JMJT! Praise be Jesus Christ! Now and Forever!
Today we celebrate the Korean martyrs who died for their Catholic faith during one of several government-sponsored persecutions that have ocurred over the course of several centuries. In his Canonization homily in honor of the 103 Korean martyrs we celebrate today, Bl. Pope John Paul II had this to say,
The truth about Jesus Christ also reached Korean soil. It came by means of books brought from China. And in a most marvellous way, divine grace soon moved your scholarly ancestors first to an intellectual quest for the truth of God’s word and then to a living faith in the Risen Savior.
Yearning for an ever greater share in the Christian faith, your ancestors sent one of their own in 1784 to Peking, where he was baptized. From this good seed was born the first Christian community in Korea, a community unique in the history of the Church by reason of the fact that it was founded entirely by lay people. This fledgling Church, so young and yet so strong in faith, withstood wave after wave of fierce persecution. Thus, in less than a century, it could already boast of some ten thousand martyrs. The years 1791, 1801, 1827, 1839, 1846 and 1866 are forever signed with the holy blood of your Martyrs and engraved in your hearts.
Even though the Christians in the first half century had only two priests from China to assist them, and these only for a time, they deepened their unity in Christ through prayer and fraternal love; they disregarded social classes and encouraged religious vocations. And they sought ever closer union with their Bishop in Peking and the Pope in faraway Rome.
After years of pleading for more priests to be sent, your Christian ancestors welcomed the first French missionaries in 1836. Some of these, too, are numbered among the Martyrs who gave their lives for the sake of the Gospel, and who are being canonized today in this historic celebration.
As we approach the Feast Days of St. Therese (Patron Saint of Missions), and St. Teresa of Avila (who had great missionary zeal), it is important to renew our missionary spirit as Discalced Carmelites. Indeed, the order itself is a bridge between East and West. Furthermore, its charism is to share the face of Christ and His love with all our brothers and sisters worldwide. This is to be through active service as well as contemplative, passive means.
The first Mission Congress of OCD met in 2007 to discuss its missionary work in Asia, specifically India. It quotes some of the first friars who went abroad seeking the conversion of souls in the spirit of St. Teresa. They wrote of the following confirmations of the missionary aspect of the order:
The first exceptional witnesses in the living tradition of Teresa’s missionary spirit are Fr. Gracián and Fr. John of Jesus-Maria, the Calagurritan. Gracián, according to our records, was aware of being identified with the Teresian spirit, which he also expressly confirms regarding the missions. He sent, when Mother Teresa was still living, the first missionaries to Congo; and later to Mexico (1585), and produced several fervent writings in favor of the missions. Fr. Gracián reminds always the apostolic spirit of Mother Teresa: “From here was born the fact that we all were formed from the beginning in this vocation to go and convert the Gentiles” (Escolias al libro de la Vida de la M. Teresa de Jesús de Rivera. Teresianum, 1981, 371). “As I spoke for a long time and with such intimacy with Mother Teresa of Jesus whose spirit was of zeal and conversion of the whole world, I am still more convinced of this way ” (Peregrinación de Anastasio, dial. III).
Fr. John of Jesus-Maria was the explicit supporter of the charismatic maternity of St. Teresa, and therefore was the doctrinal supportor of the missional spirit of Teresian Carmel. This is his definitive argument:
“Finally we either approve the spirit of Our Mother Teresa or not; Similarly we either venerate her as our foundress or not. Undoubtedly to disapprove of her spirit is reckless and questioning her founding is extremely ungrateful. It is obvious that that our Mother Teresa wanted the missions more eagerly than martydom itself. To this end she guided her works and prayers as well as those of her people, so that whoever devotes himself to the conversion of the heretics may be crowned with success. Who can deny that her idea was to obtain with our Friars, her sons, what she could not obtain with her daughters? (Assertum seu Tractatus quo asseruntur missiones, 1603).
The Venerable Fr Juan Vicente of Jesus Mary (1862-1943) was a missionary in India for seventeen years. Afterwards he was one of the greatest promotors of missionary spirit in Spain, with initiatives that endure still today. He had a strong contemplative vocation, he believed even that he had an eremitical vocation, and in fact was the restorer of the eremitical convent in his Province of Navarra. For that, his perception of the Teresian Carmel charism is very important as a witness of life and doctrine.
“The sons of St. Teresa have understood and professed always, that a Discalced Carmelite must, before all else, be profoundly contemplative, but must be decidedly active. That is to say, he must try, in all sincerity, to burn with the fire of contemplation with that love of God which is as strong as death, and from there proceed to love his neighbour for God, until he makes himself all things for all men, in order to win them all for ever. This is what makes the true Carmelite missionary. Action without contemplation would not be Carmelite; contemplation without action, would not be teresian” (“La Provincia de S. Joaquín de Navarra y su exposición de Paris”, Monte Carmelo 426, 1918, p 367).
The Teresian Carmelite is “contemplative until maximum, apostolic until you can do no more”, “the Carmelite must be a contemplative who is totally apostolic and an apostle who is totally contemplative” (“Way of meditating as taught by our Venerable Fr. St. John of the Cross”, in Mensajero de Santa Teresa, 1924-1925).
Today, South Korea is 10% Catholic. The OCDS community in America is blessed to have at least three different Korean communities in Los Angelos, Washington DC, and New York. But what of the spiritual wasteland of North Korea, or the persecuted underground Church in China? How about the dearth of prayer that was lamented even by the Prime Minister of Japan following the devastating earthquake and tsunami of this past March? Many countries in Asia remain in dire need of the Good News of Jesus Christ. As the Feast Days of St. Therese, the patron saint of missionaries, and our Foundress St. Teresa of Jesus approach, let us ask for their intercession that more may receive and accept the transforming love of Jesus throughout Asia and the world. And we pray for our OCD missionaries who already stand barefoot on the soil of foreign lands, in Uganda, India, and elsewhere, that they may be upheld with our love, prayers, and assistance to perservere in the assurance that good fruit will be forthcoming. Amen.
