Saint of the Day - Saint Andrew Kim Taegon
The first native Korean priest, Andrew Kim Taegon was the son of Christian converts. Following his 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.
Andrew’s father Ignatius Kim, was martyred during the persecution of 1839, and was beatified in 1925. Paul Chong Hasang, a lay apostle and married man, also died in 1839 at age 45.
Among the other 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. Peter Ryou, a boy of 13, 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 nobleman, apostatized under torture and was freed. Later he came back, confessed his faith and was tortured to death.
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 taking taxes to Beijing annually. 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 to Korea in 1883.
Besides Andrew and Paul, Pope John Paul II canonized 98 Koreans and three French missionaries who had been martyred between 1839 and 1867, when he visited Korea in 1984. Among them were bishops and priests, but for the most part they were lay persons: 47 women and 45 men.
NAVARRE BIBLE COMMENTARY (RSV) ********************************************************************************
From: Isaiah 55:1-9
Epilogue: Invitation to Partake of the Banquet of the Lord's Covenant
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[6] “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; [7] let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. [8] for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. [9] For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
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Commentary:
55:6-9. The Israelites are called to conversion. In order to return to their homeland, they must return to God, must “seek” him (vv. 6-7). And the Lord, who allows himself to be found and who does not judge in the way that men do, is willing and able to grant forgiveness (vv. 8-9). In other words, the call to repentance is grounded on the goodness of God who “will abundantly pardon” (v. 7). Man, for his part, should grasp this opportunity that God offers him. So, the words in this passage are a constant encouragement to begin and begin again in the pursuit of virtue: “To be converted means to ask for forgiveness and to seek out the strength of God in the Sacrament of reconciliation, and thus begin again, advancing step by step every day, learning to overcome ourselves, to win the spiritual battles that we face, and to give of ourselves joyfully, ‘for God loves a cheerful giver’ (2 Cor 9:7)” (John Paul II, Novo incipiente, 8 April 1979). And St Augustine, apropos of conversion, wrote: “Do not say: ‘Tomorrow, I will he converted; tomorrow, I will give thanks to God; and all my sins, today’s and yesterday’s, will be forgiven’. It is true that God promises forgiveness for your conversion; but He does not promise tomorrow for your delays” (Enarrationes in Psalmos, 144, 11).
The words of v. 8 are echoed by St Paul in Romans 11:33, and are a reminder to us of just how narrow-minded we can be and how we can fail even to imagine the great things that God has in store for us.