MYSTIC IN THE NEW WORLD

 

Pope St. John Paul II, hailed her as one of the “founders” of the Catholic Church in Canada. BL. CATHERINE of ST. AUGUSTINE made a promise “to live and die in Canada if God would open its door.”

Catherine was born in Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte, Normandy, France in 1632.

At the young age of five, Catherine began experiencing mystical experiences from God and at eight she knew she was being asked to be a saint. She is recorded as saying, “Remove from my heart every impurity, let me die now rather than allow my heart and soul to be soiled by the slightest blemish.”

 At age 14, Catherine became a novice at the Hôtel-Dieu of Bayeux, a hospital run by Augustinian nuns. She took the name Catherine of St. Augustine and offered herself for their mission overseas in New France. A day after her 16th birthday in 1648, she took her religious vows. Later that same month, she boarded the boat for the New World.

While on board “Le Cardinal,” Catherine became sick with the plague, but was miraculously cured by the Blessed Virgin. Arriving in Québec, Sr. Catherine began learning the languages of the natives and aiding the sick. It was hostile territory, and their workplace, she wrote, was “more like a hut than a hospital.”

In 1650 when the nearby Ursuline Monastery burnt down, their nuns moved in with the Augustinian sisters for a time. This is where St. Marie of the Incarnation (foundress of the Ursuline sisters in Quebec) met Sr. Catherine. Saint Marie was profoundly moved by the virtues she saw exemplified in Sr. Catherine.

For the next 20 years, Mother Catherine became the mission’s treasurer, director, and then novice director. She also continued in her mystical prayer life. 

The sufferings Mother Catherine endured she offered up in prayer for Canada and for forgiveness for the sins of its inhabitants. She cited Jesus in the Eucharist as being her main source of strength.

Mother Catherine also claimed God had assigned Fr. (St.) Jean de Brébeuf, a Jesuit missionary to New France, an other native of Bayeux, who had died in 1649. This missionary had never during his lifetime met Mother Catherine. The nun says that from 1662 on, she frequently received visits from this blessed Jesuit, who was entrusted with guiding, comforting, and at times restraining her in her mortifications. But on certain days even he seemed to elude her. To win him to her, Mother Catherine spoke to him with childlike simplicity: “How happy I am, Father, that you are deriving some small joy and satisfaction now from seeing me thus crucified: be vexed with me as much as you like; I shall always look upon you and love you as my kind and charitable Father.”

On many occasions Mother Catherine stated that it was for Canada, which was in danger of undergoing grave punishments for the crimes being committed there, that she was enduring suffering. This role of assumed victim for the colony has placed Mother Catherine among the founders of the Canadian Church. While others overcame the forest, the rivers, and the winter, Mother Catherine bore the sins of her adopted country and grappled in close quarters with the powers of darkness.

Sister Catherine died on May 8, 1668 at only 36 years of age. St. François de Laval, the first Bishop of Québec (considered the founder of the Catholic faith in New France) wrote, “I don’t need to see any extraordinary signs from her to be convinced of her holiness, because her virtues made me perfectly aware of it.” 

The natives gave her the name lakonikonriiostha, the one who makes the interior more beautiful”.

She was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II in 1989, and her bones are preserved within a tomb in a shrine at Le Centre Catherine-de-Saint-Augustin in Quebec City.  Her feast day is May 8.