Homily, Mass of Ordination to the Diaconate of
Hyeong-Joon (Andrew) Choi and Tae-Young (Steve) Jeon for the Diocese of Suwon
September 27, 2025; St. Patrick’s Seminary
Readings: Jer 1:4-9; Ps 89; 2 Cor 5:14-20; Jn 15:9-17
Introduction
At the seminary where I pursued my philosophy studies, we used to have to walk up a hill to the building that contained our common gathering areas: the chapel, the community room, the refectory, and so forth. Above the main entrance of the building were inscribed the words we just heard from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians: “Caritas Christi urget nos.” It was a helpful daily reminder to us of our call to strive for ever more perfect conformity to the will of God in our lives.
“Caritas Christi urget nos”: “The love of Christ impels us,” as we heard it proclaimed in the second reading. It is also commonly translated as “constrain”: “The love of Christ constrains us.” The verb in that sentence, συνέχει (sunechei), carries a richness of variety of meanings: here it conveys the meaning of “constrain” or “impel,” and likewise “control” or “rule”; elsewhere it is better translated as “to be hemmed in” or “encircled”; in still other passages it carries sense of “to be occupied with” or “absorbed in”; “to be seized” is another meaning the verb carries in certain other contexts.
Urged on by the Love of Christ
The Latin word used to translate it here conveys the meaning well: “Caritas Christi urget nos” – the urgency Paul feels to make this known to world. To make known what, exactly? Remember what he says here: “once we have come to the conviction that one died for all; therefore, all have died. He indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” But why the urgency, if Jesus died for all? Precisely because it has to be made known, that is, communicated, and accepted. This is why St. Paul endured so much suffering, even to point that he considered it a great gain, for it was suffering offered all to his Lord and for the salvation of the world.
It’s a common pattern we see repeated in the lives of many whom God calls into His service. We see a precursor to St. Paul in the person of the prophet Jeremiah, whose calling we hear about in the first reading. He seemed to be a bit resistant, really, complaining that he is too young. It seems like he was looking for excuses to wiggle his way out of it. I sometimes wonder if the real reason for Jeremiah’s resistance was that he foresaw what was going to happen; he did, after all, have a very hard time of it. He was subjected to much harsh treatment and persecution. The authorities did not like the message he was proclaiming, which was God’s Truth, so they tried to take his life: they threw him into a cistern, and put him in stocks overnight. He suffered all this for proclaiming God’s message.
Yet, such suffering, in some form or another, is always a necessary part of being an authentic spokesman for God. Does not our Lord teach us as much in the Gospel we just heard proclaimed? “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Laying down one’s life for one’s friends; for the friend – after all, he now calls his disciples, not slaves, but “friends.” Laying down one’s life for one’s friends, and the greatest friend, is loving one another as he has loved us. When constrained or impelled by love – seized by love and absorbed in it, hemmed in and encircled by it, urged on by it – one cannot but do otherwise. Thus, St. Paul gives thanks for what he suffers for his Lord, he rejoices in it.
Such, too, was Jeremiah’s experience. In typical Jewish fashioned, he has a very intimate and emotionally-charged conversation with his God; he complains that God tricked him into it. This is his famous soliloquy: “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed. All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me” (Jer 20:7). But Jeremiah cannot keep the Word of God within, he cannot but proclaim God’s Word. Remember what he says just two verses later: “I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it!” (Jer 20:9).
The Example of Korea
Yes, it is a pattern repeated in some way or another in the lives of all true disciples throughout the history of Church – most dramatically exemplified in time of persecution. And here, the history of Catholic Church in Korea has particular relevance. As is well known, the Catholic faith did not come to Korea in the usual way, in which a nation of ancient Christian faith discovers a new land; then sends missionaries to become familiar with the people and their culture, their customs and their language; and then they teach them practical skills and educate them in the arts and sciences, and provide them health care and other critical social services; and then, eventually, after this preparation for evangelization, the missionaries teach the faith to the people, baptizing them and nurturing them in faithfully living out their new Christian religion, eventually leading to the building of a new Christian civilization with its own unique cultural identity.
That is the usual way it happens. Korea, though, is exceptional: Catholicism began as a lay movement. The Catholic faith first came to Korea by way of Christian literature somehow brought into the country from Jesuits in China, beginning in 1777. This opened up an intellectual quest for the truth of God’s word among scholars of the time, and kindled within them a deeper desire for the Christian faith. And so it was that one of those ancestral scholars, Yi Seun-hunm, went to Beijing in 1784 and was baptized there, and then returned to Korea to spread his new faith and baptize others. This marks the beginning of the Catholic faith in Korea, a completely lay-led initiative, and so it would continue for quite some time.
