In
Commemoration of the
Twenty-First Anniversary
of Our Lady's First Weeping
in Naju, Korea
Anxiety as well as gratitude
After teaching the crowds in many parables at the shore of the Sea of
Galilee, Jesus went to his home country, Nazareth, and taught the people
in their synagogue. They were astonished at his wisdom and miracles and
said, "Is he not the carpenter's son? Are not his family and relatives
all with us? Where did he get all this?" The Evangelist reports that
Jesus did not work many miracles there because of their unbelief (Matthew
13).
For the past twenty-one years in Naju, Korea, since June 30, 1985, Our
Lord and Our Lady have given us messages and miraculous signs in
unprecedented numbers and intensity. We feel both anxious and grateful.
The reason for the anxiety is, as everyone knows already, that the events
in Naju have been thoroughly rejected by the local church authority and,
because of this, most of the faithful in Korea are keeping these events at
a distance. We are concerned about the possibility that Our Lord and Our
Lady may leave us because of our persisting indifference and lack of
faith. There is nothing that the omnipotent God cannot do, but He has
given free will to humans. If we reject his offer to the end, He cannot
do anything about it. In the entire Church history, was there any other
age when the Lord's works were so pertinaciously rejected and ignored by
His beloved children as in Korea now? As members of the Lord's Mystical
Body, we are supposed to make our utmost efforts to do the Lord's Will,
but, how are we going to accomplish this if we continue ignoring His
special messages and signs?
Despite all the difficulties, the works of the
Lord and the Blessed Mother continue with no sign of weakening. The
messages are still received; the miraculous signs with the Eucharistic and
Marian content as well as those urging our repentance and penance also
continue; and the graces for the spiritual and physical healings are still
being poured down. These are, above all, clear manifestations of God's
boundless love and mercy. They may also be because of God's consideration
of the almost 20,000 Korean martyrs of the previous centuries who
sacrificed their lives to defend the Faith; because of those in Korea and
other countries who remain unshaken in their belief regarding the
supernatural events in Naju; and also because of Julia Kim who does not
spare anything for the Lord and the Blessed Mother and for the conversion
of sinners and continues her painful life as a victim soul and thus moves
the Lord's Sacred Heart to send down more graces upon the world. We,
though unworthy, cannot help giving profound thanks and praise to the Lord
and the Blessed Mother and also giving thanks to the martyrs, all the
angels and Saints in Heaven, all the shepherds and people on earth who are
faithful to the Lord, and also to Julia Kim.
We, the members of the
Church,
can help the Church or can harm her
While the persecution continues, we wonder when it will end and the
powerful light of the Lord's truth and love will radiate upon the entire
world. We are certain of the coming of that day and pray for it coming
soon, but also recognize that nobody can know when and how this will be
done. It is not even necessary that we know. As the Lord and the Blessed
Mother have called us to work on the field, all we need to do is to do our
share one day at a time with gratitude and faithfulness. Of course, the
Lord is not calling us to become like slaves who are not free or like
machines that have no minds or hearts. He treats us not as slaves but as
friends (John 15:15) and even makes us little helpers or
participants in His work of human salvation (cf. Catechism of the
Catholic Church #306). Being aware of and grateful for the dignity
that He is bestowing on us, we should joyfully devote all the functions of
our souls and bodies as well as all other resources that we have to
advancing the Lord's work on earth so that it may be done well according
to His Will.
This also means that, even after we become the Lord's children and members
of His Church, our contribution to the Lord's work can be minimal or even
negative, if we misuse our free will by pursuing our self-centered
calculations and preferences ahead of the Lord's Will, by being unfaithful
to the Lord's truths and Commandments, by being negligent of our daily
duties entrusted to us, or by allowing ourselves to become victims of
fatalism that everything regarding our destiny will be determined by God
alone and we are incapable of making any difference. This principle of
free will applies to all the members in the Church, both the clergy and
the laity. Throughout Church history, we can see that the Church was
spiritually healthy and fruitful when both the clergy and the laity were
faithful, self-sacrificing, and hard-working and, on the other hand, that
the Church suffered wounds and setbacks when her members were unfaithful
and negligent. The Lord gives to the members of the Church the dignity,
authority, skills, and graces necessary for their carrying out their
missions, but this does not mean that their thoughts, words, and actions
will always and automatically conform to the Lord's Will, because their
free will is also at work. Thus, depending on whether their free will
cooperates with the graces from God or not, either good fruits will be
borne or weeds will grow in the Church because of them (cf. Matthew
13:24-30).
