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The missionaries themselves possessed the weak-
nesses and the virtues of their order.
For fifteen years enduring the infinite labors and perils of the
Huron mission, and exhibiting, as it was said, ‘an absolute pattern of every religious virtue,’
Jean de Brebeuf, respecting even the nod of his distant superiors, bowed his mind and his judgment to obedience.
Besides the assiduous fatigues of his office, each day, and sometimes twice in the day, he applied to himself the lash; beneath a bristling hair-shirt he wore an iron girdle, armed on all sides with projecting points; his fasts were frequent;
almost always his pious vigils continued deep into the night.
In vain did Asmodeus assume for him the forms of earthly beauty; his eye rested benignantly on visions of divine things.
Once, imparadised in a trance, he beheld the Mother of Him whose cross he bore, surrounded by a crowd of virgins, in the beatitudes of
heaven. Once, as he himself has recorded, while engaged in penance, he saw
Christ unfold his arms to embrace him with the utmost love, promising oblivion of his sins.
Once, late at night, while praying in the silence, he had a vision of an infinite number of crosses, and, with mighty heart, he strove, again and again, to grasp them all. Often he saw the shapes of foul fiends, now appearing as madmen, now as raging beasts; and often he beheld the image of Death, a bloodless form, by the side of the stake, struggling with bonds, and, at last, falling, as a harmless spectre, at his feet.
Having vowed to seek out suffering for
the greater glory of God, he renewed that vow every day, at the moment of tasting the sacred wafer; and, as his cupidity for martyrdom grew into a passion, he
Ragueneau, Relation, &c. 1648, p. 63, 64. |
exclaimed, ‘What shall I render to thee, Jesus, my
Lord, for all thy benefits?
I will accept thy cup, and ’
