IN TODAY’S LIVES OF THE SAINTS AND MARTYRS, A YOUNG MOHAWK WOMAN

Winchester, VA – Born in 1656 in a Mohawk village, Kateri was orphaned as a young child in a smallpox epidemic, of which she was also a victim, surviving with many unsightly scars. Her uncle tried to arrange a marriage for her but she had no desire to marry. She converted to Catholicism at 19 and took a vow of chastity. Having left her tribe, which was hostile to her new faith, she lived a life of mortification, prayer, and penance, being known to put thorns in her sleeping mat and alter her food to be less palatable. She would fashion rosaries on the ground using rocks and would pray for the conversion of the Mohawks. She died five years after her conversion at the age of 24 in 1680. St. Kateri Tekakwitha, pray for us!