Daily Reflection Memorial of Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, priests and martyrs, and their

I am haunted by one of the earliest testimonies I read from the barbarous battleground of the ever-more-horrifying conflagration in the Middle East. A woman was lamenting the loss of her sister, brother-in-law, and a niece and nephew who were killed in the first hours of the Hamas attacks. This family, she reported, had intentionally chosen to live in a settlement near the border with Gaza, enrolling their children in a school where they were learning Hebrew and Arabic. They had hoped, she said, that they might make friendships there that would transcend ugly histories, paradoxically making the world larger in their own small outpost of peace. Her fervent wish was that they be remembered not by their naivete but by their dreams. 

In the Memorial of the witness and sacrifice of Saint Isaac Jogues (and his fellow Jesuit priest and companion John de Brebuef) that we celebrate today, we are invited to mark and marvel at this same impulse of hope. Jogues had first arrived in New France in 1636, one of a company of Jesuits who undertook the perilous mission to Huron and Mohawk native peoples in Canada, determined to seek out and build on the already-present seeds of God's revelation within Indian culture and religion. He was captured by a war party of Mohawks in 1642, tortured and kept a slave for many months, but miraculously made his way back to Paris in 1644. There he rejected the pleas of his community to 'go on the lecture circuit' to inspire new vocations and support for the missions, choosing to return to the Mohawks to carry on the work of winning souls and, God willing, to offer his life for their salvation. In 1644 he returned to Quebec and to the village where he had been held captive. He would be killed there within two years. The Mohawk brave who delivered the mortal blow would come to the Jesuits years later, asking to be baptized. For his Christian name he chose to be called Isaac Jogues.

Tapping into the courage to move into the fringes, the rough edges, pushing out the boundaries of what is possible. Isn't this what Jesus did? How might we move beyond our own narrow definitions of what it means to be neighbor, citizen, friend, Christian? Fear can make us and our world so small. Let's not spoil God's work by our cowardice.

(A travel suggestion.... How about adding a stop at the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York, the next time you are visiting wine country in the Finger Lakes? Be prepared to be stunned by the beauty and peace of that sacred place. Or, closer to home, pause for a moment in front of the statue of St. Isaac in the outer foyer at Loyola. His gaze locks on St. Francis Xavier across the way, who pushed out the confines of the Gospel Good News to Japan, dying there with his sights on yet another great, and as yet virtually unknown frontier: China.)