24th Week, Wednesday, Sept 20th
1 Tim 3:14-16 / Luke 7:31-35
Paul talks about Christianity: The mystery of our faith is great.
The father of modern Russia is Nikolai Lenin. His desk still remains as it was when he died. A yellowing calendar page preserves the date: January 21, 1924. Not far from the calendar rests the book Lenin was reading when death took him. English-speaking people are surprised when they read its title. It's a book of essays by Ludwig Feurerbach called “What Is the Meaning of Christianity?”
Paul speaks about Christianity's meaning in today's reading. It boils down to this: God became man in the person of Jesus. He lived among us, died for all of us, and ascended to heaven. This same Jesus will come again in glory to be our judge at the end of time.
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What book will lie open on our desk when death comes for us?
Do we try to grow in our faith by reading? "Christianity can be condensed into four words: Admit, Submit, Commit, Transmit."
Samuel Wilberforce
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We hear today the core of St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy. The Church is the community of the living God that makes Christ visible to the world. At a time when Christians had no temples or churches, he speaks of the living Church, the body of the faithful, which must bear witness to the truth. Then, he quotes a hymn in honor of Christ, who is at the core of our faith, for the truth is Christ present in the community. Is Christ visible in the Church? Is he credible in us as a community?
Opening Prayer
Lord our God, you call your Church to be an open house, a community of welcome in which people can encounter your Son. Let your Son continue in us his deadly struggle against all evil and turn death and suffering into springs of life and joy. May thus the world believe that he is alive among us and that he is the Lord who lives forever.
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Saints Andrew Kim Taegon, Paul Chong Hasang, and Companions’ Stories
The first native Korean priest, Andrew Kim Taegon was the son of Christian converts. Following his baptism at the age of 15, Andrew traveled 1,300 miles to the seminary in Macao, China. After six years, he managed to return to his country through Manchuria. That same year he crossed the Yellow Sea to Shanghai and was ordained a priest. Back home again, he was assigned to arrange for more missionaries to enter by a water route that would elude the border patrol. He was arrested, tortured, and finally beheaded at the Han River near Seoul, the capital.
Andrew’s father Ignatius Kim, was martyred during the persecution of 1839, and was beatified in 1925. Paul Chong Hasang, a lay apostle and married man, also died in 1839 at age 45.
Among the other martyrs in 1839 was Columba Kim, an unmarried woman of 26. She was put in prison, pierced with hot tools and seared with burning coals. She and her sister Agnes were disrobed and kept for two days in a cell with condemned criminals, but were not molested. After Columba complained about the indignity, no more women were subjected to it. The two were beheaded. Peter Ryou, a boy of 13, had his flesh so badly torn that he could pull off pieces and throw them at the judges. He was killed by strangulation. Protase Chong, a 41-year-old nobleman, apostatized under torture and was freed. Later he came back, confessed his faith and was tortured to death.
Christianity came to Korea during the Japanese invasion in 1592 when some Koreans were baptized, probably by Christian Japanese soldiers. Evangelization was difficult because Korea refused all contact with the outside world except for taking taxes to Beijing annually. On one of these occasions, around 1777, Christian literature obtained from Jesuits in China led educated Korean Christians to study. A home Church began. When a Chinese priest managed to enter secretly a dozen years later, he found 4,000 Catholics, none of whom had ever seen a priest. Seven years later there were 10,000 Catholics. Religious freedom came to Korea in 1883.
Besides Andrew and Paul, Pope John Paul II canonized 98 Koreans and three French missionaries who had been martyred between 1839 and 1867, when he visited Korea in 1984. Among them were bishops and priests, but for the most part they were lay persons: 47 women and 45 men.
