When we think about the history of the Church in Korea we remember the many martyrs but at the same time many were those who wanted to live and turned against the community of faith.
After Chu Mun-mo, James (1752-1801) the Chinese priest entered Korea, the Masses were attended with great fervor. However, those who reported the Masses and gave the names of those in attendance to the authorities were also Catholics. The numbers of those who turned against the Church were as large as those who died as Martyrs.
An article in Catholic Digest taken from lectures of a professor reminds us of the sadness during the many years of persecution and the large number of those that turned against the community of faith. The writer mentions how in his own life he reflects on what he does and wonders whether it is a martyr's choice or a renegade's act. When he speaks and acts, is it building up or dividing the community?
One of the Catholics who because of the rites controversy fell away; reported to the authorities the whereabouts of the priest. The Christians were quick to hide him. In order to give the priest time to escape the leader of the Catholics put on the priest's clothes to give time for the priest to escape. He was tortured, suffered but never gave in and finally killed.
Many of the Catholics gave their lives to save the priest. Kang Wan-suk, Columba, was a member of the noble class and the authorities were not allowed to search her house and that is where he was hidden for 6 years. Many are the stories retold about Columba and her work as a catechist.
The priest during this time was hearing about the deaths of many of the Catholics because of his presence and he decided to return to China. He had only to cross over the Yalu River to live. It was at this time that he began to think deeply on what was transpiring in Korea. The Catholics were given their lives for the priest and he was returning home. He returned to his Christians and gave himself up to the authorities.
This part of the story was written by the French Missioner Fr. Dallet, using the written material left by his compatriot, the martyred bishop Antoine Daveluy. He called this the Korean 'Quo Vadis' (Where are you going?) section of the history. (The story of St. Peter who was leaving Rome to escape the persecution and was met by Jesus on the Road asking him Quo Vadis? And returns to Rome and death).
Father reported to the authorities that he was the Father Chu they were looking for and was killed on April 19, 1801, the first priest who died as a martyr in Korea.
In the Kyeongyang magazine, an article by a layman who has worked for 16 years with the diocesan family pastoral committee tells the readers what he has learned.
He mentions a documentary he saw about a priest who was sent to a poor country in Africa. He wondered what would Jesus do in his situation. Would he build a school or a church? It's not what I need but what the others' need that is an act of love.
The writer has the same question about family life. What would Jesus do to help families? We all know the difficulties families are facing in our society. The relationship of husband and wife, the axis on which the family rests is shaking. Children consequently are affected negatively. Alienation comes with age, economic difficulties continue to exist, courting, marriage and having children are renounced; all are part of the reason that Korea has one of the lowest marriage and birth rates in the world.
What would Jesus do? He believes it would be programs for the families. How do families need to communicate? How to solve the problems they meet? How are scars inflicted and healed? How does one convey to another what he feels inside? How to listen to another person? He feels these questions are important and need answers.
We know what Jesus is asking of us but just repeating this we know is useless. Important as it is to know what Jesus wants us to do, we need something concrete to experience. Persons have to be prepared to listen to the words they hear.
Programs for families, the engaged, for fathers are some of the possibilities. He has seen the good that programs of this type have done. He desires to see the family as a church and the church as a family. They need to be seen as one. Jesus came to us in a family and we need to work to make the family into a church.
"The most Beautiful thing that God made, the Bible says, was the family. He created man and woman, and He gave them everything. He gave them the world! Grow, multiply, cultivate the earth, make it produce, make it grow. He presented to a family all of the love that God has in Himself, all of the beauty that God has in Himself, all of the truth that God has in Himself, He gives to the family. And a family is truly a family when it is able to open its arms and receive all of this love" (Pope Francis).
Why are we Christians? Theologians have written books on this question. A professor in the Catholic Medical School writes an article in the Catholic Times asking himself, in these dizzy times, the same question, embarrassed that he doesn't live in imitation of Jesus.
What does it mean to live like a Christian? The first question in the old catechism was: "Why did God make me? God made me to know, love and serve him in this life and be happy with him in the next." This expresses succinctly why we are Christians. We know our origins and needs and what is necessary to accomplish them: to live in the way we are made is to live a fully human life.
Our life as a Christian is to be fully human. This is realized within the community of faith, the church. Those on a journey in search of this completeness are Christians. Jesus has told us he is the way, the truth, and life (Jn. 14:6). We know what we have to do. Each is called in their own particular way for the journey.
