Robert M. Lilly, a Maryknoll Priest who worked in Korea for many years, discovered the body of St. Hwang Luke in one of the mission stations of the parish in which he was working. "I was fortunate to find the ancestral burial ground of the Hwang family in a mission station of my parish," he said. " My desire to find out more about his role in the growth of the Catholic Church in Korea evolved from that discovery." In this Holy Week edition of Magnificat magazine Vol. 12, No.1 the life of the saint is briefly recounted. Knowledge of the Saint getting out to the rest of the world makes Fr. Lilly very happy.
"At the age of twenty, Luke Hwang Sok-tu, of Yongp'ung, Korea, a pagan nobleman's son, set out for Seoul to participate in his country's national scholastic examination. Stopping at an inn along the way, Luke met a Catholic whose words about his faith deeply impressed him. Luke quickly acquired several Catholic books. After becoming a Catholic himself, he persuaded his wife to enter the Church as well. Luke's father was infuriated by his son's conversion. Finding that his words seemed only to provoke him father to blaspheme, Luke took a vow of silence, promising to God that he would not speak again until his father was converted to the Catholic faith. After observing this silence for over two years, he was rewarded with the conversion of his father. In later years, Luke served the missionary priests as a language tutor and catechist and assisted Bishop (Saint) Antoine Daveluy in compiling and editing books for Korean Catholics. On Good Friday, March 30, 1866, Luke was beheaded together with Bishop Daveluy and four others during a major persecution of the country's Catholics."
