Kateri "universal"

Mircea Eliade, religious historian of Romanian descent, studied religious experiences around the world. Erudite scholar, he is considered one of the founders of the modern history of religions. He reflected on a great number of nations in order to study their religious structures. He concludes that by studying the history of religions, one can discover the deep-seated unity of mankind.

This unity is based on a structure of consciousness which has an openness to what he calls the sacred. This structure is not a simple stage, which could possibly be exceeded, but it is constitutive of the human being, the "sacred" is an essential element of the human condition.

The notion of sacred can be problematic, I would rather use the words aspiration to completion or completeness. The human being, unfinished, is aware of being so, and sometimes not without suffering.

This suffering has been expressed many times in literature.

Camus, for example, bears testimony to the aspiration of the human to be "total man", that is to say, of one who knows where he comes from and where he goes. He does it in the negative, but his expression is no less eloquent: "His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a Promised Land."

For Mircea Eliade, "the religious man is thirsty of being."

The answer to this quest remains diffuse and partial in the history of peoples, but with Jesus, it shines in its fullness. He is Himself conscious of his universality, sending his followers around the world "Go to all nations…"

Jesus deconstructs the idea of sacred distant and insensitive, teaching his disciples that, far from being inaccessible, God is close, even intimate, responding to the entire quest of every human being. "whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." Which is to say, anyone from any nation.

That a young Indian woman such as Kateri, vibrated in such a powerful way to the message of the Gospel, is for me the sign that God can speak to the heart of every human being.

Josée Lacoursière

Article from the website Tendances et Enjeu (Trends and Issue), published on October 12, 2012, and adapted for this publication.