Father Isaac Jogues, S.J.
Father Isaac Jogues, the first of the missionaries to bear the cross into the interior of our country, and the first to shed his blood on its soil for the faith of Christ, was a native of Orleans, France. He was born on the 10th of January, 1607, of a family distinguished alike for their virtues and their worth. In the bosom of this pious family the young Isaac was reared up, surrounded by all the profound and pleasing practices of Catholic devotion. Lessons of religion and letters were imparted together, and the scholar from his earliest youth proved himself remarkably apt at both. As soon as he was old enough, he was sent, to his own great joy, to the college at Orleans, then recently established by the Jesuit Fathers, under whose instruction he made rapid progress in his studies. The virtues of his character so ingratiated him with his companions at college, that no thought of jealousy ever entered their hearts at the eminence he enjoyed as a student.
As the close of his collegiate course drew near, he began, more seriously than ever, to meditate on the greatest act of one's life—the selection of a vocation. It was his extraordinary devotion to the Passion of Our Lord that settled this question for him. The cathedral church of his native city was dedicated to the Holy Cross, and there from his tenderest years he gazed daily upon that sacred symbol of the Passion and Redemption glittering from the spires of the temple, and it became the object of his warmest affection.
“O lovely tree whose branches wore
The royal purple of his gore!
Oh! may aloft thy branches shoot,
And fill all nations with thy fruit!”
Impelled by this devotion, he retired into himself in order to discover his vocation, and heard within his soul the voice of Heaven calling him to the Society of Jesus. Having applied for admission into the Society, and being received with alacrity by the superior, he entered upon his novitiate in October, 1624. To complete his studies he next went to the celebrated college of La Flèche, where he passed his examination in philosophy at the end of three years with great distinction. Then, in obedience to the discipline of his order, the young Jesuit went to teach in the college at Rouen, and for four years instructed the youth of that city in the elements of the Latin language, in the principles of religion and the practice of piety. So fruitful were his labors in this regard that his scholars were ever distinguished for the solidity and constancy of their virtues, and many of them became companions of their saintly preceptor in the Society of Jesus.
We now find him winning laurels in the flowery path of literature. It was, at the period of which we speak, the custom at the Jesuit colleges to test the qualifications of the teachers, by requiring them, at the opening of the year, to deliver an oration or poem, or read a lecture of their own production, in public. Simply in obedience to this rule, and without any desire of his own to gain distinction, the gifted Jogues participated [pg 106] in these exercises, and on one occasion produced a poem of rare excellence. But his heart was too thoroughly pre-engaged to covet the laurels of literary fame. He was intent on winning another crown—the glorious crown of martyrdom. Yet so obedient was the young scholastic to the will of his superior and to the spirit of his institute, that he, who only desired for himself the wigwam and council fires of the roving tribes of the Western wilds, went out with as much labor and zeal to acquire all the accomplishments of learning as though a professor's chair in Europe was to be the field of his ambition. He was next sent to Paris, where he began his course of divinity at the college of Clermont.