Episodios

  • September 29: Saints Michael, Gabriel, & Raphael, Archangels

    September 29: Saints Michael, Gabriel, & Raphael, Archangels
    Sep 29 2025
    September 29: Saints Michael, Gabriel, & Raphael, Archangels
    Feast; Liturgical Color: White
    Patrons of soldiers (Michael); mailmen (Gabriel); travelers and the blind (Raphael)

    The air between God and man is thick with mystical beings

    It is a principle of Catholic theology that salvation is mediated, that individual man does not go to God alone, and that God does not come to man alone. This means that there are layers of words, symbols, art, priests, nuns, catechists, music, books, churches, shrines, and endless other things and places and people that channel God to us. Even using the name “God” or “Father” or “Jesus Christ” presupposes the mediation of language. So although someone may say they want to “cut out the middleman”of the Church and go directly to God, they can’t. At some point in their youth, they absorbed who God was from others, so even the most basic, apparently innate knowledge we have of God is mediated, if only by nature itself. Today’s feast is about the created spiritual beings known as angels who fill the space between God and man, communicating His message, protecting man from harm, and battling against the armies of Satan. The Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael transmit some of God’s most important messages.

    Michael leads the war cry in a mysterious, metaphysical battle against the Devil and his minions in the Book of Daniel. "There is no one with me who contends against these princes except Michael, your prince” (Dn 10:21), and "At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise” (Dn 12:1). Michael means “Who is like God.”

    Gabriel is an essential figure in the events surrounding the Incarnation. We first meet him in the Jerusalem Temple, announcing the birth of Saint John the Baptist to his father, Zachary: "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news" (Lk 1:19). He later conveys the message of all messages to the Virgin Mary, eliciting her “Yes” to God’s sublime invitation. Gabriel means “the strength of God.”

    Raphael appears in the disguise of a man in the Book of Tobit, guiding the young Tobiah along his journey. "…God sent me to heal you and Sarah your daughter-in-law. I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord" (Tb 12:14–15). Raphael means “God heals.”

    The Old Testament description of the angels worshipping before the throne of God is one of fierce power: “...each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Is 6:2–3)

    These beings are far from the pudgy, pillow-soft, fat-cheeked baby angels so often depicted in art. Today’s feast is for the mighty six-winged angels, the deadly serious ministers of God’s messages. These Archangels engage in consequential spiritual battle, know that God and His Word are not frivolous, and carry out their missions as emissaries of the Most-High. We invoke them now just as Saint Patrick did in the fifth century: “I arise today through the strength of the love of cherubim, in the obedience of angels, in the service of archangels, in the hope of resurrection to meet with reward.” Amen.

    Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, we invoke your powerful intercession before the throne of God in heaven. By your spiritual assistance, protect us from harm, heal us of our infirmities, and convey to us God’s will for our lives.
    Más Menos
    5 m
  • September 28: Saint Wenceslaus, Martyr

    September 28: Saint Wenceslaus, Martyr
    Sep 28 2025
    September 28: Saint Wenceslaus, Martyr
    c. 907–929
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of the Czech Republic and Slovakia

    A young duke is killed by a jealous brother and becomes a Czech icon

    When the famous die young, their unwrinkled faces, dark hair, and youthful vigor are frozen in time, forever vital, forever attractive, forever fresh. Time is not given its chance to run over their skin like water over rocks. No shaping, cracking, molding or shifting of the surfaces. Before the modern cult of celebrity held up athletes, movie stars, and musicians for supreme adulation, most cultures revered their royalty, soldiers, or holy men and women. Kings and princes, bishops and saints, chiefs and warriors served the common good by governing, praying for, and protecting the people. No class of entertainers distracted a populace from the leadership that mattered. Today’s saint, Wenceslaus, Duke of Bohemia, was felled in a fateful encounter with his brother Boleslaus the Cruel. Wenceslaus was already famous when he died young and dramatically. All the ingredients needed to guarantee a lasting legacy were present, and his memory endured. He was recognized by the Church as a martyr, posthumously given the title of King, and quickly became an iconic figure to the Bohemian people such that his Feast Day, September 28, is a national holiday in the modern Czech Republic.

