[remembered each year on Feb 6]

Summary of information from web:

This group of men died 410 years ago in 1597. The fruit of the missionary work of Frances Xavier and others, the 26 were arrested by Japanese government officials for preaching and were all crucified on a hill now known as the Holy mountain. They included priests, brothers, laymen, Franciscans, Jesuits, catechists, doctors, servants and artisans.

Brother Paul, a Jesuit, is the best known of the group. While hanging on his cross, before they pierced him, he spoke to the crowd, and his executioners:

The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I certainly did so. I thank God it is for this reason I die.

I want to say to you once again: ask Christ to help you to become happy.

I obey Christ. After Christ’s example I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellows as fruitful rain.

When foreign missionaries returned to Japan in the 1860s they found that thousands of Christians lived around the area of the mountain. They had secretly preserved the faith for 270 years. Later they were able to come more out into the open.

My comment:

The area where this happened is where the second atom bomb was dropped in 1945. The epicenter of the explosion was the catholic cathedral, which the Christians had built with their own labor, using no outside funds. Nagasaki became the victim on that day when clouds obscured other targeted parts of Japan.

The second bomb was dropped after the Allies intelligence showed that Japan was already seeking a way to surrender in response to the Hiroshima holocaust.

This atrocity, in which the Christian west substantially smothered the peaceful fruit of the Christian gospel in Japan, speaks deeply to me.

• Decisions made in haste and short notice may annul or destroy something deep and beautiful that I do not yet understand.
• Power misused is powerfully destructive.
• I may not understand the evil that is brooding within me, until it does its damage.
• Forgiveness alone allows me to move forward when I feel my disillusionment and powerlessness at what happened.
• Repentance by the State, unlikely though it is because the state is a power-dependant structure, may be the only way to stop its continuing misuse of power.

John Steward, Kigali, 11 Feb 2007