Part
Two
When
Padre João Machado walked into the prison, he
was met by the Franciscan Friar Pedro de la Asunción, in prison since 8 April. Fray
Pedro—born in Cuerba, near Toledo, Spain—had been caught via a stratagem employed
by the sheriff of Nagayo (a town in Ōmura-dono’s
domain about 9 miles NE of the port of Nagasaki), who, feigning a desire to
confess his sins, had lured Fray Pedro into a trap.
Fray
Pedro had arrived in Japan in 1608 and had for some years been Father Superior of the Franciscan convent in
Nagasaki. Despite recent animosity
between their two religious orders, however, this Franciscan Friar knelt to
kiss the Jesuit Padre’s feet when he saw him walk through the prison door; Padre
Machado would not allow this obeisance from his brother in Christ.
Ōmura-dono reported to the Shogunate that he had captured
the two priests and then sat back to await the Shōgun’s orders; in the
meantime, the imprisoned priests were celebrating daily Mass, hearing their
fellow-prisoners’ confessions, and restoring korobi-kirish’tan (former Catholics who had been tortured or
otherwise cowed into apostasy) to their proper home, Holy Mother Church. On 21 May, the Shōgun Hidetada’s answer
came: kill the priests. Since Pentecost they had been celebrating daily
Mass together; that morning, during Mass, Fray Pedro said to Padre João, “We
will not be celebrating many more Masses.”
The next morning he told him with certainty, “This will be our last
Mass.” Padre João agreed.
A few hours
later, Lino Tomonaga, Ōmura-dono’s apostate sheriff, came to visit the priests,
talked with Padre João at length, never mentioning the death-sentence, and
left; but he turned right around, came back in, and made his grave
announcement. Padre João Machado
replied, “The three happiest days of my life have been: the day I entered
school at Coimbra, the day I was arrested, and the day I received my
death-sentence: these three.” The two priests burst into song: the Te Deum (Thee, O God, we Praise). Offered a last meal, they refused. Instead, they scourged themselves, confessed
their sins to one another, and prayed.
On
their long march to Kōri Hill, Fray Pedro carried a crucifix with his scourge
and the Franciscan Rule hanging from it; Padre João carried a bronze crucifix
and his breviary. All the way, they
preached without ceasing. When they
arrived at the execution-ground, a Kirish’tan soldier baptized as Damian
presented the holy martyrs with two cushions to kneel on. Fray Pedro de la Asunción, the Franciscan, thanked him and said, “Now may dust
return to dust.”
The
two priests knelt beside one another, a few feet apart. First Fray Pedro’s head fell in one slash of
the sword. The Jesuit, Padre João
Machado, had a more prolonged ordeal, however:
he had to endure three slashes of the sword before he could meet his
God. Perhaps the swordsman had been
wrestling with his conscience as he struggled to obey his earthly lord’s orders;
afterwards, he would perhaps have taken some mystical consolation from seeing
the two priests’ blood flows joining together into one pool: a visual sign of their blood-brotherhood in
Holy Martyrdom.
It
was 22 May, Anno Domini 1617: the start
of a great outpouring of Christian Martyrs’ blood, a baptism of the very soil
itself. This heavenly rain, this testimony in blood to
the truth of the Faith, to the Living Word who is Himself Truth, would seed a bountiful
crop of steely faith throughout Japan, faith that would endure centuries of
persecution to outlive the Shōguns and all their
puny, merely-earthly power.