    Wenceslaus lived as Christianity was still dawning in Central Europe. German missionaries had been laboring among pagan tribes for a few generations with success, but the visible layer of a Christian culture rested on a rock-hard pagan substrata. Central and Eastern Europe were passing through the normal stages of evangelization, as an age-old culture with all of its customs and traditions was slowly pushed back by a greater force moving across the landscape like a glacier. Catholicism had moved into Bohemia by the 900s, but the religious environment was not yet monolithic. As our martyr’s death attests, religious and political divisions still ran through the culture.

    The grandfather of Wenceslaus may have been converted by no less than Saints Cyril and Methodius themselves. His grandmother Ludmila was an ardent Catholic and oversaw Wenceslaus’ excellent education in which he learned to read and write both Slavonic and Latin. Wenceslaus’ mother, Drahomira, clung to the old ways, though she was nominally a Christian. When Drahomira thought Ludmila was encouraging Wenceslaus to assume power as a teen, Drahomira had her mother-in-law strangled to death with her own veil. Once he did take power, Wenceslaus banished his own mother, solidified control of Western Bohemia, and became an honorable ruler. He followed the law, favored education, and promoted the form of Christianity practiced in Germany, not in the East. This was a fateful decision. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are Slavic peoples of the Latin Rite, unlike their Byzantine Rite Slavic cousins to the east of the Orthodox curtain. Wenceslaus was pro-Western theologically and liturgically, while retaining his Slavic identity and independence in other essential matters. This double allegiance endures and lends Slavic Catholicism its unique features.

    But for all of Wenceslaus’ brief successes, in the shadows lurked Boleslaus, creating a power center in Eastern Bohemia. When Wenceslaus’ wife gave birth to a son, Boleslaus knew he would not succeed his brother, so he plotted his murder. Boleslaus and his henchman struck down the young Duke Wenceslaus in 929 on the Feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian and on the Vigil of Saint Michael the Archangel. “Brother, may God forgive you” were our martyr’s last words.

    Saint Wenceslaus, you were the model of a just ruler in your brief reign. You saw it as your sacred duty to promote the true God and His religion. Help all rulers and leaders to see morality, liturgy, prayer, and catechesis as the bedrock of a just society.
    Más Menos
    6 m
  • September 28: Saint Lawrence Ruiz & Companions, Martyrs

    September 28: Saint Lawrence Ruiz & Companions, Martyrs
    Sep 28 2025
    September 28: Saint Lawrence Ruiz & Companions, Martyrs
    c. 1600–1637
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saints of the Philippines

    A married father remains unbroken under the cruelest torture

    Many lesser-known faces in the deep audience of saints bask in the soft glow of sanctity emanating from the more prominent “marquee” saints standing on stage. In the Church’s calendar of saints, these more obscure observers of the principle action are often classified as “companions.” They can encompass dozens, or even hundreds, of men and women on a given feast day. Today’s saint, Lawrence Ruiz, is commemorated along with fifteen just such “companions,” in this case mostly missionary priests. Interestingly, Saint Lawrence is not the companion to the priests he died with. The priests, instead, are listed as Lawrence’s companions. The married Lawrence is on stage while his companion priest martyrs are in the audience.

    Saint Lawrence was born of a Chinese father and a Philipino mother, both of whom were Catholic. Growing up in the Philippines, he served as an altar boy, was educated by Dominican priests, and belonged to a fraternal society dedicated to the Holy Rosary. Because he was an educated and careful writer in a largely illiterate culture, he became a clerk and a calligrapher. He married a woman named Rosario, and they had three children. He and his family lived an ordinary, secure, peaceful life of faith. As 1636 dawned, there was no reason to guess that Lawrence would continue living anything other than a quiet life focused on home and work. But then everything suddenly and drastically changed.

