NEW ICON FOR SEATTLE

 

Our  Cathedral in Seattle has a new icon, written by an artist in New York. It portrays ST. KATERI TEKAKWITHA. It started when Corinna Laughlin, the director of liturgy for St. James Cathedral in Seattle, saw a series of 12 icons hung along a wall, including one of St. Kateri Tekakwitha.

The artist, Patricia Brintle, was originally from Saint-Michel-de-l'Attalaye, Haiti, but in 1964 moved to New York to marry her fiancé, who had moved there for work.

 Patricia began drawing and painting as a young child, developing a distinct style using bold colors. Some of her artwork has been shown at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, Italy, and she’s been commissioned to create a portrait of Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman for the Passionist Monastery in Queens, New York.

The 4-foot-tall icon represents the local connection along with St. Kateri’s New York roots. The nature behind St. Kateri, particularly the pine trees, represents the local environment. She’s adorned in a traditional Salish cedar hat, and a Mohawk skirt, leggings and moccasins. At her feet, among a group of lilies, sits a turtle. As part of the Turtle Clan of the Mohawk people, St. Kateri was known as the “Lily of the Mohawks.The icon also contains a canoe, two eagles and two salmon, a nod to both the Pacific Northwest and Native American communities.

The icon  traveled to local Native American Catholic communities after its blessing on Oct. 19, before being placed in its permanent home in the cathedral. “For Native Catholics to be able to recognize themselves in the iconography of the cathedral is important, but also the sense that she’s not a saint just for Native Catholics. She’s for everyone. She’s the patron of ecology — that’s so important to people in the Pacific Northwest, said the artist.

Why is this saint so important to our archdiocese?  The last miracle which put through her canonization happened in the children’s hospital just a few miles from the cathedral. (Blog Oct. 20, 2012) with the cure of Jake Finkbinner, a Lummi child suffering from strep A bacteria which started on his face after he received a cut on his lip during a basketball game. When the doctors gave up hope, telling the parents to prepare themselves, Sister Kateri Mitchell, executive director of the Tekakwitha Conference, placed a relic of Blessed Kateri on his leg.

The next morning, doctors were stunned to see that the flesh-eating bacteria had stopped. Five years later, St. Kateri was canonized on Oct. 21, 2012, with Jake and his family and many of his Lummi tribe, as well as Oblates from our monastery attending the ceremony in Rome.  Jake carried the gifts at the canonization Mass.

The artist studies each saint before her painting begins and in this case flew to Washington, visiting the cathedral as well as St. Paul Parish in La Conner on the Swinomish Reservation, which is the closest to us on the mainland.

“That was quite an experience,” Patricia said. “That was amazing. I can’t even put it into words. I was now walking on ground that the ancestors of the people who lived on the reservation over 10,000 years ago were walking. That touched me, that touched me a lot.”

“That was quite an experience,” she said. “That was amazing. I can’t even put it into words. I was now walking on ground that the ancestors of the people who lived on the reservation over 10,000 years ago were walking. That touched me, that touched me a lot.”  Her prayer is that the icon touches the many people who visit and pray in the Seattle cathedral.