God sometimes sends special assistance
to His children on earth
When the unfaithfulness and moral degradation among God's children worsen
and develop into a crisis situation, God often sends great Saints to bring
about a massive conversion and reformation of sinners. Especially since
the miracles in Guadalupe, Mexico, in the 16th Century, God has
been sending the Blessed Mother to the world to break people's tenacious
ignorance and unfaithfulness and reverse their moral degradation on larger
scales than before. God's purpose in sending special assistance to the
people on earth is not to reveal any new truths or alter any of the
existing teachings but to rescue and restore the humans who have fallen
into a crisis through their own complacency and corruption and are unable
to overcome it by themselves.
We can also see in Church history that many of the special revelations
from God have been strongly resisted and opposed by many. When people
have become attached to some worldly possessions such as their material
wealth, social status, power, reputation, and so on, they are likely to
resist any calls to repentance and reformation, even if they originate
from God. Especially in recent decades, many people have misinterpreted
and misused the precious teachings of the Second Vatican Council, diluting
the supernatural content of the Catholic Faith and downgrading the
significance of God the Son's Incarnation among us and adjusting
everything that flows from it such as the formal teachings, liturgy, and
devotions in the Church to the modernist tastes and preferences. To those
contaminated with the modernist ways of thinking, God's special
interventions in the flow of human history such as those in Naju will be
perceived as most unwelcome and threatening challenges to their
established conditions in the Church and the world. They will employ all
the available means to block such challenges. Regarding the arguments
presented by those who discredit the events of Naju, we have already made
our counter-arguments available in several publications and on our
website:
www.marys-touch.com. In the present article, only a few of the issues
will be covered below.
1. "Even
if the Bishop's Declaration has some shortcomings, God's Will must be that
we accept it in obedience."
This is how many people criticize those who
believe in the authenticity of the events in Naju. According to them,
people who accept the events in Naju as genuine interventions by God are
guilty of disobedience to the Bishop. As the Catholic Church teaches that
humility and obedience are the most basic virtues, being subjected to such
a criticism is a very serious matter. If this criticism were just, those
who are at the receiving end of it would really be in trouble. There
simply is no place in the Church for those who are unjustly disobedient
and defiant to the shepherds. However, at least two serious defects are
found in the above criticism, which seem to weaken or even negate its
validity.
(1) The problems in the Kwangju Declaration are not trivial matters
The main problems that are suspected to be in the Kwangju Archdiocese's
Declaration on Naju are too serious in nature to be regarded as just "some
shortcomings", "modest deficiencies", or "small mistakes".
This Declaration gave its negative judgment on Naju by declaring that the
reported events there are in conflict with the Church teachings. For
example, it says that the phenomena in Naju called "Eucharistic
miracles" contradict the Church teaching that says: "Even after the
bread and wine turned into Christ's flesh and blood through the
transubstantiation by the priest's consecration, the species of bread and
wine must remain unchanged." As we have explained in several other
places, this presentation of the Church teaching in the Kwangju
Declaration is clearly a distortion of the official Church teaching on the
Eucharist. The Council of Trent in the 16th Century taught
that the effects of the Eucharistic consecration by a priest are limited
to the changes in the substances of bread and wine into the substances of
Christ's flesh and wine without any accompanying changes in the species of
bread and wine. This is obviously not the same as saying that the
species of bread and wine must remain unchanged even after the
consecration and, therefore, cannot be a valid ground for rejecting
the Eucharistic miracles involving unexpected changes in the species of
bread and wine into the species of flesh and blood through special
interventions by God. Nobody has the authority to add any new meaning to
the existing Church dogmas or interpret the existing dogmas differently
from the official interpretations by the Magisterium. Besides, it is
unthinkable that a dogma can have different meanings between the Universal
Church and a particular church.
