Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A (2026) - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

The year is 1630, and a Dominican friar is writing home.  Fr Dominic Ibáñez de Erquicia has been preaching the Christian mission in Japan for the last seven years or so.  He arrived in Japan in answer to the call for more missionaries, after Tokugawa’s persecution had depleted their numbers: our brother Dominic was thirty-three.  Now forty, Fr Dominic sees that the persecution is reaching a new level.  Whereas before, he was able to disguise himself as a merchant to visit Catholic families, now he can only go visiting at night and mustn’t stay in one place for very long: the townsfolk are given rewards for betraying priests to the authorities.

To his father back home Fr Dominic writes:

Last year at the end of July a cruel governor arrived in the city where I now reside.  He has sealed off every means of departure by land or sea, lest any Christian escape ... I have now come to the point of greatest danger for me in this persecution and I already have a feeling that this is the last letter which I shall be able to write.

Fr Dominic reports that the local missionaries, one by one, are being captured and killed: an Augustinian was found on a mountain, a Jesuit in the city, a Franciscan tertiary too.  Remarkably, our Fr Dominic survived three more years.  Eventually, he was betrayed by a Christian apostate, taken to Nagasaki, and put to death by being hanged upside down.  He died on the fourteenth of August 1633 and was canonised just over 350 years later.  The only traces of Fr Dominic are documents: his body burned, his ashes scattered.

Thankfully, St Dominic Ibáñez de Erquicia took the Lord seriously, to declare ourselves for him under fire.  The Lord’s teaching applies not only when we’re in danger of losing our lives because of our faith, but also when the loss is still serious but not as grave: we are to declare ourselves for the Lord when we stand to lose our reputation, station, possessions, and freedom, as well as when our life is in danger.

For the martyrs, as the case of this St Dominic shows, the end isn’t a sudden surprise.  The end comes as the climax of a long, drawn out persecution.  Each stage in the persecution becomes a threshold that the martyr crosses.  At each threshold the martyr must make a stand: find a way to survive if there is one, but certainly hold on to the faith, to hold up the faith come what may.  Our St Dominic made his stand many times before he was executed: when he became a missionary, when he hid himself away, when he was trapped in the district, when he had been arrested, when he was presented with his own death.

Our martyr Dominic shows that the stand is made at every stage.  If it isn’t, if we hide the light of faith when times are bad, it’ll go out altogether when the time is worse – and if there is no light of faith in us, the Lord will not see that we’re his on the last day.  Indeed, passing the test of faith as the situation worsens brings on a much-needed indifference to the situation: with all the fortitude we seek for ourselves, the Lord tells us not to be afraid of those who kill the body but who cannot kill the soul.

We shall let the Lord alert us to how compromises weaken us well before the greater trials come.  Those who fall away altogether give their faith up piecemeal: I’m with my family this week so I’ll just go to Mass next Sunday instead; I’ll do nothing about that sinful act I just saw; I won’t say anything about casual blasphemy in my workplace; I’ll let my children decide whether they want to be baptized as adults; I’ll be back in Church next Christmas.  As we live, so we die.

Surrounded by hostile forces and knowing his end, St Dominic wrote some precious advice for his father which we shall make our own:

Let us so act that we may see one another in heaven for all eternity, fearing no separation here.  Let us have no concern for this world, for it is our exile and separates us from God who is our highest good ... May the Lord keep you until you reach our heavenly homeland.

The Lord’s own example will assist us in our next steps.  When we know we’re entering a situation of hostility to the faith, we are to turn to God for strength.  The Lord prayed before every major decision in his public ministry.  Some centuries before, Jeremiah too prayed that he would see justice done.

Like them, we shall turn towards God.  He knows that it is through this world with all its hatred and misunderstanding that we make our way.  That is why he is at the ready to assist us.  At every step, to him we say: “In your great love, answer me, O God, with your help that never fails.”

Fr Paul Rowse, OP is the Parish Priest of Camberwell East, Victoria.