No spy thriller or whodunit can match the story of the hidden Christians in Japan.
500 years ago, Church officials, and especially the Jesuits, had high hopes of Christianizing Japan. Jesuit priests, primarily from Italy, Portugal and Spain — St. Francis Xavier among them — went into Japan to preach the Gospel, and they were very successful in drawing many to the Catholic Church. Some historians think that at one time the Jesuits could count as many as 100,000 Japanese converts to Catholicism.
Then Japanese civil authorities turned against the missionaries and their Church. Preaching Christianity was outlawed. Many missionaries and many converts were martyred. A few Jesuits escaped back to Europe or to the Spanish Philippines or the Portuguese Asian colonies of Macao, Timor and Malacca, where they were safe.
Some Japanese Catholics refused to abandon the Church. They went underground. Without priests, so without the Mass, they met secretly to pray the prayers that they had learned from the Jesuits. They repeated Bible verses that they had been taught.
Fathers baptized their children and presided at their children’s Catholic weddings. Parents, in whispers, taught their children the catechism from memory. They even crafted statues of Mary in Japanese dress to disguise the fact that the statues represented the Blessed Virgin.
3 simple questions
Three centuries passed. Japan re-opened to foreigners. Christian missionaries returned, shocked to find what they called “the hidden Christians.”
The first Catholic missionaries, reading the handwriting on the wall, warned their converts that while the priests themselves might be killed, one day, in God’s mercy and love, other missionaries would come.
Protestantism had developed. The Jesuits knew that the Chrisian missionaries who might eventually come might not be Catholics. They told their converts to test these new missionaries, if and when they came, so as to receive the truth.
The instructed them to ask three questions: First, do they believe that the Blessed Sacrament is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ? Second, do they respect and listen to the bishop of Rome? Third, do they revere Mary as the blessed virgin and the Mother of God?
They told them to require answers that coincided with what the Jesuits taught.
The questions are simple and short, but they contain basic, essential Christian and of course Catholic beliefs, fundamental to Christianity since the very beginning.
Nothing could be clearer
The four Gospels were not written during the earthly lifetime of Jesus, but composed decades later by the evangelists to record memories of the Lord, lest in the natural course of events the memories would die with the people who heard Jesus.
Nothing in the Gospels is clearer than the Lord’s own definition of the Eucharist. “This is my body” (Lk 22:19). “This is my blood” (Mt 26:28). They recognized him “in the breaking of the bread” (Lk 24:35).
Nothing is clearer than Christ’s appointment of Peter to lead the Christian community, the Church (Mt 16:18). Nothing is clearer than the unique role of Mary (see Lk 1:26-38).
The New Testament is a photograph, a recording of what the first generation of Christians believed. Some of these Christians met Jesus face to face. Some literally heard Jesus. All treasured the Gospel of Christ so much that they wanted future generations to know it. Some died for it. All were willing to die for it.
Nothing is clearer than the fact that the first Christians believed exactly what the Catholic Church always has taught and what it teaches today.
Some people may say that they have trouble settling in their minds the proposition that the Catholic Church, united under the bishop of Rome, is the true bearer of Christ’s message and grace. It is understandable. So many denominations exist, with so many opinions and assertions. So many make their viewpoints heard.
Remember the hidden Christians of Japan and remember the three simple questions posed by the missionaries to test the authenticity of any institution or voice claiming, even if in good will and never intending to dishonor the Gospel, to speak for Christ.