Regarding the miraculous descents of the Eucharist in Naju also, the
Kwangju Declaration condemned them saying that the Eucharist can exist
only through the consecration by a validly-ordained priest according to
the official Church teaching. This also is an obvious distortion of
the Church teaching. The Fourth Lateran Council in the 13th Century
stated that "validly-ordained priests alone can perform the Eucharistic
consecration" to counter the Waldensian heresy that insisted that the
laity also have the priestly powers. This Council's teaching is clearly
different from the Kwangju Declaration's version of the Church teaching
that "the Eucharist can exist only through the priestly consecration."
As the Eucharist is not a lifeless, ordinary object but the resurrected
and living Christ with His body, soul and divinity, Christ can, by virtue
of His omnipotence, assume the appearances of the Eucharist whenever He
wills it. The Lord can also have His angels move the Eucharist from a
tabernacle to another place, which He did in the lives of many Saints and
at least twice in Naju (November 24, 1994 and January 6, 2002). If the
Kwangju Archdiocese's assertion were correct, all the miraculous
communions by many Saints in history would have to be condemned.
As seen in the above two examples, the Kwangju
Archdiocese's Declaration obviously contains incorrect versions of the
Church doctrines by which it condemned the Eucharistic miracles in Naju.
It probably is the first time that a local Church authority condemned
Eucharistic miracles by adding new meanings to the existing Church
teachings. For this reason, the problems in the Kwangju Declaration
cannot be considered to belong to the category of modest shortcomings
and trivial mistakes that would not have been significant factors
in reaching the negative judgment on Naju. On the contrary, the doctrinal
distortions in the Declaration were direct and primary determinants of
this judgment. They also give rise to another potentially serious
question of the Kwangju Archbishop's misuse of his authority.
(2)
The Bishop's authority is sacred and rightfully deserves respect and
obedience by the faithful, but it can also be misused
God alone deserves our absolute and unconditional obedience, as He alone
is the source of all truths and goodness and can never err or require us
to do what is not right. For this reason, we can give Him our total trust
and obedience joyfully and without any qualms in our conscience. The
Blessed Mother, and all the angels and Saints in Heaven also cannot
mislead us with errors or induce us to do evil, as they are in perfect
union with God. Concerning the situation in our world, God protects the
Pope and the Ecumenical Council of all Bishops united with the Pope with
the charism of infallibility when they make solemn definitions of the
teachings revealed by God. The faithful are obligated to give full
obedience to the Church authority exercised in this manner (cf. Matthew
16:18). Many people do not seem to be sure about this charism of
infallibility in the Church, but, as the Catholic Church established by
the Lord is not an ordinary human organization but a supernatural and
mystical body of Christ Himself, it is most appropriate that the Church is
capable of teaching the revealed truths without errors just as the Lord
Himself could during His life on earth and is also capable of channeling
God's graces to her members through her Sacraments just as the Lord
Himself could. The Church with Christ as her Head and the Holy Spirit as
her Soul is impeccable and completely holy, even though the humans who
belong to her as members are still in the difficult process of
purification and sanctification of their souls.
In all the legitimate societies in the world, God establishes or allows
various duties and positions at different levels in the hierarchy and
requiring different talents and skills. God endows those in different
positions with the authority necessary for carrying out their duties.
Thus, the Church, families, schools, business companies, social
associations, military forces, governments, and so on are equipped with a
hierarchy of various positions and the proper authority for each
position. Those who are given authority must use it in conformity with
God's Will and to promote the legitimate interests of the members under
them (cf. Rom. 13:1-2). It is also necessary and important to
emphasize that the members of the Church have a special and serious
obligation to respect and obey their shepherds as they represent the Lord
as His ministers and are entrusted with the sacred and difficult mission
of bringing up all humans as faithful and healthy members of the Family
and Kingdom of God.
