St. Noël Chabanel
To come to know the saints of our Church is to discover their strengths, but also their human frailties and limitations. Faith provides these holy men and women with the courage and perseverance to go forward, regardless of their pain and suffering. St. Noël Chabanel is no exception.
Despite success in his native France, the man who would become a seventeenth century Jesuit martyr met anything but success in New France. Chabanel struggled with the Native language, felt useless, and experienced great disappointments in the mission activity of New France. It would have been natural to give up and return to France. Chabanel saw this as a temptation and stated, “I must serve God faithfully until death.”
Noël was born in southeastern France on February 2, 1613, the youngest of four children. Noël followed in his brother’s footsteps and became a Jesuit. He entered at the age of seventeen and was ordained a priest at twenty-eight. There is little we know about his early life, but we do know that he was a successful teacher in France and was good with languages.
Noël was described as energetic and intelligent. He had a growing and enthusiastic desire to go to the missions of New France as a result of hearing accounts of his Jesuit brethren from the famous Jesuit Relations. He sailed to Quebec in 1643 and travelled to Huronia to join the mission the following year.
Chabanel’s disappointments started immediately and lasted most of his time in New France. The most obvious struggle was with his lack of ability with the Huron language, embarrassing for a man who was adept with six languages back in Europe. His superior says, “He made such little progress that he could hardly be understood even in the most ordinary conversation.
This was no small mortification for a man burning with the desire to convert the Indians.” This meant that he was ridiculed and, therefore, unable to properly communicate with the people he was trying to serve. There was also discomfort with the physical surroundings, the native culture and food. He felt useless and an utter failure, almost abandoned by God. Chabanel described himself as a “bloodless martyr in the shadow of martyrdom” and wrote that God seemed to have withdrawn visible graces and remained hidden.
We naturally think of Jesus’ sense of abandonment in the Garden of Gethsemane. After prayer, Jesus was able to say, “not what I want but what you [God] want.” Likewise, Fr. Chabanel held on to his faith and courage. In imitation of Christ, he promised, “I vow never to leave this mission of the Hurons … I beg Thee, my Saviour, to be pleased to accept me as the perpetual servant of this mission and to make me worthy of so sublime a ministry.” Like the life of the suffering Christ he strove to emulate, Chabanel seemed to have a life filled with failure, a life of loneliness in the shadows. But, like Christ, he had the perseverance and courage to be stable and remain hopeful.
Fr. Noël Chabanel was the last of the eight Jesuit Martyrs of North America to meet death. He was martyred in December 1649. He had been assigned to assist St. Charles Garnier with the Petuns at St. Jean. Chabanel was a short distance away from the Mission when Garnier was killed on December 7. A native person, who hated him for his faith, killed Chabanel the next day – the Feast of the Immaculate Conception – and his body was thrown in the Nottawasaga River. In fitting with the sense of failure associated with Chabanel, it was not known for years what had happened to him.
This man who saw his missionary life as unsuccessful showed himself to be one of God’s athletes, a man of unshakable faith who refused to quit in the face of threatening struggles and trying situations. Noël is reminiscent of St. Paul’s reminder to us about God’s foolishness being wiser than human ways. St. Noël Chabanel was canonized as one of the eight Jesuit Martyrs of North America on June 29, 1930 and is celebrated on September 26 in Canada and October 19 in the United States.