Today I was thinking of the effect that a mother’s love for the Lord has on a child as I was thinking of St. Kateri. Kateri’s mother was from the Native American Algonquin Nation – that was much more open to the French Jesuit missionaries than her father’s Mohawk Nation which was the last of the Iroquois Confederation of Nations that the Jesuits entered in upstate NY and Canada. Kateri’s Algonquin mother was a baptized Christian before she was captured by the Mohawks in a raid of her village. While many Mohawk captives were tortured and killed as part of a Mohawk religious ritual for success in future battles, Kateri’s father, a Mohawk Chief, was attracted to this Algonquin Christian and took her for his wife. He was open to her practicing her Christian religion. Kateri and her younger brother were born of this union. But when Kateri was only 4 years old, smallpox hit her village and claimed the lives of her mother, father, and younger brother. Kateri caught smallpox too which left her face scarred for life and her eyes very sensitive to light and weakened. (It is interesting to note that the Jesuit Father who witnessed Kateri’s death said that a few minutes after she died, her scars disappeared from her face! Similarly interesting is the miracle that was needed for Kateri’s canonization process – the miracle was received in 2006 by a young boy of the Lummi tribe in Washington state who had a flesh eating virus on his lip that scarred his face and was rapidly spreading and becoming fatal – until a relic of Kateri was placed on his leg and the virus ceased progressing shortly thereafter). Upon losing her father, mother, and brother at the age of four, Kateri was taken in by her paternal uncle who was also a Mohawk chief – but a Mohawk chief who was opposed to Christianity because it was taking members of his village away to Native American Christian villages. In this longhouse Kateri lived and was finally baptized at the age of 20. Many biographers write of the influence that Kateri’s Christian mother must have had upon her during the four short years of her life that she was with her Christian mother. The prayers that they said together, the Masses they attended at the village chapel, the mother’s living daily holiness. What does a mother’s witness say to a child? What power does a mother’s prayers have for her child? I am more and more amazed every time I witness this mystery of motherhood! Thank you mothers! Lynn Marie