The journey is not without trials and difficulties. Often going against the stream of the times. Jesus showed us the way in his own life.
What are we to do? We are called to build up God's kingdom, but in working to realize God's justice we have opposing understandings within the community of faith. Not a strange reality for we have seen this repeated in history from the beginning. Even in Jesus' time, we had two opposing groups who were against Jesus: Pharisees and Sadducees.
Sadducees were happy with the status quo and were willing to go along with the political power of the times. They didn't want to rock the boat they would be considered conservatives, while the Pharisees were interested in the life to come and in following the law as they knew it, and not happy with the situation of society and wanted change, they were the liberals.
Today we can see these two schools of thought within our society. Liberals and Conservatives talking past each other, similar to what we have in the church, more ideologues than Christians.
We need to see what the church considers important and what the church is saying. When the pastoral workers are silent we are faced with confusion. When we go against the truth we are fighting against the kingdom. We need a balance between the things of the world and our work in building up God's kingdom. Is God's justice being formed within the world? We need to look deeply into our roles as Christians and we will find our way.
Smartphone use is now a fixed reality of life. Consequently, pastoral work among the young is a challenge and efforts are made to understand and adapt to the present situation. Not really surprising is the refusal of some of the Sunday school students to go on retreat or camp because they can't take their smartphone with them.
Young people from the time they are born, learn to relate easily to the digital culture and have a preference for instant gratification for the wonders of the digital experience. With the smartphone in their hand, they can quickly enter the SNS world. However, with the use of the digital media, their attention spans continue to decrease. Instead of using words to express feelings they use emoticons. They feel at home with animated cartoons (webtoons) which last less than 10 minutes.
The Catholic Peace Weekly in an article tells the readers how far the pastoral work has progressed in using the digital media for work with the young. Mentioned are the efforts in some of the dioceses and parishes to use cyberspace.
One parish in Seoul found the children busy taking a religious internet quiz and checking the results. Other examples were listed on how the parishes have tried to get the interest of the children. Seoul began in 2015 working with the internet to instruct the children. They have used digital platforms and Korean KaKao Talk (Korean free mobile instant messaging application for smartphones with free text and call features). Since 2013 Taegu has been using Podcasting for instructions and was successful.
Some of the teachers have expressed the opinion that we lag behind the Protestants in these efforts. We don't have the capability at present to take advantage of the opportunities available. There are many programs that are now available but one of the teachers mentions that we need programs for the young people, that are attractive.
Young people in Korea 10-19 use the smartphone about 4.8 hours a day and 2.7 hours they are frequenting SNS. Middle school children use it the most with 4.9. 73.8 % use it for contacts with others, 53.6% for information, 30.1% for pleasure and to relieve stress, and 20.1 % out of habit.
About 3 out of 10 young people are in danger of becoming addicted. The numbers of those who are addicted increase each year. Middle school students are the highest with about 36.3% in danger of addiction. Those who use the smartphone for pleasure and to relieve stress or habit are in the most danger.
Some fear that too much will be invested in developing our approach to the internet and although necessary they are hoping we will not forget that the best type of education comes from the 'hands on type of learning' where the students reflect on what they are learning with programs and in relationships.
The Question Box of the Catholic Peace Weekly answers a reader who had a problem understanding his pastor. The priest was recently assigned to the parish. At first, the parishioners were happy to see how devoted he was to prayer. Saying the rosary on his walks, unlike the previous pastor who related easily with the parishioners but wasn't publicly that devoted to prayer.
However, the new pastor was critical of the parishioners and would repeat that he had never done anything that embarrassed him in his actions. The atmosphere of the parish became cold and the pastor a difficult person to approach.
The columnist answers that he understands well the reader's concern over the parish situation. When you have someone saying they have never done anything wrong making a judgment is not easy. However, expressing himself in that way is in itself a shortcoming in the personality: seeming to show a weak understanding of sin.
When we do something sinful we should know about the wrongness of the act. In this case, we are dealing, probably, with a priest who prays but with a narcissistic personality, one with a saint complex or Pharisee complex.
Pharisees, with great confidence, considered themselves chosen. They were different from those who didn't keep the law. God had a special love for them. They also did not have the experience of living like the poor and experiencing their difficulties, which made them oblivious of their plight. They had no idea of what living in poverty meant. With this very narrow vision, they were unable to make a sound judgment about others. They also may have had mental difficulties.
