HREE HURONS escaped. Stricken with terror, they fled to the mission, where Brébeuf and Lalemant were just finishing the prayers after Mass. The priests heard the dreaded cry: “The Iroquois! They are at your gate!” The two priests rose from their prayers and hurried out into the village. Stephen Annaotaha rushed up to them and exclaimed, “My brothers, save yourselves! Go now, while there is time!” Brébeuf and Lalemant knew they could escape, but they spurned the thought. “No, Stephen,” Brébeuf replied, “I am remaining to minister to my people to the end.”
While de Brébeuf continued to pray in a commanding voice, to exhort the Hurons being tortured at nearby posts, to console Père Gabriel and the shackled prisoners, his tormentors stabbed him with javelin heads and sliced him with knives. Unmoved by their tormentings, he thundered at the top of his voice, “Jésus taiteur! Jesus, have mercy on us!” His plea rang out like a battle cry, and was answered by the Huron Believers, “Jésus taiteur!” Angered to insanity by his defiance, the Iroquois thrust torches against his face and into his mouth. He spat out the burning splinters, shook off the embers, and preached at his tormentors, especially at the renegade Hurons who were now revenging themselves on him. He exhorted them to believe in the God whom they had rejected. To show their hate, they burned and slashed him the more.
—Taken From The Life of Saint Jean de Brébeuf
Photo courtesy of the magnificent Father Lawrence Lew.
