Foundations

St. Isaac Jogues (1607-1646) was a French Jesuit, gentle and learned, who sailed to New France (Canada) to bring the Gospel to the Huron and other native peoples. The missions were perilous. In 1642, Jogues was captured by the Mohawk (part of the Iroquois confederacy, then at war with the Huron). He was tortured, several of his fingers were chewed or cut off, and he was held as a slave for over a year before Dutch traders helped him escape to Europe. Astonishingly, after meeting the Pope (who gave him special permission to say Mass with his mutilated hands, calling him a 'martyr of Christ'), Jogues volunteered to return to the very people who had tortured him. In 1646 he was martyred by tomahawk. He is honored with seven other French missionaries and lay helpers as the North American Martyrs (also called the Canadian Martyrs); among them was also St. Kateri Tekakwitha's people. Their feast day is October 19. They model the Lenten virtue of sacrifice — offering not only comfort but life itself in love. A remarkable fruit followed: St. Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk convert and the first Native American saint, came from the same nation, showing that the martyrs' blood was 'the seed of the Church.'

By the 1600s the great European powers — Spain, Portugal, France, England, and the Dutch — were racing to claim and profit from the wider world. The dominant economic theory driving them was mercantilism. Mercantilists believed a nation's wealth was a fixed pie measured in gold and silver, so the goal was to export more than you import and to hold colonies that fed raw materials to the mother country and bought its finished goods in return. Colonies existed, in this view, for the enrichment of the home nation. This logic created the vast 'Atlantic world': a triangular web of trade linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas. European ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas (the horrific 'Middle Passage'), and American raw materials — sugar, tobacco, silver — back to Europe. Spain dominated the silver-rich south (Mexico and Peru); Portugal held Brazil and the eastern sea routes; France built a fur-trading empire in Canada and the Mississippi valley; the Dutch and English contested the Atlantic seaboard and the seas. Religious motives mixed with profit: Catholic Spain and France carried missionaries, while Protestant England and Holland often came chiefly for trade and settlement. This competition for empire is the backdrop for the founding of the thirteen English colonies we study this week.

We now begin Part Four of YOUCAT, on prayer — fitting for Lent, a season of deeper prayer. What is prayer? The classic definition: prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God, or the asking of good things from God. It is not magic words or a performance; it is a relationship, a conversation with a Father who loves us and speaks first. YOUCAT teaches that prayer is possible because God thirsts for us before we thirst for him. The Bible is the great school of prayer. In the Old Testament we learn to pray from Abraham (who bargains boldly with God), Moses (who pleads for his people), and above all the Psalms — 150 inspired prayers covering every human emotion: praise, thanksgiving, sorrow, anger, trust, repentance. Jesus himself prayed constantly: rising before dawn, withdrawing to lonely places, praying through the night before big decisions, and on the Cross praying the Psalms. He taught us the Our Father (which we will pray line by line in Week 24). The tradition names several basic forms of prayer: adoration, contrition (sorrow for sin), thanksgiving, and supplication (asking) — sometimes remembered by the word ACTS. To pray is simply to show up, open the heart, and let God in.

Add '1607 — Jamestown' and '1620 — Plymouth' to your timeline (you will study them tomorrow). Write one sentence defining mercantilism in your own words. Add St. Isaac Jogues and the North American Martyrs to your saints page (feast: October 19).