    Lawrence was implicated, falsely, in the death of a Spaniard. It was a charge so serious he had to flee the Archipelago. Through his friendships with priests, he was invited to board a ship with three Dominicans, a Japanese priest, and a layman. In June of 1636, the small vessel sailed for Japan, a hornet’s nest buzzing with anti-Catholic persecution. The ship intended to land in a peaceful region devoid of persecution, but instead errantly docked in Okinawa at the worst possible moment. Feudal Japanese Shoguns were out for the blood of Catholics, and the missionaries walked right into their tight grip. They spent over a year in prison before, along with still more Catholic prisoners, they were marched to Nagasaki for the inevitable slur against their deepest beliefs.

    The Japanese had devised torture techniques carefully calibrated to elicit maximum agony and the renunciation of the faith. On September 27, 1637, the prisoners had huge amounts of water poured down their throats, were covered with boards, and then stepped on by guards, forcing the water to spurt out of their mouths, noses, and ears. Then they were tightly bound, with one hand free in case they wanted to signal renunciation of the faith, and hung upside down over a pit. Heavy stones were tied to their bodies to draw blood more quickly down into their torsos and skulls. As the red liquid painfully pressurized their cranial sacs, the torturers strategically cut the victim’s heads to release the collected blood. This prevented the loss of consciousness and prolonged the throbbing pain. Amidst this anguish, no one broke. No one renounced their faith. No one cried out for relief. Mental images of mother and father, of smiling wife and children, of home, the fireplace, and warm embraces, did not prevail. It was God or death. Lawrence’s reputed last words were “I am a Catholic and wholeheartedly accept death for God; Had I a thousand lives, all these I would offer to God.”

    As their chest cavities filled with blood, the victims hearts could pump no more. Lawrence suffocated to death within a day or two. Some of the priests did not succumb as quickly and were beheaded. Lawrence’s fifteen companions were Japanese, Spanish, French, and Italian priests; a few consecrated women; and laymen, almost all Dominicans. Their bodies were burned and their ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. Lawrence was beatified in 1981 in Manila, the first beatification performed outside the city of Rome. After a Philippina baby with hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, was cured through his intercession, Saint Lawrence was canonized by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1987. He is the protomartyr of the only Catholic nation in Asia, the Philippines.

    Saint Lawrence, you were a married father yet forsook return to your earthly home to win a more glorious home in heaven. Help all fathers to be generous in quiet and in tumultuous times, to persevere in small things so they are able to display fortitude in great things.
    Más Menos
    6 m
  • September 27: Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest

    September 27: Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest
    Sep 27 2024
    September 27: Saint Vincent de Paul, Priest
    1581–1660
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of all charitable societies, hospitals, and leprosy victims

    A powerhouse priest organizes multitudes for charity and renews priestly formation

    Today’s saint was one of the brightest stars in the galaxy of saintly men and women whose light rejuvenated Catholicism in seventeenth-century France. Saint Vincent de Paul established charitable societies that have endured to this day. He also founded male and female religious orders that still thrive in the twenty-first century. He was a trusted counselor to bishops, cardinals, and royalty. His ideas reformed how seminarians and priests were trained so fundamentally that this vision became normative for the world-wide Church. He was the hub of many spokes: a close friend of Saint Francis de Sales, his own co-founder Saint Louise de Marillac, and the almost-saint Pierre de Bérulle. Saint Vincent had a great influence over Jean-Jacques Olier, the founder of the Sulpician Order and a prime mover behind the group of French Catholics who risked everything to found Ville-Marie de Montreal, the explicitly Catholic settlement at the farthest edge of French Canada. Our saint also inspired Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, the lay intellectual who established the Saint Vincent de Paul Societies so commonly found in parishes throughout the world.

    Few saints achieved as much as Vincent de Paul. He stood at the core of an evolving group of similarly minded French saints who left an impact like a meteor on the face of the Church. So, although he cannot be understood apart from the charitable Society that bears his name, neither can his achievements be confined to that Society alone. Saint Vincent tried to use his education and personal charm to correct the errors of Jansenism, an overly rigorous spiritual and moral approach to the Christian life that infected wide swaths of the French faithful. When his personal efforts were unproductive, he became more polemical and was instrumental in procuring a papal denunciation of Jansenism.

