19 October 2024 (MIA)

Macedonian Orthodox Church Calendar

St. Thomas the Apostle

He was ready to die with Jesus when Christ went to Jerusalem but is best remembered for doubting the Resurrection until allowed to touch Christ’s wounds. Preached in Parthia, Persia, and India, though he was so reluctant to start the mission that he had to be taken into slavery by a merchant headed that way. He eventually gave in to God’s will, was freed, and planted the new Church over a wide area. He formed many parishes and built many churches along the way. His symbol is the builder’s square, from an ancient story that built a palace for King Guduphara in India. Died stabbed with a spear c.72 in India.

Catholic Calendar

John de Brébeuf

French Jesuit. He wanted to enter the priesthood from an early age, but his health was so bad there were doubts he could make it. His posting as a missionary to frontier Canada at age 32, however, was a literal godsend. He spent the rest of his life there, and the harsh and hearty climate so agreed with him that the Natives, surprised at his endurance, called him Echon, which meant load bearer, and his massive size made them think twice about sharing a canoe with him for fear it would sink.

Brebeuf had great difficulty learning the Huron language. “You may have been a famous professor or theologian in France,” he wrote in a letter home, “but here you will merely be a student, and with what teachers! The Huron language will be your Aristla crosse.”

However, he eventually wrote a catechism in Huron and a French-Huron dictionary for use by other missionaries. According to histories of the game, it was John de Brebeuf who named the present-day version of the Indian game lacrosse because the stick used reminded him of a bishop’s crosier (la crosse).

Saint John was martyred in 1649, tortured to death by the Iroquois. By 1650 the Huron nation was exterminated, and the laboriously built mission was abandoned. But it proved to be “one of the triumphant failures that are commonplace in the Church’s history.” These martyrdoms created a wave of vocations and missionary fervor in France, and it gave new heart to the missionaries in New France. Born 1593 at Normandy, France.