Isaac Jogues and Auriesville
Jesus Mysticism in Nature's Reliquary"Rene fell face down on the ground, uttering the holy name of Jesus, (often we had encouraged each other to conclude our speech and our life with this holy name)."
- St. Isaac JoguesIn the lush Mohawk Valley of central New York State, just forty miles west of Albany sits the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs on the site once known as Ossernenon now called Auriesville. The Shrine began its centenary celebration on October 19th, the feast of the North American Martyrs, and will conclude on the feast of the Assumption, August 15th, 1985. It was in this area of Auriesville that St. Rene Goupil, St. John Lalande, and of course, the celebrated and loved St. Isaac Jogues were martyred in the 17th century.
With all the artistic images of Isaac Jogues, the poetic, biographical and autobiographical, as well as the often saturnine painted and sculpted images, one would think that some sort of satisfactory composite image could be assembled of this extraordinary yet elusive saint. However, to uncover Isaac Jogues one must embark on a real archaeological venture, digging through the fragments and hand-hewn shards, and then separate the false from the authentic.
On the surface there is the image of the heroic Jesuit Blackrobe raising the cross high above his head, and striding forward with a triumphant, deliberate gaze much like the Olympian images found on the prows of the great old sailing ships. Actually this is closer to the powerful image of the Jesuit missionary St. Jean de Brebeuf:
"Jogues' gentle, almost shrinking but nevertheless heroic nature is in striking contrast with the bold, aggressive and martial character of his friend and associate de Brebeuf. Perhaps that is why he appeals so strongly to ordinary people."
-T. J. Campbell, S.J.This saint so appealing to so many, has another image fixed from earliest childhood in the imaginations of generations of pre-Vatican II Catholics. It is the image of Jogues, the brutally mangled martyr smeared in red - the thirty-six year old Jesuit who lived through a four-year martyrdom enduring savagery, which despite our almost jaded exposure to violence, is still shocking.
Isaac was born to Laurent and Francoise Jogues on January 10th 1607. Laurent was widowed rather young and at the age of thirty he married sixteen year old Francoise de Saint-Mesmin. Laurent had two girls from his previous marriage, and he and Francoise had seven children including the boy Isaac. The family lived in Orleans, the city of Joan of Arc's greatest liberating victory for France. Perhaps the lauded memory of this child saint burned its way into the soul of young Isaac, for there is a red thread of Jesus mysticism running through the life of Isaac, and one wonders whether it was seeded by the little heroine patroness. At the mere age of nineteen Joan was burned alive in the Vieux Marche of Rouen with one last resounding word arching above the crowds: "Jesus."
Isaac entered the first Jesuit school of Orleans at age eleven. One hears of a single minded boy whose soul was already alive with "the name above every name." And under the watchful tutelage of the Society of Jesus, his gifts were fostered with discipline and care:
". . . he proved to be a diligent student acquisitive and plodding. He was of a gentle, affable, rather retiring disposition, but with a quiet assertiveness and a determination and perseverance that was called stubborn."
-Francis Talbot, S.J.The Society of Jesus inspired Isaac in his formative years, and at seventeen he entered their novitiate at Rouen in October of 1624. The novice master was the great spiritual master Father Louis Lalement, the relative of the three Lalements sent to the New World. It was said of Isaac during these early years of Jesuit life that:
". . . he was loved by Ours as being most gentle and very observant of our way of life."
- Jacques Buteux, S.J.Isaac studied philosophy at the college of La Fleche, and during his regency period taught humanities to adolescent boys at the Jesuit secondary school in Rouen. He studied theology at Clermont in Paris, and was ordained at the chapel of Clermont in 1636. Repeatedly during his formation he had asked to go to New France, (the mission had only been established in 1625 when he was a novice) and so his request was granted very soon after his ordination and he left from Dieppe for New France with a group of eight other vessels in April of 1636, and arrived at St. Lawrence eight weeks later, the only one of the passengers who had not experienced sea sickness, which had nearly driven others to despair.
