26th Sunday
Feast of San Lorenzo Ruiz and San Pedro Calungsod
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
September 28, 2025
Visit to the Philippines
Last year, I had the joy and privilege of visiting the Philippines. I accompanied Patrick Kelly, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, on a two week visit, mainly near Manila and Cebu City. There are about 600,000 Knights of Columbus in the Philippines, and the Supreme Knight and I went simply to express our solidarity and support. But it was Patrick and I who were inspired and encouraged by the wonderful hospitality of our fellow Knights and their families, by their strong faith and by their many works of charity. We went in August, so the weather was a little warm, but the hospitality and friendship we experienced was even warmer.
I was in the Philippines for only two weeks, but the atmosphere of deep faith that I experienced helped me better understand how the Church in the Philippines gave to the Universal Church the two great saints we honor today: San Lorenzo Ruiz and San Pedro Calungsod. You might say that these missionaries “exported” the strong Catholic faith of the Philippines far and wide: San Lorenzo and his companions brought the faith to Formosa and Japan, while San Pedro and his co-workers brought it to the Mariana Islands. For these two courageous missionaries, spreading the faith was neither a mere duty nor merely a ministry. No, they gave their lives to spread the faith; they were its courageous witnesses. Our 2nd reading from the 1st Letter of St. Paul to Timothy, helps us see how God trained and prepared these great Filippino missionary-martyrs for the struggle they would undergo to spread the faith. Let’s focus for a moment on that second reading.
1 Tim 6:11-16
Here we find St. Paul coaching Timothy, his friend and co-worker in the Lord, whom he had appointed and ordained as the first bishop of Ephesus. Paul is advising his young co-worker on how to prepare himself for the battle he was already fighting against false but influential teachers who were distorting the faith and enriching themselves at the people’s expense. In today’s reading, Paul is urging Timothy not to lose heart or give up, but to train himself to be spiritually strong and courageous.
How does St. Paul urge Timothy to train himself for such spiritual combat? First, he tells Timothy to avoid the greed and errors of false teachers. In the previous verse, Paul had written that “the love of money is the root of all evils.” Now he says to Timothy: “But you, man of God, avoid all this.” As St. Paul elsewhere says, ‘Avoid that greed which is idolatry’ (See Col 3:5).
Second, Paul advises Timothy to “pursue [the virtues of] righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness”. These are not the weapons of the world but spiritual weapons. As St. Paul says elsewhere (2 Cor 10:3-4), “For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh.” Third, Paul urges Timothy to compete well against the enemies of the faith by laying hold of the prize of eternal life, by keeping his eye fixed on the goal. Paul reminds Timothy of the profession of faith he made before witnesses, a profession of faith that was anchored in Jesus’ own testimony before Pontius Pilate. In a word, Timothy is to be spiritually trained to keep the commandment of love without stain or reproach until the Lord comes in glory.
San Lorenzo and San Pedro in Training
Like Timothy, San Lorenzo and San Pedro also underwent training for the mission to which God had called them. They began training for their mission as they were growing up. They absorbed their faith in Jesus Christ and in his Church from their parishes, families, and friends.
San Lorenzo, as you know, was trained by the Dominicans at his parish church in Binondo where he was an altar server. He became a husband and father as well as a church employee. Blameless though he was, he was falsely accused of murdering a Spaniard, and unexpectedly found himself aboard a ship with three Dominicans headed on a missionary expedition . . . I think you will agree that San Lorenzo had a crash course in his training to be a missionary and a martyr! But he embraced in spades all the virtues that Paul enjoined on Timothy, he competed for the faith by tirelessly preaching and catechizing, and like Jesus himself, he made a noble profession of faith before the judges he faced in Japan: “Had I a thousand lives,” he said, “I would gladly offer them all for [Christ].”
San Pedro who is especially honored in Cebu, was trained by the Jesuits. He was only 14 when he accompanied Spanish Jesuit missionaries to the Mariana Islands, one of which is Guam. Though he was young, he courageously underwent all kinds of hardships and deprivation. Provisions of food and water were often lacking. Jungles and rough terrain made traveling difficult. In the midst of all this, his spirit of faith, marked by strong Eucharistic and Marian devotion, shone through. Pedro bravely faced the obstacles he met and died with Father Diego as “a good soldier of Christ.”
The Upshot
We Christians today do not like to think of ourselves as combatants. We’d prefer to think of our faith as a source of consolation, not struggle. Yet, as St. Paul taught Timothy, and as these, our patron saints, teach us, avoiding greed, embracing virtue, & being steadfast in faith comes at a cost. We often find ourselves struggling against our own wayward tendencies. Sometimes we encounter with obstacles to spreading the faith, both from within the Church and from the secular culture we live in. Sometimes, we are made to suffer for our profession of faith. Even if we are not executed for the faith, we can be ridiculed for it.
All three witnesses: Paul, Lorenzo, and Pedro urge us never to be discouraged and never to give up our faith, but to keep our eyes fixed on the prize of eternal life, and to anchor our confession of faith in Jesus’ own testimony before Pilate. Let us be confident that anything we suffer for the faith will bear good fruit, and that one day it will result in our being ushered into the presence of “the Lord of lords and King of kings who dwells in unapproachable light” and who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.