A Forgotten Founding Father - Isaac Jogues

In narrating the birth of our country, no one would forget figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and, of course, George Washington. Yet Catholics know that it is truly the spiritual that forms and shapes the external reality. In this sense, when we look for the true spiritual fathers of our country, we would be absolutely remiss to forget the figure of St. Isaac Jogues (1607-46). Though on mission to French Canada, his captivity brought him deep inside the present territory of the United States; he may have been the first white man to traverse the Adirondack Mountains on foot and was one of the first to sail down the Susquehanna River through central Pennsylvania. If only his christening of the present day Lake George had stuck as Lake of the Blessed Sacrament! St. Isaac Jogues, along with his other fellow Jesuits, sanctified our nation with their blood, laying the true spiritual foundation for our country, one that we need to take up and make our own.

Unlike most martyrs, we could say that Jogues was martyred twice. After a successful stay with the Hurons (where he made the consecration described above), he surrendered himself to the Mohawks, who had captured or killed most of his travelling party. He was subjected to excruciating torture, running the gauntlet of Indian clubs, suffering from fire and knife, hanging by his arms, extreme hunger and cold, constant fear of death, and even having several of his fingers cut and bitten off. Kept alive as a slave, after more than a year he was able to escape with the help of the Protestant Dutch settlers. He returned to France and received a dispensation from the Pope Urban VIII to celebrate Mass without the use of the proper fingers (the Pope reportedly said “It would be shameful that a martyr of Christ be not allowed to drink the Blood of Christ”). Jogues’s vow of self-offering, however, was not complete without a second and complete martyrdom. He returned to the Mohawks first as an ambassador of the French and then as a missionary, when he was killed with the blow of a tomahawk.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/a-forgotten-founding-father-st-isaac-jogues