The last illness of Catherine Tekakwitha

It is written:

“About two, or three months before her death, which this generous girl had desired to attach herself even more to the Cross of her Saviour. One day, at the beginning of Lent at the Passion of Our Lord while resting herself near a thorn shrub, which she was filled with sorrow, because she had done nothing for Him. The fervour would take her to place some branches with thorns among her wood and on arriving at her lodge, which she had taken a handful of these thorns and placed them under the bark that served as her mat. When she went to sleep that evening, which she had taken out the thorns and spread them that then she would have herself on them. The first and second nights passed without effect, but the third night that her body had succumbed. The Father saw her and was in doubt of something, which she had confessed and thrown the thorns into the fire. They had said that this caused her death. Although others say when her companion was sent with some other Native girls over the ice to Laprairie to bring something, which Catherine Tekakwitha had accompanied her companion and caught a fever. That from this time, which she was never well.”

Her sleeping on thorns was a day at the beginning of Lent and she slept on these thorns for three consecutive nights. In 1680, Ash Wednesday or the first day of Lent was Wednesday March 6. After she had slept on these thorns that her last illness began, because she had walked to Laprairie. This perhaps would be in the second week in Lent. There is reference to her last illness that she had in the last two months of her life; that is, the month of March 1680:

“In 1680, the last year of her life when she was obliged to stay almost continually in her lodge, because of her illness, which Father Chauchetière had taken care of her. He had seen her everyday, which to have conversed with her of God and explain to her our mysteries. The last two months of her life, which she had endured extraordinary sufferings. She was obliged to hold herself in the same position the entire day and night, which when she would move that she did with extreme pain. She had never once in that time ever sigh in complaint, but when these pains were at their worst that she esteemed herself most content. She had said of wanting to live and die on the Cross, which was uniting her sufferings to those of her Saviour.”

The distance is about 3¾ miles, or about 6 kilometres if we take the distance from the Chapel of the Mission (although her lodge must have been very close to the Chapel) to Laprairie de la Magdeleine, where is the present Church of La Nativité de la Sainte-Vierge. The walking time could have been of about 2¾ hours between the Chapel of the Mission to Laprairie and again 2¾ hours from Laprairie to the Chapel of the Mission and she with the others walked along the ice covered river.