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Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Wednesday, July 14th, 2021. Today is also the feast day of a great saint that once lived right here in what is now the United States, St. Kateri Tecahwitha. Now, all week we are talking about the second beatitude, which is, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. We've already

talked about how Christ always sees our suffering, our pain or sadness, and how we need to turn to him for comfort.

We'll only be happy if we do.

Yesterday we talked about repentance and how crying, tears are actually an important part

of repentance and how our tears as we confess our sins are like a second baptism.

Now today we are going to look to the example of St. Kateri Tekewitha, a saint who lived this beatitude so well.

So St. Ketiri Tecahwita was a Mohawk Indian girl.

She lived in what is now upstate New York, but she lived there before

the United States was formed. Now, Kateri was born to Christian parents. The Jesuit missionaries

had come to the area and her mother had converted. She was a devout Catholic. However, the smallpox epidemic

hit her village when Kateri was still very small. Both of her parents and her brother died.

And actually, St. Kateri got the disease as well. She survived. But smallpox left her face

very scarred and actually affected her eyesight.

In fact, her Mohawk Indian name, Ticahuita, means girl who bumps into things because her eyesight was so poor.

After her parents died, Kateri was adopted by her uncle, who was a chief of the Mohawk Indians, but he was

not Christian. In fact, at this point, the Mohawks had rejected Jesuit missionaries. In fact,

we have some saints, including St. Isaac Jacques from France, who was martyred by her tribe.

So they hated Christians, and he refused to let Kateri practice her Christian faith. Nevertheless, Kateri continued to love Jesus, but her life

following Jesus was very, very hard. She was forbidden to talk to the Jesuit missionaries,

but she just could not stay away. It was years before she received her first Holy Communion,

but even before that, she studied the Word of God, and she refused to work on Sundays,

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