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P.O. Box 1333
Merchantville NJ 08109, USA
Email: info@arxpub.com
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Arx
Publishing, LLC P.O. Box 1333 Merchantville NJ 08109, USA Email: info@arxpub.com |
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Arx Publishing is pleased to present a series of devotional booklets on the lives and heroic deaths of the North American Martyrs. As the French and English colonized North America in the 1600s, a group of brave souls left the comfortable world they knew in order to propagate the Catholic faith throughout the primeval wilderness of the New World. Foremost among these missionary pioneers were the Jesuit “black robes”, whose piety, patience, and practicality won thousands of devoted converts among the native tribes. Under their spiritual direction the Micmac, Hurons, Algonquins, and even the warlike Iroquois, forged an authentic American Catholicism, animated by an intense fervor and heroic constancy seldom seen since the days of the Roman persecutions.
 St. Jean de Brébeuf |
#1: The
Life of St. Jean de Brébeuf by Father Paul Ragueneau,
S.J. One of the group of eight Jesuits canonized in 1930 as the Martyrs of North America, St. Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649) has long been revered as a giant among the missionaries. Made superior of the Huron mission, he at once trained his scholarly intellect to the study of their language, writing numerous religious and linguistic works including perhaps Jesous Ahatonhia, the first Canadian Christmas carol. Beloved by his Huron flock, who named him Echon, he marvelously adapted himself to their native customs and ways of speech, and gathered to himself a devoted church whose members would seed the Catholic faith throughout North America. In this short excerpt penned by his fellow Jesuit Father Paul Ragueneau, we learn of the extraordinary virtues and visions that St. Jean was privy to. Using excerpts from Brébeuf’s own writings, Ragueneau describes the saint’s astounding willingness to die a terrible death in order that his beloved Hurons might be brought to the Christian faith. His fervent desire was granted when an Iroquois war party attacked the Huron village of St. Ignace (Taenhatentaron), and carried off Brébeuf and Father Gabriel Lalemant to one of the most gruesome tortures and glorious martyrdoms in the history of the New World. Paperback booklet ~ 32pp. ~ ISBN: 1-889758-51-5 ~ $3.00 ~ To order, click here |
St. Isaac Jogues
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#2: The
Captivity of St. Isaac Jogues by Father Jerome Lalemant, S.J. Perhaps the most famous of the eight Jesuits canonized in 1930 as the Martyrs of North America, St. Isaac Jogues (1607-1646) lived a story that reads like a fictional adventure. Captured and tortured by the Iroquois in 1642, Jogues made a thrilling escape to Manhattan and dodged various perils on his voyage back to France. Immediately acclaimed as a hero, Pope Urban VIII granted him a unique permission to celebrate Mass with his mutilated hands, saying “it would be unjust that a martyr for Christ should not drink the blood of Christ.” Yet despite all Jogues suffered and survived in the Iroquois country, this “living martyr” would eventually return to plant the seeds of the church there with his blood. Using Jogues’ own writings, Lalemant recounts the saint’s unshakeable confidence in God during his captivity by the Iroquois. He voluntary surrendered himself into their hands to minister to his captured friends, sharing in their torture until the murder of his companion St. René Goupil, the first of the North American Martyrs to receive his crown. Yet all of these gruesome experiences lead Jogues into a rapturous dream of Christ the Judge, who kindles in his heart “a great fire of love” and spares him from the seemingly inevitable hand of death. Paperback booklet ~ 32pp. ~ ISBN: 1-889758-52-3 ~ $3.00 ~ To order, click here |
 St. Charles Garnier
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#3: The
Martyrdom of St. Charles Garnier by Father Paul Ragueneau,
S.J. One of the group of eight Jesuits canonized in 1930 as the Martyrs of North America, St. Charles Garnier (1605-1649) was a missionary to the Tobacco Nation, also known as the Petun or Tionontati. On December 7th 1649, an Iroquois army attacked the undefended town of St. Jean (Etharita). In the slaughter that followed, Garnier refused to flee, instead staying to administer the sacraments to the wounded and dying. Severely wounded by musket fire, he said a quick prayer then dragged himself toward a dying man before finally being killed by an Iroquois tomahawk. The heartwrenching story of the attack on Etharita is here told by Father Paul Ragueneau, from an eyewitness account of a Christian Indian who escaped with her life. There follows a summation of Garnier’s life and heroic virtues, drawn from Ragueneau’s 12 year personal friendship with his fellow missionary. His “perfect obedience,” his prudence, charity, indeed his cultivation of all the Christian virtues led him to devote himself heart and soul to the native Americans. He was, it was said, a man born only for their conversion. Paperback booklet ~ 24pp. ~ ISBN: 1-889758-53-1 ~ $3.00 ~ To order, click here |
 St. Gabriel Lalemant
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#4: The
Martyrdom of St. Gabriel Lalemant by Father Paul Ragueneau,
S.J. One of the eight Jesuits canonized in 1930 as the Martyrs of North America, St. Gabriel Lalemant (1610-1649) was a companion in martyrdom of the indefatigable St. Jean de Brébeuf. When the Iroquois attacked the Huron town of St. Ignace (Taenhatentaron) on March 16th 1649, Lalemant and Brebeuf were captured with their Huron flock and slowly and horribly tortured to death out of demonic hatred for the faith of Christ. From the eyewitness accounts of Hurons who escaped the slaughter, Father Paul Ragueneau composed this account of the deaths of the two great martyrs. He concludes with a short recounting of Lalemant’s innocence and purity, including an invaluable excerpt from the saint’s own private papers in which this man of “very delicate constitution” willingly offered himself as a spiritual victim for the salvation of others. Through a gruesome night of torture longer and more intense even than that of the stalwart Brébeuf, all his intense physical sufferings were, in Ragueneau’s words, "finally crowned with immortal glory." Paperback booklet ~ 16pp. ~ ISBN: 1-889758-54-X ~ $2.00 ~ To order, click here |