It is not always easy to distinguish between psychological problems and serious mental health problems but when a person is attacking and imputing guilt of others continually and sees no problems in his own actions then it is not inappropriate to think that you are not relating to a mentally healthy person. Is this not the reason Jesus warned us to be wary of the influence of the Pharisees?
A normal Christian is one who has a normal sense of shame and understanding of guilt. When others are in difficulty and we do not help and are able to help and feel shame this is normal. When we see others doing something sinful we also see the possibility of our sinning and refrain from condemning unreasonably, we are acting like people of faith.
When our sense of guilt is exaggerated we may be dealing with psychological problems but a proper sense of guilt is part of our human condition and helps us understand the faults of others. So before we condemn others, we feel sadness for the person and ask for God's forgiveness. Shame makes us more human and understanding of others.
Life is the first gift received and we spend the rest of our lives thanking God or at least we should. "I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made; wonderful are your works" (Ps. 139:14).
Sadly many are the reasons we fail to see this preciousness and in Korea much of society is concerned because of the large number who have lost the reason for living and die by their own hands. Society knows the cost this has on many families. Programs, education and many efforts are expended to decrease the number of suicides within the country.
In the Catholic Peace Weekly a religious sister who is the director of a suicide prevention program writes an article on what to do when persons don't find a reasons for living. How do we help those who are thinking of suicide? Am I able to help those who are contemplating suicide?
These are the kinds of questions that she hears often in her work. Suicide is the worst possible result of a problem that has many and varied reasons. However, there are ways to prevent this from happening she makes clear. There is a unique counter measure for the problem.
When we discover signs of this possibility we need to take action and use what we learned with Gatekeeper Training for Suicide prevention and get involved. However much learned, it is of little value if we don't apply it.
In the situation of those who are thinking of suicide among the many different emotions they have one that is similar in all cases: a feeling of hopelessness. They have not found a reason for living. Not that there is no meaning for living but they have not found it. When a person has a reason for living he is able to overcome all difficulties.
When a person has lost all reason for living, paradoxically, they are in position to find a reason for living. In the situation they are in they don't have the strength to do this and the reason they need someone to help them. That is where we need to enter and help them to find reasons for living.
Suicide is a choice and in Korea we continue to find ways to help those whose pain either physical, emotional or mental is so severe that nothing makes any sense and they choose death. The family suffers and all those who knew the person suffer so in life we need to be more concerned in making every person we meet our eternal responsibility. In every thing we say and do, to show not only the preciousness of our own life but the lives of all those we meet.
Happiness is a topic central to life. No one wants to live without joy. However, when we ask ourselves whether we are happy the answers don't come easy. A happy person makes others happy and in the process increases one's own happiness.
A religious sister in the Kyeongyang magazine, director of a research center, gives us her thoughts on happiness in a not particularly propitious time in Korea. If the present moment is all that we have than whether I am happy or unhappy depends on me and not on others, it's my attitude.
Studies made on the happiness index of Koreans in comparison to other countries registers low. To come to an objective standard of what we mean by happiness is difficult. The understanding that happiness has in society will influence the citizens. She quotes a sociologist who sees Koreans as cliquish, in a hurry and wanting more, which opens oneself to envy those with education, wealth, and places in society.
Many have an understanding of happiness based on secular values, and not Christian. We are all connected and will not find happiness disconnected from others or with our private groups. Recent Korean history played out before our eyes, shows us what happened to those attempting this.
We need to be providers of joy and begin with those closest to us. I love you, thanks, I am sorry, forgive me.... Within the cells of our brains, our experience, and history are recorded. When we meet similar situations we will react with similar responses: consequently, the reason for training. When we use positive words the positive energy increases and we have joy and peace.
She gives us an example of a garden. We have all kinds of good seeds: joy, love hope but also negative seeds: hate, despair, fear, jealousy. Our actions and words are watering those seeds and the ones we water will grow.
She mentions the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh who recommends we overcome anger in this way: "Do not say it is because of the other person but to mention the feeling of anguish and ask for help. I am in pain and need your help." We need to change the negative energy of anger to positive energy with deep breathing and walking.
For a Christian, we believe that peace is a gift of God. It comes from a trust in God and resting in him. When we surrender to him we will not lose our balance in a continually changing world. Relatively speaking, less chance of losing our way within the chaos we find.
