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Views from the Choir Loft

Revitalizing Our Missionary Spirit

Fr. David Friel · October 19, 2014

ODAY is World Mission Sunday, a day on which we focus on praying for the missions and supporting them financially. The work of the missions is to bring the Gospel to lands where it has not yet been preached. Today is also October 19th, the date each year when the Church observes the feast of St. Isaac Jogues & his companions, who were among the earliest missionaries to work in what we now call the United States. These remarkable men are, of course, the patron saints adopted by Corpus Christ Watershed.

It may be worthwhile today to take a brief trip back to the mid-1600’s, when Fr. Jogues and his Jesuit companions were working among the Iroquois & Mohawk & Huron Indians of upstate New York. The missionaries began by teaching the Indians the very basics of the Catholic faith. If you visit the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, NY, you can still see how they wrote the name “Jesus” on the trees to teach love and respect for the divine name. They learned some of the native languages so that they could teach catechism lessons and the basic prayers. They really lived out the spirit of Psalm 96 to “tell His glory among the nations, among all peoples.”

Not all of their efforts, however, were met with a terrific welcome. One day, one of the lay Jesuit brothers, Bro. Rene Goupil, was teaching a child how to make the Sign of the Cross. Some of the Mohawks who did not approve of the Christian missionaries saw this, and they martyred him with a hatchet.

Another day, in August of 1642, Isaac Jogues was captured in Ossernenon (now called Auriesville, NY). There, he was ritually tortured and had his two index fingers cut off in the process. This was a very intentional act on the part of his tormenters, since a priest was required to have his two index fingers and two thumbs in order to celebrate Mass. After the dismemberment, Fr. Jogues had to leave America and return to Europe to ask permission to celebrate Mass even with mutilated hands. Pope Urban VIII granted him this dispensation.

At this point, most people would have given up. Most people would not have returned to the New World. Most people would have been happy just to have returned to their homeland and the comparatively comfortable life of Renaissance France. Amazingly, Fr. Jogues wanted to return to the missions to continue his work. He did, in fact, return, and months later, on October 18th, he was killed with a tomahawk. The next day, October 19th, another of his companions, Bro. Jean de LaLande was also martyred.

HOSE JESUIT MISSIONARIES gave so much—including their very lives—to bring the native peoples of our country to faith. The great pioneer of the Jesuit missionaries was a priest named John de Brébeuf. Once, after anointing a dying Indian child, he said: “For this one single occasion I would travel all the way from France; I would cross the great ocean to win one little soul for Our Lord.” Their efforts bore much fruit. We have them to thank for St. Kateri Tekakwitha and for paving the way so that we might also have faith and the freedom to practice it.

Since the time of those missionaries, the United States has brought up thousands more missionaries and sent them all across the world. There is a strange reality, though, in which our country is again, in many ways, mission territory. So many people in our cities and in our countryside do not know their catechism or their basic prayers. So many have strayed from the practice of the faith that they were once taught. More & more priests & sisters are coming here from Africa & Asia—areas to which we once sent American missionaries.

We need a revitalized missionary spirit—in our world, in our country, in our dioceses, in our neighborhoods. We need a renewed and re-energized spirit of evangelization and zeal for souls.

St. John de Brébeuf wrote a beautiful prayer in one of his diaries:

My God, it grieves me greatly that You are not known, that in this savage wilderness all have not been converted to You, that sin has not been driven from it. My God, even if all the brutal tortures which prisoners in this region must endure should fall on me, I offer myself most willingly to them and I alone shall suffer them all.

Is the same missionary spirit that was in the hearts of those Jesuit missionaries of the mid-1600’s alive in you?

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Passing on Tradition, St Isaac Jogues Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    “Booklet of Eucharistic Hymns” (16 pages)
    I was asked to create a booklet for my parish to use during our CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION on 22 June 2025. Would you be willing to look over the DRAFT BOOKLET (16 pages) I came up with? I tried to include a variety of hymns: some have a refrain; some are in major, others in minor; some are metered, others are plainsong; some are in Spanish, some are in Latin, but most are in English. Normally, we’d use the Brébeuf Hymnal—but we can’t risk having our congregation carry those heavy books all over the city to various churches.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Yahweh” in church songs?
    My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

Random Quote

“We have baptized about 240 this year … All the labors of a million persons—would they not be worthwhile if they gained one single soul for Jesus Christ?”

— Father Isaac Jogues, writing to his mother

Recent Posts

  • “Booklet of Eucharistic Hymns” (16 pages)
  • PDF Download • “Text by Saint Francis of Assisi” (choral setting w/ organ: Soprano & Alto)
  • “Yahweh” in church songs?
  • “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
  • “Participation” • Recovering its Receptive Dimension

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