Category Archives: Great Commission

The Jesus Road

Posted on October 17, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

In the early 1830s, physician, scientist, and neophyte missionary Jean Louis Berlandier watched as his friend, an unnamed Kickapoo Indian, lay dying. The Kickapoo gave off a fierce appearance in his dress, paint, and bearing; he was a skilled hunter; … Continue reading →

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Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Dorothy Day was a lay missionary. She was not a member of a religious order (although she did become a Benedictine oblate), rather she was a convert to Catholicism who completely embraced the religion to guide her everyday existence according … Continue reading →

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Fanny Allen (1784-1819): From Vermont to the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Fanny Allen’s commitment to the Great Commission was not flashy, the stuff of grand tales of perseverance, suffering, and martyrdom—more the everyday, the challenges to faith of family and friends, the renewed commitment time and again, the daily putting on … Continue reading →

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Ignatius of Loyola, Soldier for Christ

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Ignatius of Loyola was a soldier for Navarre, Spain, who became a soldier for Christ. Recovering from battle wounds at his family’s castle in Loyola in the Basque region of Spain, he experienced conversion in which he renounced his former … Continue reading →

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Jean Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888), Missionary Bishop on Horseback

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Visitors to downtown Santa Fe are drawn to two majestic buildings, the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi and the Chapel of the Loretto Sisters. Little would one suspect today that the founder of these two buildings, indeed the father … Continue reading →

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Juniper Berthiaume (1744-?) French Missionary to the Penobscot Tribe

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Pope Francis said on his Apostolic Journey to Canada in July 2022, “I have been waiting to come here and be with you! Here, from this place associated with painful memories, I would like to begin what I consider a … Continue reading →

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Missionary John Thayer

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

John Thayer (1755-1815) was a New England convert, educated at Yale where he was taught that all things Roman Catholic were despicable. Then he went to Europe and underwent a conversion—a most unexpected religious change. He wrote a book about … Continue reading →

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Junipero Serra: Work and Prayer

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

Franciscan Junipero Serra (1713-1784), one of the founders of Catholicism in California, should he miraculously walk the paths of California today (on tired, sore, bare feet, for he believed in the practice of mortification), he would be astonished at the … Continue reading →

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Louis Hennepin (1626-1704), Missionary of Hope

Posted on September 11, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

When a person thinks back to the colonial American past imagining what the first Catholic missionaries who braved the elements, journeyed into the forests, and canoed down American rivers, must have been like, they are thinking of such a person … Continue reading →

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Martyr for Christ: Jean de Brébeuf (1593-1649)

Posted on August 4, 2025 by theamericanplutarch

The images of the great martyrs of the past, those disciples and followers of Christ who committed their all—body and soul—to the Great Commission, to spread the word to all creatures worldwide, inspired Jean de Brébeuf as a young man … Continue reading →

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