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.

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Published by Arx Publishing.

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