the korean martyrs
Korea is the only nation where Christianity came to be without the help of foreign missionaries. There are different versions. Some say it was Catholic Japanese soldiers who brought Christianity around the 1500’s, baptizing several who converted. Others say it was the Koreans themselves coming home from China. One thing however is clear, the first Catholics in Korea were baptized by lay men, that is without priests or missionaries, and it is also said that for their knowledge of the faith, they relied on books supposedly authored by Jesuits in China and smuggled to Korea, and they used these to educate themselves in the catholic faith. Lay persons making the rounds teaching the faith to families, person to person, house to house. This was their situation for at least 3 centuries until in the early 1800’s when a Chinese priest finally managed to secretly enter the country and found around 4,000 practicing Catholics, and that Chinese priest was the first priest they ever laid their eyes on. Seven years later their number grew to 10,000, but as they grew in number, thousands, upon thousands were martyred until the persecutions stopped in the year 1883. One of those who were martyred was one of the first Korean priest, Fr. Andrew Kim Taegon. Fr. Andrew himself studied for the priesthood in Macau, re-entered Korea through Manchuria, in China, then went back again to Shanghai to get ordained, then back again to Korea, all the time incognito and in constant fear of the authorities who prohibited with rigor the Catholic faith. Finally, he with many others were beheaded and their bodies were thrown into the Han River.
When I was sent to South Korea years back to represent the Archdiocese in a BEC conference in Seoul, I came to know of the religious faith of Koreans. In the Diocese of Seoul for example, each year they would ordain 10 to 15 priests while in our own diocese we are lucky if we could ordain two or three. Their seminaries are full, really full, so much so that a young man wanting to become a priest has to wait for at least three years in order to be admitted - they have a long waiting list for seminarians. Their catechists are really trained well and they send them to Rome, to Paris and Belgium to study theology. These are lay catechists. Ours could not even attend a mere on-going seminar held in Pius, there in Jaro, every month because some do not have enough money to pay for their fare - while their catechists study in Rome. They do invest on their lay catechists as much as on their would-be-priests, because after all, they, the Koreans, were Christianized by lay catechists. And they are really devout in their faith, clasping their hands in prayer all the time during the mass and the women still wear white manto or the veil. When I talked to some catholic Koreans who came here in the Philippines, some of them told me that they were scandalized because of our attitudes in the mass and by the way we dress for the mass, because a Catholic in Korea can never think of doing what we do and wear during the mass. And some of them have this Basic Ecclesial Community, the BEC, gathering by themselves every week to pray together, read the bible and share their faith. This they do even in high rise condominiums and I was once a witness to their faith when I attended one of their gatherings. Now they number around 4.7 million and you will know them because they acquire the names of the saints when they are baptized, they are renamed during their baptism like Andrew Kim Taegon.
I am sharing this experience and knowledge about Korean Catholics which I believe have its roots in the foundation of the Catholic Church in Korea and the legacy of their martyrs. They have thousands of martyrs, and they can boast of 10 thousand martyrs. Probably that is the reason why they take their faith seriously valuing it, defending it, living it, dying for it because they knew that this faith grew from the gallons of blood that were poured out by their ancestors in the faith. It would be an insult to belittle what they died for. Ours, we have only two and they were martyred by force of circumstance - Lorenzo Ruiz fleeing the Philippines for Japan, and Pedro Calungsod accompanying a priest in Guam.
I am narrating this to show to us the meaning of our gospel today. One is, relationship with Jesus, faith in Jesus is not a relationship based merely on the same blood or gene pool. Relationship with Jesus is established because we are willing and striving to do his will. Catholicism is not a baptismal certificate. That baptismal certificate is only good for getting passports and enrolling oneself in catholic schools. Other than that a baptismal certificate does not do any real good. Again it is the doing of God’s will that makes one a catholic and this will, this will of God is expressed in the teachings of the catholic church. I believe this is something important to reflect on, because sometimes we find ourselves more inclined to listen to the teachings of other religions, teachings which are contrary to our own beliefs as catholics. My point here is, to be true to our catholic faith, we have to believe that God’s will for us is expressed in the official teachings of the catholic faith.
Sometimes we have that tendency to believe nga daw palareho lang ang tanan - palareho man lang na. If that is the case we would be insulting the thousands upon thousands who died and have remained faithful even in death for their catholic faith.
The second point which we can glean from our gospel today is this. For Jesus, faith relationship is thicker than blood relationship. Our relationship in the faith binds us more closely to one another. This is the lesson we can get from the Korean Church especially in its early stages. They shared the faith, they kept it alive by themselves without the help of priests or bishops or missionaries. They felt responsible for one another in the faith, helping each other live through the many centuries of persecution.
But alas we Filipinos were never really persecuted for the faith. We came into this world born as catholics. We never got to choose it. We never even have to defend it to the point of shedding blood. We take it as naturally as we breathe and as staple as the rice we eat. Probably this is where the difference lies. I don’t know, but think it over. What does it take to make us faithful not just in name but in doing the will of God s as expressed by our catholic faith?
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