September 27 is actually the feast day of St. Vincent de Paul (did you know he is supposed to have once been a slave?) but I wrote about him in 2020, and I’ve gotten interested in St. Isaac Jogues, whose feast day was yesterday, September 26.
Jogues was born in France in 1607 and was one of that extraordinary group of Jesuit missionaries who worked to convert the Indians in French North America, often meeting martyrdom in the process. Jogues himself was captured by Mohawks—reportedly he gave himself up to them in order to minster to other captives—and subjected to such prolonged torture that, after his escape and return to Europe, he was named a “living martyr” by Pope Urban VIII. The Pope also gave Jogues special dispensation to resume saying Mass, since his hand had been mutilated and he could no longer hold the Host only with his forefinger and thumb, as Church law required.
Then—and this is why I say these Jesuits were extraordinary—Jogues insisted on returning to minister to the Mohawks. They murdered him in October 1646. His killer, subsequently captured by Indians allies of the French and condemned to death, converted to Christianity and took Jogues’ name. So Jogues is sometimes said to have been martyred twice.
The discipline of writing these blogs has brought home to me how extraordinarily rich, and humane, is the Christian tradition upon which America, and the West, was founded.
It also reminds me I need to see about that review of Andrew Torba’s new book Christian Nationalism.
Oh, and Rosh Hashanah, which began at sundown on September 25, ends tonight. (So St. Isaac Jogues fits right in after all!) But it has become a multicultural must to step on Christmas by never mentioning it except in connection with Hanukkah and other “holidays." Somehow, however, the MSM neglects to provide the nearest Saint's day in the Christian calendar to each year's Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover—there are a lot of saints! So it has become a VDARE.com service (as so often) to fill the gap.
We wish a Happy to all our readers. We mean it.
