Website: Kirishtan.com
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In 1617 the Shōgun Hidetada (above) found out that the daimyō of Ōmura, whose Christian name was Bartolomeo (like his heroic, departed grandfather), was conniving at the hiding of Catholic priests in his domain in Kyushu, the westernmost of the four home islands of Japan. The Shōgun’s sledgehammer came down on this daimyō’s head: he must expel the priests from his domain at once.
There were some who would rather give their lives for their flocks than be
expelled; among these eternal lights were Fray Pedro de la Asunción of the
Franciscan Order and Padre João Baptista Machado de Távora, S. J. Both were
beheaded on Kōri hill in the domain of Ōmura for the crime of clinging to the
Truth: for being faithful servants of the God who eternally commands,
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
João Baptista Machado de
Távora was born at Angra do Heroísmo (Cove of Heroism) on the island of
Terceira, separated westward from Lisbon by about a thousand miles of the
Atlantic Ocean. His father and mother were wealthy nobles, but his life-story
proves that João was no spoiled aristocrat: at the age of ten, on hearing of
the Catholic martyrdoms in contemporary Japan, the boy announced that he hoped
to go there and become a holy martyr himself.
At age 16, on 10 April 1597 (64 days after the crucifixion of the 26 Martyrs of
Nagasaki), he entered the Jesuit Order at Coimbra, Portugal, where he would
have begun his studies at the Jesuit university. He sailed for India in
1601 and there, at Goa, studied philosophy; next, at Macao (off the south coast
of China), he studied theology, and in 1609 headed for Japan, where he made
astonishing progress in Japanese.
His assigned apostolate was in the region of Kyōto, the Imperial Capital, but
in 1614, when the Tokugawa Shōgunate promulgated its Christian Expulsion Edict,
Padre João Machado escaped to the port city of Nagasaki, a longtime
Catholic refuge on the west coast of the westernmost of Japan’s four main
islands. His assigned apostolate was the far-flung Gotoh Islands. These
islands had become havens for Catholic refugees fleeing the Shogunate’s
increasingly-bloody persecution; Padre Machado is reputed to have performed
awe-inspiring miracles of healing there. In April of 1617, detoured from
an intended voyage to the islands, he said Mass at Sonogi, a village on the
north coast of Ōmura Bay, a few miles north of Ōmura Sumiyori’s
castle-town. This daimyō (feudal lord), christened Bartolomeo, had been born and
raised a Catholic; his grandfather had been none other than Bartolomeo Ōmura Sumitada, the very first
Japanese daimyō to receive baptism, and a dauntless champion of the Faith unto
his dying breath. Sumitada’s faithless son Yoshiaki, however, apostatized, and his son, the great Bartolomeo’s namesake, became a persecutor of the Church under pressure from the Shōgun. His soldiers arrested Padre João Machado at Sonogi immediately
after he had celebrated Mass; as all were practicing Catholics, every one of
them was ashamed, and explained to the Padre that it was only for fear of their
lives and those of their families that they were obeying their faithless feudal
lord’s orders.
Thanks to contrary winds, the soldiers’ boat had to wait at Sonogi; thus, for a
blessed space of days, Padre Machado celebrated daily Mass for both his flock
at Sonogi and his captors. No doubt word
got out and the faithful came from far and wide to confess their sins and
receive the Bread of Life. On 29 April, though, a fair wind having come, that
boat with its life-giving cargo sailed for the faithless daimyō’s castle-town; en
route, the Padre heard the contrite soldiers’ confessions. From the dock at
Ōmura, Padre Machado was led to the daimyō’s prison at Kōri in a torchlight
procession, like Jesus being marched out of Gethsemane.
(Read Part Two tomorrow.)
