Sep 20 – XVII Sun of Pentecost / Korean Martyrs

It's the Feast of XVII Sun of Pentecost, 2nd Class, with the color of Green. In this episode: the meditation: "Jesus Christ, Son of God", today's news from the Church: "Preconception Genetic Screening: A New Form of Eugenics?", and today's thought from the Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Have feedback or questions about the DD or our other shows? [email protected] Sources Used Today:

"Jesus Christ, Son of God" — From the Assumption to Adventhttps://angeluspress.org/products/from-trinity-sunday-to-the-assumption

"Preconception Genetic Screening: A New Form of Eugenics?" (FSSPX.news) https://fsspx.news/en/news/preconception-genetic-screening-new-form-eugenics-61142

The Spiritual Life — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (Angelus Press) https://angeluspress.org/products/spiritual-life-archbishop

Please support our new project, the Archbishop Lefebvre Biography Audiobook: Learn more:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Wp4MQdK2o Donate:https://sspx.gifts/audiobook

The story of the Korean Martyrs begins in a way that's almost unique in Catholic history.

Christianity reached Korea before missionaries did.

During the eighteenth century, Korean scholars traveling to China encountered Catholic books written by Jesuit missionaries. They brought them home and began studying Christianity on their own. A small group became convinced that the faith was true.

There was just one problem.

They didn't have any priests.

So Korean lay Catholics began teaching one another, baptizing converts, gathering for prayer, and building an underground Church largely by themselves. When they eventually learned more about how the Church actually worked, they wrote to the Bishop of Beijing essentially saying: please send us a priest.

That request became increasingly dangerous.

Korean society was built around Confucian customs, including ancestral rites that Catholics came to understand they could not participate in as religious worship. Christianity also taught that every person possessed equal dignity before God, an idea that could unsettle a rigid social hierarchy.

Persecution followed.

Over the next century, thousands of Korean Catholics were killed.

Among the best known was Saint Andrew Kim Taegon, the first native Korean Catholic priest. His journey to ordination was incredible. Because there was no seminary in Korea, he secretly traveled hundreds of miles to Macau, studied for the priesthood, was ordained in Shanghai, and then slipped back into Korea to serve Catholics in hiding.

He lasted about a year.

Andrew was arrested in 1846, tortured, and beheaded at only twenty-five.

Another remarkable figure was Saint Paul Chong Hasang, a layman who repeatedly crossed into China seeking priests for Korea. He even wrote directly to the pope asking for help establishing a permanent Catholic mission.

He was eventually executed too.

What makes the Korean Martyrs especially striking is the variety among them.

They included priests and laypeople, nobles and servants, husbands and wives, elderly believers and teenagers. Some families lost several generations.

And yet the underground Church survived.

When religious freedom finally began emerging in the late nineteenth century, missionaries discovered something astonishing: Catholic communities had continued praying, baptizing children, teaching the faith, and waiting for priests through decades of persecution.

Today, several major shrines around Seoul preserve their memory, especially the sites where executions took place along the Han River.

The Korean Church wasn't originally built around a missionary arriving from somewhere else.

It began with ordinary laypeople reading books, discovering the Catholic faith, and deciding it was worth risking everything to keep it.

Holy Martyrs of Korea, courageous priests, families, and lay apostles who kept the faith alive, pray for us.

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