A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus began to reproach the towns where most of his miracles had been worked. He reproached them because of their failure to reform. It will go ill with you, Chorazin, and just as ill with you, Bethsaida. If the miracles worked in you had taken place in Tyre or Sidon, those cities would have reformed in sackcloth and ashes long ago.
I assure you, it will go easier for Tyre and for Sidon than for you on the day of judgment. As for you, Capernaum, are you to be exalted to the skies? You shall go down to the realm of death. If the miracles worked in you had taken place even in Sodom, it would be standing today. I assure you, it will go easier for Sodom than for you on the day of judgment.
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Yesterday, we had the feast of blessed Katara Tegawitha, a young lady, young girl, born of an Algonquin mother, and a Mohawk father, who died in Montreal in 1680. 1680, seventeenth century. Her life was short.
She only lived about twenty four years, five of them as a Christian. When she became a Christian, a Catholic, let's let's say Catholic because that's what we're talking about. There's nothing wrong with that word, you know. It's being carefully avoided today. We run Christian schools.
Anyway, when she became a Catholic and was baptized, she found that she could not live a good Catholic life in the environment which was around her. And so she she walked, that was the only way of going, maybe with a canoe here and there, all the way several 100 miles to Montreal, where she then made her first holy communion, took a vow of chastity, which as I said yesterday, meant that she was separating herself from the possibility of marriage and a husband. And for an Indian girl, to have a husband was her only security for the future. They keep that in mind, very practical consideration. Even even young women devoted to chastity have to have food and shelter and clothing.
And then she died just a year or so later. And we today, the church recognizes her as blessed, which is the next step, the last step towards full canonization when she will be put up for the whole church to admire and to hail her as a saint. And now, from the wilds and the wilderness of Northern New York and Canada, from a world which was dominated by what we call the heathens and the savages, which of course is doing them very scant justice. We take and go back four hundred years today to Saint Bonaventure. Thirteenth century.
Four hundred years now, we're back. We're going back to a man who was who was nine years old when Saint Francis of Assisi died in 12/26. We're talking back to a world where which was which was had the apex of civilization of its day, Italy and France. And he and he was very much part of that whole life. That's what I want to bring out.
We're going the picture of a of a wilderness, uncivilized, uncultured, without roads, without communication, without culture, without a common language, without schools, or universities that didn't know the word. That they did in Montreal. But they certainly didn't know it in Northern New York. And the church today is holding up the both equally. Equally.
You can't be more saint than any other saint. If you're a saint, you are a saint. Whether you come from a heathen tribe and a wilderness like Caterre, or you come from the apex of European culture like Bonaventure. They're the same before God Almighty. And this is the point I will lay before you.
These dates and things, it's just putting getting them anchored in reality. That's the only reason I use them. That we we wanna be anchored in the existential order. I'm no Platonist, as you all know. Here's a man Bonaventure, born around 12/1217 or in there someplace.
Saint Francis is still living. You have the two great mendicant orders, the orders of the beggars. Now this was an entirely new concept, that a religious should live by alms, and roaming the streets, going where the people are, going into the midst and the center of the multitude to bring the word of God by their lives of absolute poverty, as Saint Francis wanted, and teaching them the word of God. Now, it's a and at the same time that this is happening, this is the beginning of the thirteenth century, you have the rise of the universities in Europe. And the first one was Paris, as far as we know.
And as soon as this young Italian, Bonaventure, decides he wants to become a follower of Saint Francis, and gets his early education in a Franciscan's friary, he goes up Paris, which is now the at his early beginnings, and they're very dim. And there, he studies theology and becomes a master of theology. Now while he is there, there's also another young Italian named Thomas Aquinas. Far as as far as any records go, we there's no evidence they ever met, but that cannot be imagined. But anyway, we don't know that they met by any evidence.
Anyway, you have these two young men, one of Dominican, the follower of Saint Dominic who was dead several years. Bonaventure, the follower of a whole new idea of poverty, which already was splitting the order wide apart of Saint Francis. These two young men represent a whole new concept in the University of Paris, And they inject what? Turmoil, revolution, because they became a threat to the secular teachers there. They didn't want these religious there.
Anyway, Bonaventure goes from from the being a student there, he becomes the he becomes the chief provincial of their order, the general of the Franciscans. He becomes an archbishop. He was even he was even nominated to be Bishop of York over in England. He was a man who who was became famous for his mysticism, for a leader in spirituality, leaning heavily upon Saint Augustine, or what was supposed to be Saint Augustine. And anyway, he he is he is a figure, a national, an international, of course that word had no meaning in those days, a figure.
That's Bonaventure. A man who was writing, who was teaching, who was a leader, who was administrator, who became an archbishop, who became a cardinal of Albino archbishop cardinal of Albino. And then he is summoned by the holy father to come to the second council of Lyon in France. And likewise, there's another Dominion there's a Dominican marching from Paris down to Lyon, and his name is Thomas Aquinas, and the year is December. And both of them have gone through all kinds of struggles around Paris.
But Aquinas never became anything except a teacher, a magister. Whereas Bonaventure, he was a man of affairs, a leader of the spiritual life. Of course, he was a writer and so was Aquinas. But Bonaventure was in the midst of the cultural, the religious, the spiritual life of the day, moving around over France, partly of Germany, Italy. And they're both now going to at the holy father's command to the count second council of Lyon, and both Aquinas died en route, December, and Bonaventure, after giving a very inspiring talk, died suddenly, was buried the same day, I think it was May 1274.
I cannot exaggerate the dominance that Bonaventure had for his time, much more than Aquinas. Because he was much he was involved in in in all kinds of movements, and enterprises, and investigations, and in leadership that Aquinas never had. I want you to see that figure, that thirteenth century Bonaventure, with everything in the palm of his hand, you might say, that the thirteenth century had to offer, and compare that with his lit little old ignorant Indian girl up in Montreal taking a vow of chastity. And yet the church says you're the same. You're the same.
That's why we're all called upon to be saints. Don't ever mistake it. And you're going to be a saint not in the unreal world of what you would like to be, but in the actual world of what you are. Whether you're thirteenth century monk, a teacher, and bishop, and archbishop, and cardinal, or whether you are an unknown, malformed, sickly Indian girl of Montreal. In the name of the father, and of the son, and the holy spirit.
Amen.