Mass for the Feast of the Korean Martyrs

Celebrated by Archbishop Denis Hart
at Holy Family Church, Mount Waverley,
on Sunday, 25th September, 2005, at 2.00pm

Introduction

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am delighted to be here with Father Joseph Lee and with all of you to celebrate the Feast of the Korean Martyrs.

Your very deep faith is founded on their witness to Jesus Christ in the face of persecution, in times of freedom, and in your migration to Australia. We thank God for the ongoing witness, which the courage of these martyrs and their love for Jesus Christ and his Church has inspired.

Today, too, some of our newer members and younger members in the community will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, by which they will receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and be sent out likewise to witness to Jesus Christ.

Because this challenge to witness is even more important in these days, let us call to mind our sins that with the light and strength of the Lord we may show his face to others.

Homily

My dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today we come to recall the story of the martyrs upon whom the faith of the people of Korea is so strongly founded. From the end of the sixteenth century educated Catholics had begun to study Christian literature brought by the Jesuit missionaries to Peking in China. From 1783 with the conversion of Ye Sung Hun and his friends, baptised John Baptist and Francis Xavier, the first church was established in the home of King Born Ou in Myong-dong. From 1831 Korea had become a Vicariate Apostolic and growth followed in the face of the persecutions. During the nineteenth century some ten thousand Catholics were put to death for their faith.

Today we celebrate the courageous witness of Saint Andrew Kim, Paul Chong Hasan, and seventy-seven others, who were martyred for their faith between 1839 and 1846.

I pay tribute today to their strong faith in the face of horrendous persecution, almost too horrible to mention.

At the canonisation of the Korean martyrs on 6 th May 1984, our late, loved Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, said:

“The Korean Church is unique because 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 boast of ten thousand martyrs. The death of these many martyrs became the leaven of the Church and led to today’s splendid flowering of the Church in Korea. Even today their undying spirit sustains the Christians of the Church of silence in the north of this tragically divided land.”

It is the spirit of the martyrs, giving witness to Jesus Christ, that is our challenge as today we celebration Confirmation. Our new Catholics and our young people will come forward to meet God, the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who has indicated that our bodies are temples of his presence; he who remains to give life and light and strength to us, as we go forth to witness to our faith.

In Australia where God is often ignored rather than persecuted, the challenge to witness is the same. We are invited without hesitation to give of ourselves as firm Christians devoted to faith, country and family and to bringing these values and love of our God into the places where we live and work and recreate.

The gentle gifts of the Holy Spirit; wisdom, understanding, right judgement, knowledge, courage, reverence and wonder and awe in God’s presence, are the gifts of the Spirit given to these candidates whom we congratulate for their faith and readiness to be chosen as witnesses to Jesus Christ in the world.

May the Holy Spirit give them strength and through their coming forward remind us of the abiding presence of the Spirit of light, truth, justice and love.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.