A miracle for Kateri Tekakwitha?
NPR has a long story this morning on a the healing of a boy in Washington State that his parents and others call a miracle, worked by a Mohawk who was baptized into the Catholic Church almost 350 years ago.
Kateri Tekakwitha was a Mohawk who converted to Catholicism. Her face was scarred by smallpox. Legend has it, when she died, her scars vanished. She was beatified in 1980, the first step toward sainthood. Sauer says Kateri was the perfect intercessor for Jake.
The boy was dying from an incredibly aggressive flesh-eating bacteria.
As Jake hovered between life and death in the hospital, a representative of the Society of Blessed Kateri visited him. She gave his mother a relic, a pendant with Kateri’s image on it. Elsa Finkbonner placed it on her son’s pillow.
“That was the last day that his disease progressed,” Elsa says. “And the next morning when they had taken him in for surgery, that was when they told us the news that it had finally stopped.”
Kateri Tekakwitha was born in central New York. She’s long been venerated by Catholics among the Mohawks. But for her to be canonized, the Vatican needs to agree this is a miracle, clearly due to prayer and Kateri Tekakwitha.
Doctors quoted in Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s story can’t explain the boy’s survival any other way. She notes that the pope will have the final say, probably years from now. But for the boy’s mother…?
…she thinks Kateri does deserve to have Catholicism’s highest honor.”It would be disappointing if she didn’t get to be a saint,” she says. But in the end, that’s not really the salient issue. Her son is. “I’m just happy to celebrate Jake’s 11th birthday.”
Tags: health
“Doctors quoted in Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s story can’t explain the boy’s survival any other way.”
Well, it was obviously a miracle then. Couldn’t possibly be any other explanation.
There is a Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda, NY, in Montgomery Country, not far from the Mohawk River. Also, if there are any fans of the novelist William Vollmann out there, they might recall a lengthy characterization of Kateri in his book Fathers & Crows.
Miracles do happen. What a wonderful story.
St. Augustine did not subscribe to miracles. Augustine was of the opinion that things called miracles were only natural events for which humans had not yet come up with an explanation. He believed God never contradicts God’s laws.
I side with Augustine.
Miracles do happen.
But you know what is important is not the Church recognition of a Saint (Sainthood is simply recognized not conferred by the Church), but is what his mom said “But in the end, that’s not really the salient issue. Her son is. “I’m just happy to celebrate Jake’s 11th birthday.”
I think this young native women is a saint there are many saints that have not yet been recognized by the Church. A Saint is simply someone we can say without a doubt is with Christ, but the fact is we are surrounded by saints every day and we will find out about them in heaven or possibly before!
When I was a very young Catholic boy going through the passage of Confirmation I took the name Kateri Tekakwitha because I saw her as a strong indivisual and inspite of her hard life she was a good example for me. I don’t care if she is made a saint or not, or if it was a miracale or not. She was a good example for me.