Georgetown University - Ye Domesday Booke Yearbook (Georgetown, DC)

Page 27 text:

hatchets were placed about their necks, and flaming bark was tied to their bodies, Insen- sible to his pain, Father Brebeuf preached to his tormentors, whereupon they cut off his nose and lips. Three times boiling water was poured on the two priests in mockery of bap- tism. Strips of flesh were cut from their bodies, roasted and eaten before their eyes. Father Brebeuf, a man of tremendous physique, died after four hours of this torture, but for seven- teen hours the delicate Father Lalemant suf- fered these atrocities, before he gave up his soul to God. The bodies of the martyrs were recovered by their friends the next day, and tenderly buried. The Iroquois decimated the Hurons. They even penetrated into the Tobacco nation. There were two missions here. At one of them, St. Jean, were stationed Father Charles Gar- nier and Father Noel Chabanel. On December 7, 1649, the Iroquois descended on the village. Father Garnier was there alone, as Father Chabanel had left that very morning on the order of the superior, who thought it needless to expose two men to danger. The Indians set fire to the huts ; and began to kill all those whom they deemed unable to keep up with them in their flight, as they feared the return of the village ' s warriors. As Father Garnier hastened about giving absolution to the Christians and baptizing all who were not yet dead, he was shot twice and twice struck on either side of the head with a tomahawk. The next day, some Christian Hurons found his body, and carefully buried it. Meanwhile, Father Chabanel was continu- ing his journey. After leaving St. Jean he had passed through the other mission and was some eighteen miles past it, in the thick of a forest, when night fell. They camped in the snow ; and his Indian companions slept ; but for some reason, probably apprehension, Chab- anel remained awake. About midnight, he heard strange, confused sounds of voices. It was the Iroquois, retreating with their pris- oners and booty, singing their war songs. Chabanel awakened his companions, who fled immediately. He tried to follow; but could not keep pace with the savages, who returned to the mission and related what had happened. They said that Chabanel had taken an oppo- site direction from them, in order to reach Isle St. Joseph. For some time, h is brother priests were ignorant of what had befallen him; but at last an apostate Huron confessed to having murdered him, and thrown his body into the river. He declared that he had killed Chabanel out of hatred for the Faith, which had brought ruin to the Hurons. The last of the martyrs had died at the hands of one he sought to help. Words mean little when they attempt to describe the heroic virtue which kindled in the souls of these men. The tongues of angels would be needed to speak adequately of them. We can but praise, in our poor, weak fashion. Before us, we can ever behold the lives of eight men, eight warriors, victorious in the battle of life, champions of the cause of Christ. TiBOR Kerekes, Jr.

Page 26 text:

When he received the permission of his superiors to return to the Iroquois, he tried to find a companion. It is essential that he, who accompanies me, must be virtuous, docile to direction, courageous, one who will suffer any- thing for Christ. In the young donne Jean de Lalande, he found the exact counterpart of his description. On the 24th of September, they set out together with high hopes for their work among the Mohawks. The box which Jogues had left behind was the cause of his death. The Indians blamed it for bringing on an epidemic and a poor har- vest. When they heard that Jogues was re- turning to their villages, they waylaid him two days before his arrival there, stripped and ill-treated him and Lalande, and dragged them to a village as prisoners. On the eight- eenth of October, Jogues was invited to a meal. As he entered the cabin, he was treacherously tomahawked. His head was cut off, and set upon a pole facing the route he had traveled. The next day, his young companion was mur- dered in the same fashion; and their bodies were thrown into the river. Thus the missions lost one of their greatest members; and two souls, of unconquered faith and courage, were united with God. The Hurons had begun to embrace the faith in large numbers after Jogues left; and the number of missionaries among them in- creased to twenty-one. Among these was Father Antoine Daniel who had returned in 1639, after his seminary failed, because the parents could not bear to be separated from their children. There was an extraordinary growth, not only in the number of converts, but in the actual virtue of the people. All the reports of the time were encouraging. In fact, the Hurons were gradually becoming Catho- lics; and in time, they might all, if peace prevailed, have been converted. But the Iro- quois renewed their attacks with increased ferocity, and destroyed whole vi llages instead of merely ambushing stray bands. On July 4, 1648, they appeared at St. Joseph II, just as Father Daniel was finishing Mass. The people were in an agony of terror. Father Daniel hastily baptized and absolved those, who desired it, and as the Iroquois, who had heard that there were many persons con- gregated in the church, approached, he said, Flee, my brothers, and bear with you your Faith even to the last sigh. As for me, I must face death here, as long as I shall see here any soul to be gained for heaven; and dying here to save you, my life is no longer anything to me; we shall see one another again in heaven. Then he calmly strode out to meet the enemy who stopped in surprise to see a lone man coming toward them. They surrounded him and pierced him with arrows. He received a mortal wound from a gun; and fell to the ground, pronouncing the name of Jesus. Within a year, on March 16, 1649, the Iro- quois attacked a village at which Brebeuf and Lalemant were stationed. They perpe- trated the most hideous tortures on the inhabi- tants and the two missionaries. The priests were beaten with sticks, necklaces of red-hot

Page 28 text:

% z Martyrs ' Xast i our while yet this pitiful hour r emains, we stand hiefore the summoning Eyes, the Glance, the Voice bitter and faint and stern. we cry to You Lover of men our lives are the inept, the painful line traced by blind fingers in the restless dust: what surety, what thin dusklight was ours sinks to an evening lit with lies, the world swings back to its irrevocable blank wall and powers rise and winds and chaos wrangle and stars grow unsure. we cry to You Lover of men what things above his life a man must give this moment witnesses, this moment takes : we who loved surpassingly Your peace have been to peace a stranger on the street : we and our dreams are the anonymous reckoned with drifted leaves long underfoot from a long-stricken tree : we who have cried Your love upon the loveless, yield You back a cry, a moment ' s mote of dust uptossed in storms of dust, and tears, our secret tears the long night holds them, and the forest floor sighs with the fragile bloodroot for their falling and the outcreeping salty tides of life keep them as self to self, and know them not. we cry to You this insupportable now, this present hell puts heaven to the rack: the great wound, life, clots at the sickening heart, the spirit ' s fierce elation greys and shrinks and trails off to a small, a coward cry and what remains, and what survives the ash? the creak and shift of time erases us to-day in fire, erases on a day even the ' Jesu ' from the pillaring oak. . . how terrible, how few the things that stand straight at the stake with us to right and left known at the bitter now for what they are: ' nothing and You abiding to the end. l -Daniel J. Berrigan, S.J. 24