than hers to assist or relieve, as the case might be. Often she did not wait for this. A sudden inspiration, an impulse of sympathy, carried her where she was needed. When the good deed was done, the love within her heart drew her again to the foot of the tabernacle. "When she entered the church in taking the blessed water she recalled her baptism, and renewed the resolution she had taken to live as a good Christian; when she knelt down in some corner near the balustrade for fear of being distracted by those who passed in and out, she would cover her face with her blanket, and make an act of faith concerning the real presence in the Blessed Sacrament. She made also several other interior acts of contrition, of resignation, or of humility, according to the inspiration which moved her, asking of God light and strength to practise virtue well. In the fourth place," continues Chauchetière, "she prayed for unbelievers, and above all for her Iroquois relatives. She finished her devotion by saying her beads. She confided this exercise to her companion, who made it known. Except for her habit of hiding the beautiful practices taught her by the Holy Spirit, we might have occasion to admire still more the rapid progress which faith made in her soul. She had regulated the visits which she made to our Lord to five times a day without fail; but it can be said that the church was the place where she was ordinarily found."
Spiritual writers are accustomed to divide the Christian life into three progressive grades; namely, the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. Chauchetière declares that Kateri's life at the Sault might well serve as an example to the most fervent Christians of Europe, and compares her spirit with that of Saint Catherine of Sienna; then he sums up in a few words her exalted spiritual attainments by saying that she was already in the "unitive way" before having well known the other two.
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