This phenomenon carries with it something else, too, which makes the Korean experience truly remarkable: being a strictly lay-led Church for its first several years means that Catholics in Korea went all those initial decades without the Eucharist. How could the Church have survived, let alone flourished, without the sacrament of the Bread of Life for all those years, especially since they were such formative years? It is, again, simply because of their faith. The reception of the sacraments is not some sort of mechanical ritual; the sacraments are signs of God’s initiative and the response to faith already present. Without the faith which the sacraments presuppose, they are simply empty rituals, conferring no benefit to those who receive them. What burning desire must have welled up in the hearts of those first Korean Catholics, as they longed for the day when they would be able to receive their Lord and Savior in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and his forgiveness in the sacrament of Penance.
Of course, we also know, tragically, that the arrival of the Catholic faith in Korea was accompanied by waves of the fiercest persecution, both before and after the arrival of the French missionaries in 1836. Tragic, but in God’s Providence, the seed bed of the Church. As always, the blood of martyrs watered the seeds of the faith which had been planted, and the faith did, indeed, begin to grow. This unprecedented phenomenon of Korean Catholicism moved Pope St. John Paul II to state, in his homily at the Mass of Canonization of the Korean Martyrs in 1984 during his Apostolic Visit there:
The Korean Church is unique because it was founded entirely by lay people. This fledgling Church, so young and yet so strong in faith, withstood wave after wave of fierce persecution. Thus, in less than a century, it could boast of 10,000 martyrs. The death of these martyrs became the leaven of the Church and led to today’s splendid flowering of the Church in Korea.
Notice the interesting turn of phrase Pope John Paul uses: he speaks of “boasting” of 10,000 martyrs. This is the great boast, the great legacy, that Korean Catholics have inherited from their ancestors, and a legacy which calls the current generation to live up to and to pass on to future generations, as it was passed on to them.
Lived in World Today
You, my dear brothers Andrew and Steve, are being sent: thankfully, not into a society afflicted with the fierce persecution your ancestors suffered, but nonetheless into a world which in other – and perhaps even more dangerous, given the subtlety of it – ways is hostile to the faith. But you are being sent for the same purpose as your Catholic Korean ancestors were, and our Christian ancestors going all the way back to St. Paul: so that the Good News of the redemption that Christ has won for us can be communicated, and accepted. While fierce and explicit persecution continues to rage in some parts of the world, in some other, overly-developed, places complacency toward religion is morphing into hostility, marginalization and ostracization.
As in every age, courage is needed to preserve the integrity of the faith, and as is the witness that proclaims the Good News by personal example. We all need to imitate the courage of the Korean martyrs whom the Church celebrated a week ago today: St. Andrew Kim Taegon, St. Paul Chong Hasang, and their 101 companions, from every age and walk of life, men and women, ordained and lay, adults, children and youth. You, Andrew and Steve, are blessed to be inheritors of this precious legacy, which teaches us all so much about the cost and benefits of true discipleship: courage, perseverance and integrity in the face of persecution which communicates the saving truth of the Gospel and wins souls for Christ.
Such was the witness, as one example among many, of seventeen-year-old Agatha Yi who said, when she and her younger brother were falsely told that their parents had betrayed the faith: “Whether my parents betrayed or not is their affair. As for us, we cannot betray the Lord of heaven whom we have always served.” Because of this witness of hers, six adult Christians freely delivered themselves to the government officials to be martyred. And we see the fruits in the Korean Church to this day: a Church which is strong, vibrant and united, in which lay faithful take full, active participation in the life of the Church alongside their clergy, making sacrifices of time, talent and treasure for the glory of God.
Conclusion
Andrew and Steve, in a few moments you will pronounce your ordination promises. Therein you will promise to follow the example of St. Paul, of Jeremiah and of your early Korean ancestors in the faith, when you promise to “resolve to hold fast to the mystery of faith with a clear conscience, as the Apostle urges, and to proclaim this faith in word and deed according to the Gospel and the Church’s tradition.”
May the hallowed and inspiring spiritual inheritance which is yours as Korean Catholics keep you strong in this resolve, so that the words St. John Paul spoke in that same homily of canonization of the Korean martyrs may be realized in your lives: “The Korean Martyrs have borne witness to the crucified and risen Christ. Through the sacrifice of their own lives they have become like Christ in a very special way. The words of Saint Paul the Apostle could truly have been spoken by them: We are ‘always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.’”
May God grant us all this grace. Amen.
