“Look to the example of St. Kateri”: Bishop Wall’s Message to the Faithful During Feast Day Mass

On Monday, July 14, Bishop James S. Wall celebrated a Mass in honor of the Feast Day of St. Kateri Tekakwitha in St. Michaels, AZ. The text of his homily – edited a bit for clarity – is printed below.

This is the first time that we’ve had this feast day at Mary, Mother of Mankind, here at St. Michael’s. I think this is a very appropriate place to have this, to [honor] our very special saint, Kateri Tekakwitha.

I know that I – along with probably some of you here with us today – were privileged to be in Rome when she was canonized. We took a little over 100 people from the diocese to Rome when Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed her as canonized, and so we count her amongst the Saints in Heaven.

As we know, she’s a very special saint to all of us here today. We know that in her life, very early on, she experienced a lot of hardship. At the age of four she lost her mother, father, and brother, and so she was sent to live with relatives. And she not only lost her parents and her brother to smallpox, but we also know that it disfigured her face snd affected her eyesight. Roughly translated, her last name means “she who bumps into things”. But she didn’t let that hardship hold her back, and I think that’s an important lesson for all of us. Whenever we experience difficulties, whenever we experience hardship, whenever things don’t go our way – do we let it hold us back? I would say, let’s look to the example that St. Kateri set for all of us.

As we know, it was through the missionaries – Jesuit missionaries – in which she first heard the gospel proclaimed. She was attracted to the gospel, she was attracted to the truth, and she eventually was baptized and she became a Christian.

There are three special virtues that we can look at in the life of St. Kateri, that we can imitate. St. Paul says, “be an imitator of me, as much as I am an imitator of Christ”. We can see that in the life of St. Kateri.

The first virtue that we’re able to see in the life of St. Kateri is one of humility. Humility is simply understanding who I am in relation to God and in relation to everybody else. In other words, He is God, and I am His son or daughter. And everybody else in the world, no matter where they come from, is my brother or sister, my neighbor. Humility gives us a deep gravity and understanding of who we are. The world that we live in is constantly trying to tell us that we are other things. But our core identity comes from God, from our Creator. And that is: beloved sons and daughters of the Father.

In the life of St. Kateri, she truly knew who she was. She knew that she was the beloved daughter of the Father. And that’s what she lived in her community, a beautiful witness of her Catholic faith.

The second way is through her acts of charity. She wasn’t always treated well, and perhaps because she lost her family, or perhaps because of her Catholic faith, she wasn’t always treated well. But when she was treated poorly by others, she didn’t return it with the same type of behavior. As our Lord says, when you’re struck on one cheek, give the other cheek. So she essentially turned the other cheek, and she made sure that she ministered to the people in her community with love, regardless of how they treated her.

What is charity? Charity is simply willing the good of the other. And as we know, our Lord’s greatest commandment is: to love God with all our heart, strength, soul, and being, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And so in the life that she lived, she beautifully expressed that.

The third virtue we’re able to see in the life of St. Kateri is one of unity. She understood – because of her core identity of being a beloved daughter of the Father – that everybody was her neighbor. Everybody was her brother and sister, regardless of where they came from, regardless of what tribe they came from. And in doing so, what she was able to help to foster and to safeguard was the virtue of unity, the unity that Jesus prays about in the gospel: “Father, I pray that they are one, just as you and I are one.” This is one of the last things that Jesus prays for before his passion.

Jesus entrusts us with unity. He entrusts us to be one. It’s not something that we create on our own, but it is something that Jesus gives us as a gift. We have to be good stewards of that gift. We have to make sure that whatever we’re doing, we’re always trying to safeguard the unity that Jesus has given to us in his prayer.

So we’re able to see humility in St. Kateri’s life, able to see charity shining forth in her life, and able to see that she’s a wonderful steward of the gift of unity.

The final thing to reflect upon – we know St. Kateri was a deep woman of prayer. We’re all called to be men and women of prayer. That’s our lifeline with God. If we don’t have a lifeline with God, if we don’t have a prayer life, it’s like trying to drive a vehicle without gas – or, in our modern days, trying to drive a vehicle without plugging it in and charging it up. You won’t go very far. She understood that very well.

There are stories about her showing up in the middle of winter, very early for the first mass, and waiting outside the doors of the church, and coming in and attending all the masses before she could return home. She had this beautiful, powerful prayer life, and her prayer life was really animated and on fire by her love and devotion to Our Lord, present in the Eucharist. And as we also know, St. Kateri had a great love for Our Lady, and that was expressed in her praying and recitation of the rosary.

She would walk through the forest, she would walk out into the wilderness, and she would mark crosses on the trees, and that was the way that she prayed the rosary. She would walk it by going through the environment, through nature, through God’s natural beauty that surrounded her, and that’s how she would pray and strengthen her devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

So we know her humility, we know her charity, we know her unity, and we know that most importantly, she was a woman of deep and intense prayer.

Friends, it means that we too have to be men and women of deep and intimate prayer. We should seek that love for our Lord in the Eucharist, through praying the rosary and asking for the intercession of Our Lady, just as St. Kateri did.

So we ask for her intercession today, that we can imitate all the beautiful examples that she sets before us, and that we can live out the core identity that we all have, just as she lived out her core identity. And that is that we are all, by virtue of our Baptism, beloved sons and daughters of our Father in Heaven.