    Our Saint’s contributions to the renewal of the life of the clergy were notable. He was a proponent and founder, along with de Bérulle, of the so-called French school of spirituality, which has been so universally adopted in priestly formation that there is, in reality, no other approach. This spirituality combines asceticism, practical and active concern for the poor, a missionary drive to the unconverted, a sophisticated theological education, simple and direct preaching, and a total reliance on the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity in seeking to do the will of God. These high ideals, this total approach, also inspired Vincent’s near contemporaries Saints John Eudes, Louis de Montfort, and Jean-Baptiste de La Salle to become who they were.

    To be a man of action and contemplation. To be educated but able to discourse with the simple. To focus on the salvation of souls but also on the material concerns of the needy. To be fully a priest but to have wide circles of lay friends and followers. This was the vision of Saint Vincent de Paul for all priests, and the vision he himself put into action in his own life. He was a force of nature who stormed through life for the glory of Christ alone. Devotion to Saint Vincent followed soon after his death. He was canonized in 1737. His remains are displayed for veneration in a glass coffin above the altar in the ornate chapel of the Vincentian Fathers in central Paris, not far from the chapel of the Miraculous Medal. A partially concealed staircase allows access for the faithful to see the great man up close.

    Saint Vincent de Paul, you worked tirelessly for the poor, orphans, and widows. You gathered around yourself numerous helpers. Your primary motivation was not social justice but the pure will of God. Inspire us to be so committed, so dedicated, and so faithful.
    Más Menos
    5 m
  • September 26: Saints Cosmas and Damian, Martyrs

    September 26: Saints Cosmas and Damian, Martyrs
    Sep 24 2024
    September 26: Saints Cosmas and Damian, Martyrs
    c. Late third–early fourth century
    Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saints of doctors, barbers, and pharmacists

    Holy twins are honored for their healing, their poverty, and their deaths

    The ancient walls of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem enclose the sacred ground where the life of Jesus Christ culminated in His death, burial, and resurrection. Both the modest hill of Calvary and the rock-cut tomb in which His corpse was laid are found under the roof of this venerable church. Calvary and the tomb have long been protected from relic hunters by slabs of marble and stone cladding that conceal the rough, first-century substrata resting just below. There is a custom, still common today, of allowing the faithful to sleep overnight inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. From the time the heavy wooden doors close at dusk until they creek open again at sunrise, the pilgrim must remain in the church. This pious custom of resting and watching in the dark, all night long, near a holy site in order to soak up its latent power is called “incubation.” The custom originated in an ancient church in Constantinople housing the remains of today’s saints, Cosmas and Damian, where the faithful incubated themselves in the hope of a miraculous cure.

    Similar to Saint George, legends about Saints Cosmas and Damian far outrun any verifiable historical details about their lives. The devotion to today’s saints across epochs and cultures is as broad as an ocean but as shallow as a lake. Upon a slender bed of long-lost documents rests the narrative that Cosmas and Damian were twins and natives of Saudi Arabia who studied medicine in Syria. They became known as the “moneyless ones” for not accepting payment for their healing services. They were likely martyred north of Antioch in the early fourth century.

    The earliest historical anchor planting these holy brothers in the ground of history dates to around 400 A.D., when a pagan visitor recorded a visit to a shrine dedicated to Cosmas and Damian in Asia Minor. In the fifth century, a church was built to their memory in Constantinople and, in the sixth century, a pagan temple in the Roman Forum was rededicated as a Basilica in their honor. The bright apse mosaic of Rome’s Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian still shines and shows Saints Peter and Paul presenting the twins to the glorified Christ.

    Most of the wealth of miracles that have long been attributed to Saints Cosmas and Damian involve healing, in keeping with their medical profession. The fame of these miracles, together with their martyrdom, was so widespread in the early Church that they joined that elite class of martyrs, saints, virgins, and popes whose names were inserted into the Roman Canon, or Eucharistic Prayer I, where they are still read at Mass today. Their names also ring out in ancient litanies still sung at solemn Masses. Yet close familiarity with their names may dull our curiosity about their gory end.