There is still in existence a troubled letter from Isaac's mother to his younger sister Francoise in which Madame Jogues senses and fears her son's destiny in New France. Call it intuition or premonition - better yet call it the inner instruction of the Spirit foretold in the Gospel of John; for as we read the letter now, the labor and suffering have already given birth to the promised martyr
"...Your brother is on his way to New France at last; I imagine you may have heard of his departure from Pere Couture. I have just received his farewell letter and must begin writing the children about his holy words and desires...I am very afraid for him, Francoise...What I dread most is that Isaac would like to be a martyr... "Isaac Jogues was born to be a martyr. His vocation was to be a martyr. He does not march militaristically toward this fulfillment, nor does he round up masses of converts along his way - for in this sense his mission was a "failure." But he does move forward with the inner fire of St. Paul and he fairly outdoes St. Ignatius of Antioch in his passionate traveling towards union with Christ crucified.
Rarely has an age been so incapable of understanding this vocation as our own. We live under several tyrannies which afflict our movement: a desperate secularism, a spiritless psychological reductionism, and a spirituality grown so pragmatic that the very word martyr has become derogatory, or ridiculed and reduced to masochism. G. B. Caird in his commentary on the Book of Revelation, the paean to the martyrs par excellence, cites this holding to life itself as the final idol the apocalyptic author is trying to topple:
"The idea that life on earth is so infinitely precious that the death which robs us of it must be the ultimate tragedy is precisely the idolatry that John is trying here to combat."
It is the four year span, 1642-1646, which becomes inexplicable outside of the mystery and precious gift of the burning vocation of martyrdom. The details are legendary: the gnawed, gnarled fingers, the lacerated, burned body, the forced "running the gauntlet" assailed, slashed and clubbed by attacking men...not once but many, many times. Through all these now familiar horror tales we are awed by the presence of this gentleman with a driving compassion for the others suffering with him. We are made aware in every account of his own physical frailty. At the same time we are made aware of the strength of Christ in him enabling him not only to endure these sufferings but to return to New France after a visit to his home in Europe.
Arriving at Rennes in January 1644 at the Jesuit residence, and looking to all the world like a vagrant, the rector did not recognize him and asked him point blank if Father Jogues had been put to death. Isaac answered, "He is at liberty and it is he, Reverend Father, who speaks to you."
Of all the tales of the lengthy martyrdom of Isaac Jogues, including his own death by a tomahawk in 1646, Isaac's witness and account of the torture and murder of his dear friend and companion Rene Goupil is the most poignant. Goupil was a thirty-five year old layman who had a successful career in medicine before becoming a donne or lay apostle in New France. Rene and Isaac were captured in 1642 in Auriesville and Rene took vows as a Jesuit brother, face to face with Isaac while being tortured. And on September 29th,1642 he was killed by a tomahawk for teaching a child the sign of the cross.
Isaac lived on and had one desire, even in the face of death: to find and bury Rene's body which had been taken away after his death.
There has been some criticism of Auriesville for its cluttered atmosphere and some are put off by the inner decor of the main church designed as a coliseum to evoke the earliest martyrs. People say the images resemble a wax museum tableau or a Disneyesque Frontierland. I suppose it is helpful to remember St. Bernadette Subirous was utterly dismayed at seeing the S-curved lady statue placed in the grotto of Lourdes which she said in no way resembled the Lady who had spoken to her.
Perhaps these things at Auriesville will repel some pilgrims, but I doubt anyone could go there and not be drawn by the numerous visual reminders of the name which still sets New France on fire. The word "Jesus" with a simple cross above it is placed in red on trees and signs all over the landscape of the shrine - this in memory of the first carving of the name by Isaac. Jesus' name, Jesus' cross are in red on over sixty pillars in the coliseum; and a red cross is on each of the seventy-two coliseum doors. Somehow (through Ignatius of Loyola's graced charism) this red name and cross has been borne inside and out by the Jesuits of the Americas, from the martyrs of New France, to Padre Pro - dying before a firing squad in cruciform. From those martyred and imprisoned in Central and South America, to those Jesuits like Fr. Daniel Berrigan who has suffered imprisonment and whose blood splashed against the walls of the Pentagon - all crying out like the blood of Abel.
Walking down the pathway into the ravine at Aurisville where it is said Rene was murdered, one knows why pilgrims come especially to the ravine, and will always come there. For it is in the ravine that one senses something of God - some touch, some peace, some blessing. This place does not attract the sensation seeker, looking for the morbid or the macabre. Rather, one finds that the earth there, sown in red seeds, has brought forth a verdant, shimmering landscape Pope Pius XII called "Nature's Reliquary."
Jesuit Bulletin. Fall 1984. p.12-14.
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This page is managed by
Fr. Raymond A. Bucko, S.J.
of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology
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Page Last Updated: October 6, 2001
