A Though on the Church in Japan Grown out of the Seed of Martyrs’ Blood, on the Memorial of the 26 Martyrs in Nagasaki, Japan (February 6)

 "Plures efficimur, quotiens metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis Christianorum". Apologeticus L13, Tertullian

Tertullian wrote, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church". Indeed so, in regard to the 26 martyrs of Nagasaki, Japan.

St. Paul Miki, SJ, the first Japanese Jesuit,  St. Pedro Bautista, OFM, Spanish Franciscan missionary priest from the Philippines, and 12-year-old faithful Japanese boy, St. Ludovico Ibaraki, who even tried to convert an executioner, are just a few of these 26 heroes in Catholic faith, whose lives are memorialized and honored on February 6. Their bloods are seeds of the church in Japan.

As his death drew nearer in Jerusalem, Jesus said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit"(John 12:24). In fact, this was in reference to these prophetic words of his own earlier, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). And the newly raised Temple is the one holy catholic apostolic Church, as defined in the Nicene Creed, and one body of  Christ with many functioning parts in coordination, as Paul has put it (1 Corinthians 12:12-26). And we make up this one body of Christ, called the Church (1 Corinthians 12:27). Therefore, we make up the abundance of the grains, out of the first one grain of wheat, Jesus.

In 1549, St. Francis Xavier, SJ, and his Jesuit companions, began sowing seeds of Christian faith in Japan. And St. Pedro Bautista, OFM, and other Franciscans also saw seeds of faith in Japan.  St. Paul Miki, SJ, and St. Ludovico Ibaraki, were just two of the seeds out of the seeds these Jesuits and Franciscan missionaries in Japan had sown.

The 26 martyrs of Nagasaki in 1597 are the first batch of the grains of wheat raised on their respective crosses and fell to the ground of Nishizaka, Nagasaki, from which the church of Japan has been growing strongly, sustaining herself through nearly 250 years of severe persecution and the plutonium bomb destruction on August 9, 1945.

To this date, at least 205 known martyrs are in Japan, including the 26 martyrs of 1597.

May the church in Japan grow abundantly fruitfully "super martyris sanguine sanctorum".