Feb. 6: St. Paulo Miki and Nagasaki

In 1549, the Jesuit St. Francis Xavier and a group of priests arrived in Nagasaki on the feast of the Assumption of Mary, August 15. By 1596, there were thousands of Christians in Japan. The Emperor, worried by the European influence, began the persecution. Twenty-six Christians, consisting of Jesuits, Franciscans, and laymen, were force marched from Kyoto to Nagasaki. There they were tied to crosses. The event is remembered in A Song for Nagasaki:

The Christians in the crowd took up the prayer, four thousand of them. Hazaburo Terazawa was the official in charge of the execution, and he would have to give a personal account to the dictator. He was growing apprehensive, as it was becoming a show of Christian strength rather than the bloodcurdling spectacle Dictator Hideyoshi had ordered.

One of the twenty-six asked leave to speak. He was the thirty-three-year-old Jesuit Paul Miki, son of a general in Baron Takayama’s army, an accomplished catechist and preacher. Dying well was tremendously important for samurai, and they often met death with a jisei no uta, or farewell song. Miki’s strong voice reached the edges of the crowd.

“I am a Japanese and a brother of the Society of Jesus. I have committed no crime. The only reason I am condemned to die is that I have taught the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am happy to die for that and accept death as a great gift from my Lord.” Miki asked the crowd if they saw fear on the faces of the twenty-six. He assured them there was no fear because heaven was real. He had only one dying request: that they believe. He said he forgave Hideyoshi and those responsible for his execution. Then with deliberation and a ringing voice, he gave his farewell song. It was the verse of Psalm 31 that Christ quoted from the Cross: “Lord, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Terazawa gave a sign, and the samurai moved in with their steel-tipped bamboo lances. The samurai gave deep-throated cries, and their lances ripped into the twenty-six. The deadly silence of the crowd suddenly erupted into an angry roar, and Terazawa hurriedly withdrew to complete his report. The spectacle of humiliation had gone awry. The prestige of Christians rose dramatically, and baptisms increased.

Soon afterwards, Japan was shut off from the rest of the world. Not till the 1850s were churches allowed to be built in Japan. The newly arrived Catholics were amazed to find that 50,000 Christians still existed in Japan 250 years later.

This heart
Still believes
The love and mercy still exist
While all the hatred rage and so many say
That love is all but pointless in madness such as this
It's like trying to stop a fire
With the moisture from a kiss

And I hear them saying you'll never change things
And no matter what you do it's still the same thing
But it's not the world that I am changing
I do this so this world will know
That it will not change me

As long as one heart still holds on
Then hope is never really gone

-The Change, Garth Brooks