Saint Magdalene of Nagasaki is a Japanese martyr, patron saint of the Augustinian Recollect Secular Fraternity. Her life story, her testimony in death and her faith are today a ray of light for many people, so many years later.
In few Christians would it be as real as it was in Magdalene the image of the journey. During six years – between 1626 and 1634 – her life was a continual pilgrimage in the mountains which surround Nagasaki. She was a Catechist and had to deliver a sacred task: “to preach, baptize, counsel, and strengthen those whom she accompanied or sought out her spiritual counsel”. She journeyed with her people on the way of faith, the Catechumenal way.
At the end, she culminated her pilgrimage with a supreme act of catechesis, in her journey from the prison to the place of torture. “She journeyed around in a way so joyful that she caused admiration from those who saw her. She encouraged her companions, preached to the faithless and warned the Christians to stay faithful to the faith they professed”.
Her martyrdom crowned in her the faithfulness and constancy which she made, accompanying the Church.
She died singing. All the witnesses tell that Magdalene, whilst she was in the pit, sang songs to the Lord “with singular melody and sweetness.” It was the same as she had always done: to sing with words the life and praise of the Lord, in order to animate the march and illuminate with faith the obscurity of the journey.
Surely, in her fourteen days of torment, the young catechist would have repeated frequently the old Japanese canticle of trust and invitation to martyrdom:
“Let us go now, let us go now
To the temple of paradise:
Paradise it is called,
They call it the spacious temple”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Introduction
- 1. 1584-1632: The First Augustinian martyrs: Francis of Jesus and Vincent of St. Anthony
- 2. 1632-1637: The fire continues: Martin of Saint Nicholas and Melchior of Saint Augustine
- 3. Magdalene
- 4. The last act
- 5. The world in which she lived
- 6. The martyr, for St. Augustine
- 7. A very large process
- 8. Recollect or Dominican? A disputed Saint
- 9. The Augustinian Recollect Secular Fraternity
- 10. What does Saint Magdalene tell us today?
- 11. A life of traveling around, to die singing