    No details have been preserved, but it can be supposed that Cosmas and Damian died like so many other martyrs: by crucifixion, beheading, or drowning at sea; by the goring of beasts, or by their flesh being burned off in a roar of flames. The chilling sentence of death read by a Roman official sent a cold shiver up the spine. It was irrevocable. The martyr’s fate was often to be publicly shamed, tortured, and physically destroyed in a brutal fashion in keeping with a brutal world. No miracle saved Cosmas and Damian from their violent end. As physicians, they knew well the frailty of the human body. They understood their own bodies to be cracked vessels flooded temporarily with the Holy Spirit of God. And when the time came for that earthen vessel to return to the clay from whence it came, they bravely gave up what was never theirs. They offered a witness so shocking that it was seared into the memories of those who saw it, a witness so other-worldly that a few emulated it, and untold masses of others honored it through prayer and devotion, as we still do today.

    Saints Cosmas and Damian, through your heroic witness of martyrdom, we ask your intercession to embolden the weak, to strengthen the hesitant, to give words to the meek, and to unleash the hidden power of the Gospel in all those who could do more.
    Más Menos
    6 m
  • September 23: Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest

    September 23: Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest
    Sep 22 2024
    September 23: Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio), Priest
    1887–1968
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: White
    Patron Saint of civil defense volunteers and adolescents

    A humble friar’s love for Christ burns holes in his hands

    Long-married spouses often develop similar patterns of speech. A boy might learn to walk just like his father, and a girl might favor the same hairstyle as her mom. Teenagers in the same cliques dress alike and cut their hair in a similar fashion. It is natural to adopt the traits of the one you love, to mimic their behavior, dress, speech, and habits, consciously or unconsciously. Lover and beloved converge, master and disciple unite, leader and follower bond. Today’s saint did not have a reference group apart from Christ Himself. Jesus Christ inhabited every corner of the mind, soul, and imagination of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. Pio’s life fused with Christ’s so totally that Pio’s very body bore the marks of his beloved. Not the same haircut, clothes, or gait, but the same nail marks and bloody wounds. Father Pio merged with Christ such that to look upon the friar’s hands was to see the crucified palms of the Son of God on Calvary.

    Padre Pio grew up dirt poor and uneducated in a village near Naples, Italy, in 1887. Neither his parents nor his grandparents could read or write. He was baptized as Francesco and helped on the family’s small plot of land as a boy. The family was deeply religious, in the good, medieval way that perdured in rural Southern Europe far longer than it did in Northern lands. Saints, feast days, devotions, processions, fasts, the Mass, angels, saints, the Virgin, and God were the stuff of life. They saturated the atmosphere of Pietrelcina. Little Francesco and his family breathed Catholic air. It entered their bloodstream, circulated in their veins, and oozed out of every corpuscle. When he was about ten years old, Francesco decided to dedicate his life to God as a Franciscan friar. After completing some schooling and being privately tutored, he entered a nearby Franciscan friary at age fifteen. He took the name Pio (Pius) after a saint honored in his hometown. He was ordained a priest in 1910.

    Padre Pio lived virtually his entire priestly life at a modest Franciscan friary in the rural town of San Giovanni Rotondo. Beginning in 1918, he began to experience the stigmata, or marks of the sufferings of Christ. He bled where Christ bled. Holes perforated his hands. He had sharp pains in his side. He also began to display supernatural gifts: bilocation, prophecy, miracles, and healings. His personal routine of prayer and mortification was also stupefying. He did not want his private passion play to go on tour, but it did. He became famous throughout Italy for being holy. Then he became widely known the world over. By the time of his death in 1968, Padre Pio was a bona fide Catholic superstar.

