DAILY- HOMILY

February 6, 2017 – MONDAY, 5TH Week Ordinary Time

Sts. Paul Miki, Religious, and Companions, Martyrs 

St. Pedro Bautista, Priest and Martyr 

Bl. Charles Spinola, Sebastian Kimura, Priests, and

Companions, Martyrs

Memorial, Red

Gn 1:1 - 19 I Mk 6: 53- 56

     St. Paul Miki (1562- 1622), a Japanese Jesuit scholastic, and 25 companions were martyred on crosses and then stabbed with spears in Nagasaki. Two other Jesuits in the group were Sts. John Soan de Goto (1578 - 1597), a Jesuit scholastic, and James Kisai (1533 - 1597), a lay brother.

     Among them also was St. Pedro Bautista (1542 -1597), a Spanish Franciscan priest, who had previously worked in the Philippines for nine years.

   Bl. Charles Spinola (1564 - 1622), an Italian Jesuit missionary to Japan, was martyred in Nagasaki with thirty other Jesuits, half of them Japanese. Among them was 81. Sebastian Kimura (1565 -1622), a Jesuit, the first Japanese ordained a priest.

GOSPEL READING:     Mk 6: 53- 56

     Having crossed the lake, they came ashore at Gennesaret where they tied up the boat. As soon as they landed, people recognized Jesus and ran to spread the news throughout the countryside. Wherever he was, they brought to him the sick, lying on their mats. And wherever he went, to villages, towns or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplace and begged him to let them touch just the fringe of his cloak. And all who touched him were cured.

REFLECTION

     Today is the feast day of many martyred in Japan in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, including St. Pedro Bautista, a Spanish Franciscan priest, who had previously worked in the Philippines.

     What is it in the Catholic religion that some were willing to die for their faith? Of course, martyrs loved God so much they were willing to suffer persecution and death for their faith in him. Some say because the Christian experience of faith is not based on simple rational thinking and so some are willing to do what may seem unimaginable, to die for their faith.

     Indeed such perseverance has driven those who persecute them for their faith more determined to punish them: they find them unreasonable, stupid and misled, and truly hard-headed. The persecutors could not understand how the Christians could believe in a God who seemed so weak as to die on the cross. They could not understand such a God nor people who believed in such a God, even willing to die for their faith.

     For them God should be powerful and not subjected to suffering and death as Jesus was, so those who preach a crucified God infuriates them. In their misunderstanding and disgust, they subject the Christians to the same sufferings and death Jesus suffered.

     But the death of martyrs is their triumph over evil, sin and death. Thus, we extol and honor them. Thus, their example and death inspire us to live our faith with greater ardor and devotion; their example and death have indeed been the "seed of Christianity," especially in its early years in Rome.

WE PRAY FOR MTQ DAILY PRAYER INTENTIONS:

BIRTHDAY

     BAYANI R. REYES

IN MEMORIAM (†) 

     FRANCIS B. ANG (JULY 1,1927 ·FEB. 6, 2005)

     LUIS ROLEDA

Finally, we pray for one another, for those who have asked our prayers and for those who need our prayers the most. 

Have a good day!

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