Paul Miki was born in sixteenth century Japan, at a time when Christian missionaries were welcomed by—or at least held a peaceful coexistence with—the people of Japan. The missionaries were gaining momentum in their evangelization efforts there, and the Church in Japan was beginning to thrive and flourish. Certainly, it must have been a great joy for the missionaries to witness the magnificent power of the Holy Spirit pouring out His grace upon these beloved, newly converted souls. One such soul was Paul Miki, whose conversion to the Christian faith came at the hands of none other than St. Francis Xavier himself, a close friend of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and an original founding member of the Society of Jesus.
God arranged it so that Paul Miki would be taught by the best of the best. Miki’s heart was on fire for Christ; it burned with a passion for his newfound faith. Miki would have never experienced anything like it before. Thanks to the prayers and grace poured out through St. Francis Xavier upon his disciple, Paul Miki would have experienced his own Pentecostal moment. There was no going back. From that day forth, he would have been willing to do anything for Christ—even die for Him. In fact, it would have been his greatest honor.
Paul began preaching the Good News himself—just as his spiritual father and mentor, St. Francis Xavier, had done for him. And just like St. Francis Xavier, Miki began successfully gaining converts to Christianity—in droves. Such was the explosion of grace taking place in Japan.
But then things took a drastic turn for the worse. Fearing the influence of the Jesuits, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, then-ruler of Japan, began persecuting Catholics and decreed that all Christian missionaries should be banished from the country. The work of evangelization in Japan was over.
To drive the message home, the rulers of Japan launched a brutal campaign against Christians, allowing them to escape execution only by renouncing their faith. Paul and twenty-five of his companions refused. They were arrested, jailed, and later forced to march six hundred miles from Kyoto to Nagasaki, where they were crucified and martyred for their faith. Throughout the long march to their certain deaths, the men were heard singing the “Te Deum,” the traditional song of thanksgiving to God. Paul Miki’s last words were ones of forgiveness for his persecutors.
While Miki’s apparent tragic death seemed to end in failure, this was no failure for him personally. Defying all logic, Paul and his companions died as any of us could only dream of passing from this world to the next: peacefully, joyfully, and unafraid. Jesus indeed was with them, until the end of their age.
But what about their failure to carry out Jesus’ great commission to “make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:19)? It is true, from the time that Francis Xavier had set foot in Japan until that point, Christianity had flourished, with over one hundred thousand converts. But when the religious persecutions were over, and the missionaries returned to Japan, they found no trace of Christianity. It must have been one of the saddest days of their lives. All the grace-filled work of their beloved patron saint, Francis Xavier, for all intents and purposes, had ended in failure. Evil, it seemed, had overcome good.
These new missionaries of the 1860s wiped their eyes, washed the tears off their faces, rolled up their sleeves, and made the firm determination that they would start all over again. Perhaps they did not understand the will of God, but they made the decision that they would trust it.
As they established their presence once again in Japan, they discovered something shocking . . . and glorious. Thousands of Japanese citizens living around the very region where St. Paul Miki shed his blood and whose final words of sacrifice included: “I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain,” had secretly preserved the Faith. They had been passing on the teachings of St. Paul Miki and St. Francis Xavier without a single priest, a single church building, and perhaps not even a single Bible among them.
Friends, this was the outpouring of pentecostal grace that had been showered upon the people of Nagasaki on the day Paul and his companions planted the seeds of the Japanese Church by their blood. Without their offering of love and sacrifice, it is certain the spiritual soil in Japan would have run barren and dry.
So . . . did Paul Miki fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission? Of course he did! He faithfully made disciples of the Japanese people—ones that could withstand the test of time—against all odds. For over two hundred years it appeared to everyone—including the Church itself—that Miki’s ministry had ended in failure and disaster. Miki was not even canonized a saint until 1862, as it had not seemed that his was an inspiring story to tell! Who is inspired by someone who died for nothing? But the underground Christians in Nagasaki proved to the world that Miki had died for everything.
So what do we learn from St. Paul Miki about our own lives? Well, the idea of being crucified for our faith is both overwhelming and terrifying to us little ones, so perhaps it seems that his life is unrelatable. But the far greater aspect about Miki’s life for us to contemplate is how much he trusted. Paul Miki did not need to rely on outcomes turning out the way he would have preferred in order to have peace. He did not need to see the end of the story in order to do what he was asked to do. He did not stare at the face of apparent failure and get caught up in doubt, because he knew that “all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). It was centuries before that good made itself known to the world.
And so friends, let us decide today whether we truly believe this too. Admittedly, it is hard to hold onto that belief when things appear to be ending in failure. But let’s understand, we cannot prove our trust unless we are faced with opportunities in which our trust is tested. In the spiritual life, a “test” is not to be understood as an exam with a pass/fail grading system. When God tests us, His intention is to strengthen us. And the beauty of it is that our test strengthens not only us, but also extends that strength to those around us!
The more we are strengthened, the more grace is poured out upon others, such that they are strengthened in their own trials as well. St. Paul Miki and his companions did indeed make disciples of their nation, just not in the way they had expected. May we ourselves do the same, according to the heavenly Father’s vision, and not our own.
St. Paul Miki, pray for us.
Author’s Note: Excerpt from The Safe Haven: Scriptural Reflections for the Heart and Home, Ordinary Time (Weeks 1-7). To purchase, visit Amazon or The Catholic Company, where all other volumes currently in print are also available.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
.png){kind=link}