EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH
Can peace grow from violence?
By Rev. James Rude
John Baptist Maciado was a Jesuit priest sent in 1609 to Japan to minister to the growing community in Nagasaki. John, born in Portugal in 1580, was captivated as a child by the stories that came out of Asia through the letters of missionaries like the great Francis Xavier and wanted nothing more than to walk where Xavier walked. At 16, he entered the Jesuits. He was ordained as a priest and, at 29, in 1609, arrived in Japan to begin his work.
He worked for only five years before the shogun Tokugawa Iyeyasu outlawed Christianity. The Jesuits were ordered to leave the country by their religious superior, but John got permission to remain to support the Christians there. He remained free for three years but was discovered when he left the area to minister to a leper colony. John was arrested and beheaded on Trinity Sunday, May 22, 1617.
His death was part of an intense persecution of Christians under the shogun Iyeyasu, but the question is: Was the shogun working evil against the kingdom of God or working good for the kingdom of Japan? Were John and the others felled as martyrs for the Lord or as cultural aggressors against Japan?
I grew up and worked many years in Los Angeles and became very aware of a great ethnic variety. Moving to Honolulu made me even more aware. But awareness of cultural diversity does not necessarily mean the understanding of cultural diversity.
I think of the stories I was told of American POWs in WWII who were punished because they would not bow to the Japanese officers. Their brothers had no trouble saluting German officers; no one told them bowing was similar.
And I think of the terrible present world situation of terrorist activity and responsive homeland security activity, which seems to some to be equally terrorist, and wonder if we are all dealing with the awareness of cultural diversity but not its understanding.
Japan was dominated by a number of powerful families and warlords, part of a feudal world that dated back to the 12th century. The 1500s saw a movement toward unity which, partly through force and partly through politics, was achieved by the shogun Ieyasu in 1603. As with Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella and England under Henry VIII, Ieyasu in Japan saw national unity to be heavily factored by religion, so not only was Christianity proscribed and persecuted, but also deviant sects of Buddhism came under the sword. Historians say Ieyasu began a period of peace that lasted until 1868. Still it was a peace founded on the murder of scores of people. People like John Baptist Maciado.
I write these words on the Feast of Pentecost, when Christians celebrate the end of the paschal mystery of Christ and the beginning of the mystery of the church. I pray that the fruits of the spirit — wisdom, faith, and love — flower in the church.
The Rev. James Rude, S.J., is associate pastor of the Catholic Campus Ministry at the University of Hawai'i. He writes about Jesuits on www.newmanhawaii.org.
