Saints Leo Ignatius Mangin, Priest, Mary Zhu Wu, and Companions, Martyrs [Jesuit Churches]
Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
“Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms;
I drew them with human cords, with bands of love;
I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks.” (Hosea 11:3–4)
God loves His children with the tenderness of a father teaching his infant child how to walk. This stands as one of the great images of meekness which God gives us through the prophet Hosea: the meekness of parents who gently care for their child. The father who is training his son to walk his first steps does not stand aloof, but rather stoops down to his child in order to help catch him as he totters, in order to have the best view in the house the first time the child successfully puts one foot in front of the other.
Saint Leo Mangin, a French Jesuit missionary, tried to live out this meekness in caring for those souls entrusted to him in rural China. He lived the normal life of a priest in a mission church until, in the summer of 1900, military forces began attacking Catholics. When many refugees came from other villages, he and the local villagers took care of them. When the attackers came to the village walls, Saint Leo would hear confessions by day and assist the guards in keeping the watch shifts at night. This good shepherd knew the meek and loving heart of Our Lord, and imitating God’s desire to be close to His People, especially in their suffering, Saint Leo gave all that his fatherly heart could to those who were soon to be martyred with him.
Saint Mary Zhu Wu knew this same caring love of God, and wished to show it herself. She cared for her husband who organized the villagers to defend the village for days against the military forces besieging them. She cared for those left behind to die in the village. And when the soldiers broke into the church as the last survivors were praying the rosary and receiving absolution from Saint Leo, Saint Mary stood between the soldiers and her fellow martyrs with her arms outstretched in the form of a cross. She gave even the last moment of her life in imitation of our meek God who cares for us. The meek do not care if the world does not value their sacrifice; they know that God sees and makes their lives worth more than the world will ever understand. May the holy martyrs of China pray for us, that like them we may imitate God’s persevering and meek sacrifice of love.