While the authority entrusted to the Bishops and priests in the Church is
sacred and precious, this does not, however, mean that it can be exercised
in an absolute or arbitrary manner. Those who are given the authority
must exercise it with humility and fear, always making sure that it is
exercised properly according to God's Will. We sometimes see cases of the
civil, ecclesiastical, or other authority being exercised in irresponsible
ways, not in pursuit of God's Will and people's interests but for the
selfish reasons of those who have the authority. Those who abuse their
authority or any other thing that has been received from God are
forgetting that all of us are going to have to give an account before
God. For example, suppose that a teacher made an inadvertent mistake
while teaching in class. One of his students might raise his hand and ask
about it. If the teacher examines if there was any mistake and, if so,
promptly corrects it, he is using his authority properly and will earn
more respect and gratitude from his students. If he refuses to correct
his mistake and even forbids any questions and discussions about it, he is
being disobedient to God Who is the source of all truths and all
authorities.
The Church is where we learn God's truths and Commandments from the
shepherds and put them into practice in our daily lives. Because correct
knowledge and acceptance of these truths and Commandments are essential
for our salvation, the purity and correctness of teachings is far more
important in the Church than at any other place in the world. In fact, as
God Himself revealed the saving truths and entrusted them to the Catholic
Church, this Church is incomparably superior to other humanly-based
religions as the way of human salvation. In fact, it is the only way that
has been established and is being made available to the whole human race
by God Himself and, therefore, is the only sure way for our salvation.
The Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, and Christ is the only
Savior of the world. We need to make this fact very clear to ourselves
without despising some partial truths found in other religions. Equality
of different religions is an error that is not compatible with God the
Son's Incarnation in our world and His continuing work through His
Church. The need for evangelizing the pagan world remains as urgent as
ever. This reality makes the mission of the shepherds in the Church all
the more important as they are the leaders and teachers in the Church. It
is essential for the health of the whole Church that they keep what they
teach free from errors and equivocations. Here is a quote that throws
more light on the nature of a bishop's authority:
"An individual Bishop, when he makes a promulgation of faith, is not
infallible. The history of the Church shows that individual members of
the Episcopate, for example, Photinus, Nestorius, have fallen into error
and heresy. In order to preserve the teaching of faith handed down by
Tradition, in its purity, the collegiate infallibility of the whole
Episcopate suffices. However, the individual Bishop, in what concerns his
own diocese is, by virtue of his office, the authentic, that is the
authoritative, teacher of faith, as long as he continues in communion with
the Apostolic See, and as long as he adheres to the general teaching of
the Church." (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Dr. Ludwig Ott,
Tan Books & Publishers, 1974, p. 300)
2. "Why
is the truth so important? What is so bad about errors?"
The Catholic catechism teaches that the purpose of our being born into
this world is to know God and love and serve Him and, by doing so, to earn
eternal happiness. So that we may know Him and His goodness, God has
revealed Himself and His Will through the prophets of the Old Testament
and completed the revelation through Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of
God. Thanks to God's revelations, we can learn the supernatural truths
and Divine Commandments and, based on them, live the life that can lead us
to salvation and eternal life. The importance of knowing the truth
applies to almost everything that we do in our lives. In order to reach a
destination, we need to know the correct way. To build airplanes,
buildings, bridges and other things, we need to have sufficient and true
knowledge of engineering and good skills. Some say that faith alone can
bring us salvation or that the faith that can save us is nothing other
than our religious feeling, grossly misleading people to believe that it
is not necessary for our salvation that we learn the divine truths and
observe the Commandments. The Catholic Faith offers the truths from God
to enlighten and guide our intellect and teaches God's love and goodness
to motivate our free will. As God is truth itself and goodness itself, we
simply cannot come close to Him and become united with Him unless we are
faithful to His truths and moral commandments. In contrast, if we allow
errors to creep into our minds, we are going to become unable to worship
God properly or to have a healthy relationship with other people starting
with our own family members. In fact, all the sins in the world begin
with an error. The original sin by Adam and Eve began with an error
uttered by the devil that they certainly would not die even if they ate
the forbidden fruit and, instead, would become like God. The numerous
abortions in our world also start with the error that the unborn babies
are not human beings and, therefore, abortions are not murders.
