A SPECIAL DAY!

The Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine in Fonda will be hosting Easter Mass on Sunday, April 5, inside the site’s St. Peter’s Chapel. Mass will be held at 10:30 a.m., and led by the Very Rev. Father Michael Heine, OFM Conv. (Provided photo)

The Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine in Fonda is celebrating a momentous milestone in April — and everyone is invited!

The shrine will be hosting Easter Mass on Sunday, April 5, inside the site’s St. Peter’s Chapel. Mass will be held at 10:30 a.m., and led by the Very Rev. Father Michael Heine, OFM Conv., Minister Provincial, who is coming up from Maryland for the celebration.

The Mass also falls on a special day for the shrine: April 5 is the 350th anniversary of Saint Kateri’s baptism, which took place on the grounds. 

Melissa Miscevic Bramble, director of operations for the shrine, said it’s a blessing to be part of the community that’s bringing Saint Kateri’s baptismal celebration to life.

“Not only is it the 350th anniversary of her baptism — on the grounds that are now her national shrine in the U.S. — but it’s Easter, which falls on the exact same day as it did 350 years ago,” Bramble said. “We absolutely needed to see if we could celebrate this!”

“350 years to the day, on an Easter Sunday, at the place she was baptized,” Father Heine said. “It kind of reminds all of us, when we renew our vows, each one of us is called to be saints like her.”

Dedicated to the first Native American saint, the Saint Kateri shrine was first opened in 1938 by Father Thomas Grassmann and the Franciscan Friars, Order of Friars Minor Conventual, at the request of Bishop Edmund F. Gibbons. The anniversary also falls during the Jubilee Year of St. Francis, which celebrates the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death.

Walking the grounds of the shrine, it’s not hard to find the history of Saint Kateri. The site is on land where Kateri lived most of her life, and holds the Kateri Spring that provided the water for her baptism. St. Peter’s Chapel, where this year’s Easter Mass will be held, is housed in a former Dutch barn built in 1782 and named after the original chapel where Kateri was baptized, which was lost when the village was burned by the French in the 1690s.

“It’s an honor to celebrate at that place,” added Father Heine, “on Easter when we’re all renewing our baptismal promises, too.”

Bramble reached out to Bishop Mark O’Connell after his installation to obtain permission to host the Mass. The shrine offers Sunday Mass from May to October, but needed permission for the Easter celebration, which fell outside that window. 

Everyone in the Diocese, including Bishop Mark and surrounding parishes, was supportive of the idea, Bramble said. 

“One of the things that’s interesting to me about praying in (that chapel) space is it’s really an opportunity to pray in the way St. Kateri prayed because she didn’t have a climate-controlled environment where she attended Mass,” Bramble said. “She was lucky if she had Mass in a chapel that had a fire going, but one of the things she’s known for is having spent a lot of time in prayer out in the woods outdoors, where it wasn’t a physically comfortable place to pray.”

With that in mind, Bramble noted that attendees should prepare to celebrate Mass in a space without heat. But it’s an experience that, Bramble hopes, will help Catholics connect deeper to God’s creation and Kateri’s history.

“To me, it adds another dimension to the worship, to put us in the mind-set of so many people in centuries past who worshiped in that way,” she said.

After Mass, Father Heine and Bramble will lead a walk from the chapel to the Kateri Spring for a quick reflection. Water bottles will be provided if anyone wishes to collect water from the spring.

“Saint Kateri spent a lot of time in prayer in nature, and when you stop and think about it, there are many beautiful churches that have inspirational religious art, but we can’t improve on what God has created,” Bramble said.