Four heroes of the early Church in Canada continue to be honoured centuries after their deaths.
Lineups formed throughout the day and late into the evening Jan. 23 as more than 3,000 people — young old, single individuals and families — came to venerate, pray and reflect on the lives of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, North America’s first indigenous saint, and Jesuit martyrs St. Jean de Brebeuf, St. Gabriel Lalement and St. Charles Grenier.
The relics normally reside at the Jesuit Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ont. The tour, which began last December, is the first time the relics have left the shrine and been taken across Canada. Their cross-Canada odyssey included stops at dioceses in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
The relics are more than 400 years old. They include the skull of St. Jean de Brebeuf, as well as bone fragments of St. Gabriel Lalement and St. Charles Garnier.
A separate reliquary includes bone fragments of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first indigenous saint of North America. Most of her remains are housed in her tomb at the Kateri shrine in Kahanawake, Que.
In Edmonton, the tour was hosted at Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples and Corpus Christi parishes.
“It’s amazing to be that close to a piece of a saint. It was very special. I wish I had more time, but there’s a long line,” Marie Dean who came, with her two-month-old daughter in tow, to venerate the relics at Corpus Christi parish.
“I wouldn’t want to pass this opportunity up just to be there and be able to say a prayer and ask for intentions to be heard for not just for my family and the people I love, but people around the world who are suffering — that meant a lot.”
St. Kateri holds a special place in Marie Dean’s heart. She is Metis and a parishioner at Our Lady of Mercy in Enoch, where the parish prays through the intercession of St. Kateri at every Mass.
Dean also wrote an essay on St. Kateri as part of her theology courses at St. Joseph’s College, where she was one of the first residents of Kateri House residence for women.
Knowing St. Kateri’s life of courage and faith, Dean said of the relics tour: “It’s something so powerful. I couldn’t miss this.”
Archbishop Richard Smith led the veneration of the relics at Corpus Christi parish.
The relics tour offers opportunities for personal prayer and reflection. Attendees are encouraged to bring written prayer intentions, which will be taken back to the Martyrs’ Shrine in Midland, Ont.. Holy cards, rosaries, and medals can also be pressed to the reliquaries to create spiritual keepsakes.
In the Catholic tradition, veneration of bone fragments dates back to the Old Testament and the relics are sources of healing of the mind, soul and body, Father O’Brien said. At the Martyrs’ Shrine there are crutches and wheelchairs which had belonged to those who have received physical healing.
James Neufeld, a parishioner at Sacred Heart parish, said St. Kateri is a part of the communion of saints, to whom he prays to every day. St. Kateri is especially important to Neufeld as he’s a member of the Sechelt (Haida) First Nation.
“As a Catholic, and as a believer, the supernatural is very dear to me. It’s part of my nourishment, for my piety and for who I am,” said Neufeld, one of 400 people who came to venerate the relics at Sacred Heart parish.
Two groups of Grade 1 students from St. Stanislaus School were among those venerating the relics at Sacred Heart parish.
Father John O’Brien, director of the Martyrs’ Shrine, said he was “overjoyed but not surprised” to see the large crowds in the Archdiocese of Edmonton.
“I think it’s an interior hunger that people have, to be inspired, to be fed by God through the relics of the saints. It’s clearly tapping into a desire, or an intuition. Even though we’re living in this little corner of the world here, in very secular Canada, Christ is here too and is always re-presenting Himself.
“We all need our hopeful stories,” Father O’Brien added, “stories that convey truths about history that involve heroes, that involve sacrifice, and that those stories give us hope. You see sacrifice; that’s definitely written into the lives of all these particular saints. But it’s a sacrifice that’s willingly embraced and pursued as part-and-parcel of their commitment to God.”
Father O’Brien gifted Sacred Heart parish with a print of Joseph Chiwatenhwa and his wife Marie Aonnetta. Chiwatenhwa was among the first believers among the indigenous peoples to accept the Christian faith, through the missionary and evangelistic work of the Jesuits among the Huron nations.
While the tour has moved on, its effect will linger.
“We do have these mountaintop experience and we do have to go back down the mountain to the ordinariness of life,” Father O’Brien said. “We don’t have Easter and Christmas every day, but we do have them and they hopefully cause a strengthening of faith and of hope and of love in the lives of God’s people.”
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