This week on Fresh Ground Theology’s The Weekend Cup, Kateri Tekakwitha’s conversion places her under growing pressure within her childhood community. Her refusal to abandon Christian worship leads to hunger, ridicule, threats, and conflict with her relatives. When remaining at home becomes increasingly difficult, Kateri escapes with the assistance of Native Christians and begins a dangerous journey toward the Catholic Mohawk settlement at Kahnawake.

At Kahnawake, Kateri discovers a community in which her Christian faith and Mohawk identity can exist together. She receives her First Communion, serves the sick, develops close spiritual friendships, and eventually makes a private vow of perpetual virginity. Her intense fasting and penitential practices weaken an already fragile body, and she dies during Holy Week in 1680 at approximately twenty-four years old. Shortly after her death, witnesses see the scars from her childhood illness disappear from her face—the first miraculous sign that the young woman they loved may have been a saint.

Part 1: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha pt1 – Fresh Ground Theology

Sources: Ellen H. Walworth, The Life and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha: The Lily of the Mohawks; Pierre Cholenec, The Life of Catherine Tekakwitha; Claude Chauchetière, The Life of the Good Catherine Tekakwitha; Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint; K. I. Koppedrayer, “The Making of the First Iroquois Virgin”; Lynn M. Busch, “The Marian Spirituality of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha.”

Music: Adventure Beyond by Alexander Nakarada (https://creatorchords.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0