    Padre Pio had mystique. That mystique was not rooted in good looks, a chateau on the Côte d’Azur, or in movie stardom, but in how he said Mass. People flocked to witness Padre Pio say long, intense, devotional Masses. In the modern world, sin has mystique. It’s cool, retrograde, impulsive, and “edgy.” A life of sin and vice is seen as more authentic than a life of goodness and virtue, because the sinner supposedly does not hide his real self behind a social curtain. Padre Pio hid nothing. He was totally authentic, totally sincere, and totally holy. His life was a rebuke of sin. He did not pretend to “share” others’ burdens by joining them in sin. He entered into the real drama of life by embodying Christ. A true Christian is authentic when he separates himself and his friends from sin, when he creates the mystique of Christ around him, and when, like Christ, he draws all men to himself.

    Saint Pio, your intense love of God was communicated to the faithful in your celebration of Mass, your wise counsel in the confessional, and in your mystical experiences. What was so manifest in you was rare but lies latent in every priest. Help every priest to be an icon of Christ.
    Más Menos
    6 m
  • September 21: Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

    September 21: Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist
    Sep 20 2025
    September 21: Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist
    First Century
    Feast; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saint of bankers, accountants, and money changers

    A lover of money becomes greedy for God

    People leave their jobs for all sorts of reasons: more pay, better opportunity, a shorter commute. Today’s saint left his job for a better boss. Matthew was at work in the city of Capernaum, a bustling town with a customs house. It was just another day, and Matthew was going about his job of collecting taxes. Nearby, Jesus was doing his job too, curing a paralyzed man. It was an ordinary day for both of them. But after performing His miracle, Jesus walked down the main street of Capernaum, saw Matthew outside of the customs house, and then...the normal day ended. Jesus said to Matthew, simply, directly, and with force, “Follow me.” And then something astonishing happened. Matthew followed Him. Fistfuls of Roman coins may have spilled from his hands, or he may have swallowed a gulp in his throat, quickly adjusted his tunic, and then scurried to walk in the small clouds of dust that puffed up behind Jesus as His sandals slapped the dry ground. In an instant, Matthew’s life changed forever and always. He had become a follower, a joiner, of the most important man in the history of the world.

    The Gospel of Matthew nowhere mentions that it is written by a man named Matthew. But it was attributed to him very early in the life of the Church. It was compiled by 80 A.D., at the latest. Matthew’s Gospel is clearly written by a Jew and for Jews. It references the Old Testament repeatedly and notes how Jesus fulfilled those ancient Scriptures. Matthew’s Gospel is the only one which identifies him as a tax collector. Mark and Luke refer to him as Levi, which may have been his birth name, while Matthew (“gift of Yahweh”) was his post-conversion name. Because it begins with a genealogy, Matthew’s Gospel, but not Matthew himself, is in art represented by a man or by a man’s face. After his big moment in Capernaum, Matthew’s name consistently appears in the Gospels’ lists of Apostles, but little more is said about him, apart from a feast he hosts in honor of Jesus. It is not known where he evangelized or where or how he died. Four churches in France alone claim to have Matthew’s head, implying that no one has his head.

    Christ passes by in every life. Everyone has their chance to say “Yes” or “No,” to stay or follow, to change or remain the same. That moment may come only once and never return. Sudden callings, and sudden conversions, are rare, but they do happen. A life is more likely to plot gradually up or down like a line on a graph than to take a sharp right angle in either direction. Matthew’s life angled sharply when his personal trajectory intersected with Christ’s. The moment is captured in all of its drama by the painter Caravaggio in his Calling of Saint Matthew. A broad shaft of light beams through the room from above Christ’s head. His bony finger points to a well-dressed man at a table with his hands over a pile of coins. The scene unfolds not in the street but in a darkened room. Light and darkness play. Sin and virtue tussle. Past, present, and future hang in the balance. Christ seems to say, “Will you take and eat, will you go and sell, will you come and follow me?” Difficult, challenging questions. But Matthew gave the difficult, generous answer in response, and we remember him today due to that one moment.

