Reflections on life, meaning and purpose

St. René Goupil — martyred for making the Sign of the Cross…

There is a letter, undated but composed around the year 1646, written under obedience to his superiors, by Father Isaac Jogues, Jesuit priest and martyr. It concerns a Jesuit Brother who would also become a martyr: René Goupil. René arrived in the New World from Europe in 1640. For the next two years, as a Jesuit lay missionary, he worked both in humble manual labor in the Jesuit house and as a surgeon in the hospitals of Quebec…