Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
The Martyrs we honor today were the victims of the first mass execution of Christians in Japan.
The Catholic faith arrived in Japan when St. Francis Xavier landed on August 15, 1549.
After a bit of a slow start due to problems with the language, conversions multiplied, and by 1597 there were about 300,000 Catholics.
They came from all social classes, from feudal lords to peasants.
Some feudal lords allowed evangelization in the hope that it would open the door to profitable trade relations.
Others enthusiastically embraced the faith, and still others were suspicious.
Christianity was in competition with the established Buddhist and Shinto religions, and Buddhist monks tried to turn the hearts of rulers against the faith.
Court officials, or at least some court officials, wondered whether the missionaries were really as altruistic as they claimed to be, or whether evangelization had some ulterior motive.
One of our group of martyrs was an unlikely saint.
St. Philip of Jesus was born in Mexico City.
He was a stubborn child who would slip away from his mother's supervision to play games and jokes with his friends, which often ended up in fights.
When he told his mother in 1589 that he was going to join the Franciscans, she thought it was another joke, but it wasn't.
He didn't last, however.
After a few months as a novice, he left the Franciscans.
Then he went to the Philippines as a merchant and lived a life of pleasure, but he didn't last in that either.
A year after he left the Franciscans, he was readmitted.
He persevered this time and studied for the priesthood.
The Sea of Manila was vacant when he finished his studies, so he boarded a galleon to sail to Mexico and be ordained there.
The ship was called the San Felipe.
A ship named after his patron saint might have sounded lucky, but things didn't go as planned, at least not as he planned.
The ship was heavily loaded with Chinese silks and other treasures from the Far East, and it was ill-prepared to run into a bad storm.
The last typhoon of the season ripped the main mast and rudder off the galleon and drove it to the coast of Japan.
The pilot wanted to use a makeshift rudder to limp along the coast to Nagasaki, a Christian haven, but the passengers were exhausted after three harrowing months at sea and convinced the captain to overrule him.
Also the pilot guided the ship cautiously into the harbor, but the local lord sent out a fleet of armed boats that intentionally drove the damaged galleon onto a sandbar.
Then he declared that the ship's cargo was forfeited to him by the Japanese law of salvage.
The de facto ruler of Japan, Hideyoshi, had guaranteed the security of Spanish ships, so the captain sent his pilot and a prior interpreter to lodge a complaint.
The local ruler also sent a message to Hideyoshi telling him what he had discovered in the ship, a rich cargo, but also soldiers and cannons.
Were they preparing for an invasion?
Along the way, the pilot ran into the man Hideyoshi had sent to take charge of the cargo.
He started asking questions, and the pilot started bragging about how big the Spanish empire was.
He showed a map.
How was such a vast empire conquered, he was asked.
The pilot's response was understood to imply that first the friars came to convert the inhabitants, and then the conquistadors follow, and the converts rise up to help them conquer the country.
His rash and false statement had devastating consequences.
When Hideyoshi heard about this, he went into a rage and decided to kill all the Catholic priests in the country, but then calming down, he realized that he needed at least some Jesuits to be able to make trade deals.
So instead, he'd just make an example of the religious in the capital city of Osaka and in the imperial city of Kyoto.
St. Philip of Jesus, as it happens, had gone to join his Franciscan conference in Kyoto, and that's where the head of the Franciscan missionaries, St. Peter Baptist, was based.
He was of noble birth, but gave it all up at the age of 21 to become a Franciscan in 1566.
He had come as a missionary to Mexico in 1580, and then to the Philippines in 1582.
There he became the provincial superior and did outstanding work.
He was the guardian angel of all the missions in the Philippines.
King Philip II wanted to make this virtuous priest a bishop, but he declined.
In 1593, he was sent to Japan with five of his conferers to work under him.
He was learned and holy and had worked numerous miracles.
In early December 1596, he was arrested together with two other Franciscan priests, St. Philip of Jesus and two Franciscan brothers and 15 native-born Franciscan tertiaries who worked as missionaries.
The authorities also arrested three Japanese Jesuits, one of whom was St. Paul Miki and the other two more assistants that worked with him.
Like St. Philip of Jesus, St. Paul Miki had completed his studies, or all but completed them, and was ready to be ordained, but there was no bishop in Japan to ordain him.
He was a persuasive preacher who combined eloquence in his native language with solid theological training.
Their noses and ears, or the noses and ears of the prisoners, the condemned men, were to be cut off as a sign of shame before their execution, but the local governor intervened and only their left earlobes were cut off.
Then they were paraded through Kyoto, Osaka, and Sakai to show what happens to Christians.
On January 9th, they began the long winter march to Nagasaki, where they were to be executed as a warning to the Christian enclave.
As they went, crowds insulted them, but St. Paul Miki and one of the Franciscans took every opportunity they had to preach.
The prisoners were able to write some letters and leave them behind.
These testified to their joy at being able to die for Christ.
The youngest were boys of 12, 13, and 14, and who had served Mass for the priests.
Two other Franciscan tertiaries were added to the group along the way, bringing the number of martyrs to 26.
When they finally marched into Nagasaki, the guards were worried that the Christian community would rise up to free the prisoners, but instead they found only a holy silence and looks of grief.
The crucifixions took place on a hill overlooking the city.
The crosses would serve to humiliate the condemned men and to warn others, but it was not Roman crucifixion.
They would not be left on the crosses to slowly suffocate, but killed outright by soldiers.
St. Paul Miki's crucifix was his last pulpit, and there he preached his last sermon.
Some of the martyrs sang the Te Deum to thank God for this grace.
The youngest sang from Psalm 113, praise the Lord, ye children, praise ye the name of the Lord.
At a signal, pairs of soldiers worked their way from the two ends of the lines of crucifixes toward the center, driving their spears into the flanks of the condemned men through their hearts and out their shoulders.
And as they went, the martyrs and the crowd cried out, Jesus, Mary.
And so, this is St. Philip of Jesus, a rebellious child, had become a holy martyr on the hills of Nagasaki.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.