    Saint Matthew, you made the right decision at the right time and so changed your life and those of millions of others who know Christ because of you. Help us to recognize when a pivot point arrives in our own life, when we must change direction, and help us to choose that direction well.
    Más Menos
    5 m
  • September 20: Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Priest, and Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs

    September 20: Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Priest, and Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs
    Sep 20 2025
    September 20: Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Priest, and Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs
    Nineteenth century
    Memorial; Liturgical Color: Red
    Patron Saints of Korea

    Their martyrdom for a new faith caused the Christian sun to rise in Korea

    Catholicism was not originally brought to the isolated Korean Peninsula by celibate missionaries who trekked over its remote borders or who landed on its far shores from the outside. Instead, native Korean intellectuals had heard interesting ideas and had read intriguing books imported from nearby China about a new faith. These diplomats, professors and poets went in search of the Church. They crossed their own borders to speak with Jesuit priests in Beijing. The Koreans dialogued with the Jesuits, read their works, witnessed the celebration of the sacraments, and saw the Chinese Church in action. One of these Korean scholars, a man named Yi-Sung-hun, was baptized as Peter in Beijing in 1784 by a French missionary. Newly minted in Christ, with a convert’s fervor, Peter filled his baggage with catechisms, crucifixes, statues, rosaries, and images of the Virgin Mary and headed back to Korea excited to unpack the new faith for all to see. Peter baptized some of his friends and together they formed the first community of Catholics in Korea. They met in a house where sits, today, the Cathedral of Myeongdong.

    The evangelization of Korea dawned as a thoroughly lay initiative. And once the Catholic seed was planted in Korean soil, it first grew slowly among scholars but then more steadily among the larger populace over time. Today’s feast commemorates the official persecution that burned hot, then cold, then hot, for decades as those first Christian seeds germinated. As the Church grew like a plant, it protruded too high over the land and was repeatedly cut down in the bloody harvest commemorated today. Hundreds of martyrs, mostly lay men and women, but some French missionary bishops and priests as well, were murdered by successive Korean governments throughout the last decade of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth for the crime of being baptized Catholics. They posed no other threat.

    Paul Chŏng Ha-sang was a nobleman whose father and brother were martyred. Sacrifice was in his genes. Paul traveled to Beijing nine times, pleading for the Chinese Church to send priests to the lay-led Korean Church. Along with others, he sent a letter to Pope Pius VII describing the plight of the Korean faithful. Once clandestine priests began to arrive regularly in the 1830s, Paul would go to the Korean border to escort them to the communities of the faithful and lodge them in his own home. Paul was executed in 1839. His mother and sister were killed shortly after him.

    Father Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn was the very first native-born Korean priest. He departed Korea in 1837 for the Portuguese settlement of Macau to complete his seminary studies. He was ordained by a French missionary bishop in Shanghai in August 1845. He then guided back to Korea the same bishop and a French priest. His priestly ministry would be to die. He was arrested less than a year after his ordination. The authorities were so impressed with his personal bearing, education, and linguistic abilities that they agonized over whether he should be executed. They wrestled with their consciences, but their consciences, in the end, lost. Father Andrew was beheaded at the age of twenty-six in September 1846.

    The struggle to establish an organized Church structure in Korea was brutal. Today’s martyrs, whose names are all known and about whom basic facts are verified, stand in the fore. Yet behind them stand, faceless and nameless, thousands of other martyrs known to God alone. They perished by the sword, by crucifixion, in prison, or of starvation, rather than renounce their Christian faith when faced with certain torture and death. The Catholic Church in South Korea today is immense and vibrant, fully Korean and fully Catholic. The Church in North Korea does not effectively exist, and martyrs may still be dying there today, squeezed to death in the iron grip of its dictators. The story of the Korean Church is one of daring, one of steely courage, but one of tears. Only in 1886 did the century of persecution end, with a French-Korean treaty. Pope Saint John Paul II canonized Father Andrew Kim, Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and 101 other Korean martyrs on May 6, 1984, at a Mass in Seoul, South Korea. It was, at that time, the largest gathering of humanity in the history of the Korean peninsula. The martyrs’ blood was fertile.

    Holy Korean martyrs, known and unknown, we implore your powerful intercession in heaven. Give us half your courage, a quarter of your daring, and just one percent of your faith. With that we can emulate you in the easy circumstances of today, where we suffer metaphorically, but rarely in our bodies.
    Más Menos
    7 m