Homily for Thursday, Week 14 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Thursday
Week 14 of Ordinary Time
Chinese Martyrs

July 9, 2026
Matt 10: 7-15
Hos 11: 1-4, 8-9
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

“As you go, make this proclamation:  ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Matt 10: 7).

In yesterday’s gospel, Jesus selected his 12 apostles and sent them out to do his work.  Today he instructs them for their mission.  They’re to do the same works of mercy that he does, providing signs of God’s personal care and his power to make people whole—to offer health and well-being not only in a spiritual sense but in their whole person.  Human beings are not only souls; we’re corporal creations of God.

The apostles are to go forth with total trust in God’s care, not calculating their means and toting along their own resources.  They’re to trust that God will provide for them so that, single-minded and focused, they’ll be free to do Christ’s work, to make known to people “the Holy One present among you” (Hos 11:9) and to “draw them with bands of love” (11:4) to their maker, their Father, their redeemer.

This is what Christian missionaries do:  bringing education, health care, economic improvements, etc., as well as the Good News of God’s love in Christ.  Missionary priests and sisters were doing that in China as much as anywhere.  Sometimes it was dangerous to preach the kingdom of heaven in the Celestial Kingdom, one of China’s names for itself.  Missionaries weren’t always received or listened to; those who did listen and were converted were often stigmatized as enemies of Chinese wisdom and culture, or as “foreign devils,” tools of the colonial powers.

Today we celebrate the fidelity of 120 particular martyrs whose witness to the kingdom of heaven was spread over nearly 300 years—1648 to 1930.  But thousands of Chinese faithful, as well as missionaries, lost their lives in various persecutions, especially the one associated with the Boxer Rebellion.  Such persecution continues in China and numerous other places.

Obviously, St. Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions were companions only in a general sense.  Few of them knew each other.  But they are companions in the communion of saints, as we too are their companions.  We join them in “witnessing to the truth before the world” (Collect) by our vows, our life as brothers, our ministries of education in past years and of prayer now—witnessing to God’s goodness and care for all people.

Sts. Callistus Caravario and Louis Versiglia, Salesians
The last 2 of the canonized Chinese martyrs, 1930