Sacrilegious communions are based on the ignorance about the evils of our
sins and about the truth of Our Lord's Real Presence in the Eucharist. In
Naju, the Blessed Mother mentioned the word: errors dozens of times
in her messages, lamenting over the black clouds of errors enwrapping the
entire world. She also urged us to be faithful to the Heritage of the
Faith that has been entrusted to us. The Heritage of the Faith
refers to the authentic truths and traditions in the Church. We should,
therefore, begin educating ourselves more thoroughly and deeply about the
spiritual treasures in the Church which are the divine teachings and
sacred Catholic traditions and also fight against the widespread ignorance
and distortions of the Church teachings in the world. We also need to
fight the errors that continue to prevent the work of the Lord and the
Blessed Mother in Naju from spreading its light all over Asia and the
entire world and bearing fruit among countless people. Because many
people, including some clergy, have fallen into deviations from the
authentic Catholic teachings and have been promoting the modernist
doctrine that we must accommodate our faith life to the advances and
vagaries of the world, they find it so hard to recognize and accept the
true reality of what is happening in Naju. When such a person looks at
the events in Naju, which are powerful testimonies to the authentic
Catholic teachings and tradition, he is likely to resist and reject them.
We seek true unity
based on the truths from God
If people with different opinions and
beliefs gather and talk for the purpose of prevailing over others, they
will never reach any unity. Before anything, we need to recognize that
the Catholic Church does not belong to any humans or owes anything to the
secular spirit that prevails in any particular age, but belongs to God
alone and exists for His purpose alone. As the Mystical body of Christ,
she has to constantly march toward her glorious perfection as the Bride of
Christ, shedding all the errors, impurities, and evils from the souls of
her members in the process of that march. If we focus on this
supernatural reality of the Church and adhere to her authentic teachings,
we should be able to reach true unity. For example, some say, "The
species of bread and wine must remain unchanged even after the
consecration by the priest," and others say, "The Church teaches
that the consecration by the priest brings about changes in the substances
of bread and wine into the Lord's flesh and blood only, without any
accompanying changes in the species of bread and wine. Therefore,
miraculous changes in the Eucharist into visible flesh and blood after the
consecration do not contradict any of the Church teachings." If we
mention these differing statements as though they are some competing human
theories, we are ignoring that our task here is to seek and find the
correct meaning of the Church dogmas as intended by God Himself. The
divine truths, which alone are eternally and absolutely true unlike human
theories and conceptions, are the only foundation for genuine unity and
harmony in the Church. If we seek our standards for unity among some
unreliable concepts like convenience, political correctness, face-saving,
human cleverness, give-and-takes, prevailing ideas in the world, and so
on, we will never find the eternal truths from God or achieve unity and
salvation that are true and lasting.
Regarding the questions about Naju, we are not asking the Church leaders
to grant our own desires or bless any human agenda. What we
want is that an objective and professional investigation of the reported
events in Naju begin without any further delay, as it has been widely
recognized already that the previous one was neither objective nor
professional but was done in a most cursory and irresponsible way based on
prejudice and incorrect interpretation of the Church teachings. Also, we
ask that the suspected doctrinal problems in the Kwangju Archdiocese's
Declaration on Naju be investigated and, based on the findings, be
officially and clearly corrected. Doing these will be the proper way for
restoring the Lord's honor which has been damaged and has remained in that
condition for too long. We humbly and eagerly implore all the shepherds
especially in Korea to lead us firmly on the way of defending the
authentic Catholic Faith which our numerous martyrs defended with their
own lives and handed down to us. Also, we express our deep, heartfelt
respect and gratitude to all those shepherds in the Church who have been
praying and suffering because of their concern about the problems in the
Church. We are filled with hope because of them and, most of all, because
of the Lord's promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against
the Church built on the rock (Matthew 16:18).
May the current difficulties be overcome soon with the boundless mercy of
the Lord and the special help from the Blessed Mother and the true unity
be restored in the Church! May all the shepherds and the lay people under
them work together, vigorously evangelizing the world!
Benedict Sang M. Lee
Mary's Touch By Mail
Gresham, Oregon, U. S. A.
June 24, 2006
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