Replies

St. Paul Chong Hasang

SEPTEMBER 20
ST. ANDREW KIM TAEGON AND ST. PAUL CHONG HASANG

St. Andrew Kim Taegon was a priest and St. Paul Chong Hasang was a lay person. These two martyrs represent 113 Catholics who died for their faith in Korea. They were proclaimed saints by Pope John Paul II during his visit to Korea in 1984.
Christianity reached Korea in the seventeenth century. It was brought there by lay people. The believers nourished their faith on the Word of God. They quietly grew and flourished. Missionary priests came from France. The Korean people were introduced to the sacramental life of the Church. Government persecutions took place, off and on, throughout the nineteenth century. A total of 103 Koreans were killed between 1839 and 1867. Ten members of the Foreign Mission Society of Paris were martyred, too, three bishops and seven priests. This brought the total to 113.
St. Andrew Kim Taegon and St. Paul Chong Hasang represent the glorious and courageous Korean Catholics who paid the price for their love for Christ. St. Andrew Kim Taegon was the first Korean priest. He was martyred on September 16, 1846, just a year after his ordination. Andrew's father had been martyred in 1821. St. Paul Chong Hasang was a heroic lay catechist. He was martyred on September 22, 1846.
Today the Church is growing rapidly in Korea. The gift of faith is being received because of the sacrifice of the martyrs who paved the way.

"We have received baptism, entrance into the Church, and the honor of being called Christians. Yet what good will this do us if we are Christians in name only and not in fact?"-St. Andrew Kim

Andrew Kim Taegon & Paul Chong Hasang& companions, martyrs

Andrew Kim Taegon, Paul Chong Hasang

and Companions
Feast Day: September 20, 2007
(1821-1846)

Andrew Kim Taegon, first native Korean priest was the son of Korean converts. His father, Ignatius Kim, was martyred during the persecution of 1839 and was beatified in 1925. After Baptism at the age of 15, Andrew traveled 1,300 miles to the seminary in Macao, China. After six years he managed to return to his country through Manchuria. That same year he crossed the Yellow Sea to Shanghai and was ordained a priest. Back home again, he was assigned to arrange for more missionaries to enter by a water route that would elude the border patrol. He was arrested, tortured and finally beheaded at the Han River near Seoul, the capital.
Paul Chong Hasang was a seminarian, aged 45.
     Christianity came to Korea during the Japanese invasion in 1592 when some Koreans were baptized, probably by Christian Japanese soldiers. Evangelization was difficult because Korea refused all contact with the outside world except for an annual journey to Peking to pay taxes. On one of these occasions, around 1777, Christian literature obtained from Jesuits in China led educated Korean Christians to study. A home Church began. When a Chinese priest managed to enter secretly a dozen years later, he found 4,000 Catholics, none of whom had ever seen a priest. Seven years later there were 10,000 Catholics. Religious freedom came in 1883.
     When Pope John Paul II visited Korea in 1984 he canonized, besides Andrew and Paul, 98 Koreans and three French missionaries who had been martyred between 1839 and 1867. Among them were bishops and priests, but for the most part they were lay persons: 47 women, 45 men.
     Among the martyrs in 1839 was Columba Kim, an unmarried woman of 26. She was put in prison, pierced with hot tools and seared with burning coals. She and her sister Agnes were disrobed and kept for two days in a cell with condemned criminals, but were not molested. After Columba complained about the indignity, no more women were subjected to it. The two were beheaded. A boy of 13, Peter Ryou, had his flesh so badly torn that he could pull off pieces and throw them at the judges. He was killed by strangulation. Protase Chong, a 41-year-old noble, apostatized under torture and was freed. Later he came back, confessed his faith and was tortured to death.

Comment:

We marvel at the fact that the Korean Church was strictly a lay Church for a dozen years after its birth. How did the people survive without the Eucharist? It is no belittling of this and other sacraments to realize that there must be a living faith before there can be a truly beneficial celebration of the Eucharist. The sacraments are signs of God's initiative and response to faith already present. The sacraments increase grace and faith, but only if there is something ready to be increased.

Quote:

"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 10,000 martyrs. The death of these 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 in the Church of silence in the north of this tragically divided land" (Pope John Paul II, speaking at the canonization).