Movies of the Anglican Commemorative Service at St. Mary Catholic Cathedral in Tokyo

Some scenes of the commemorative service for 150th anniversary are available on YouTube.

The scene was taken in front of the tabernacle which locates on the left side of the alter. Thanks to its location, it escaped the direct sacrilege from the Anglican bishops.

Introduction of the Primate of the American Episcopal Church, Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori and Archbishop of Canterbury, Rev. Rowan Williams.

The scene of "Holy" Communion.

This scene is also taken during "Holy" Communion. Compare the sound of a hymn like a Okinawan folk song with the noise of people.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.

Eucharistic Prayer of Akita

Most sacred Heart of Jesus, TRULY present in the Holy Eucharist, I consecrate my body and soul to be entirely one with Your Heart, being sacrificed at every instant on all the alters of the world and giving praise to the father, pleading for the coming of His Kingdom.
Please receive this humble offering of myself. Use me as You will for the glory of the Father and the salvation of souls.
Most Holy Mother of God, never let me be separated Son. Please defend and protect me as Your special child. Amen.

Movies of Protest before St. Ignatius Church in Tokyo

Some scenes of the protest before St.Ignatius Church in Tokyo is available on YouTube.












Immmaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Japanese Right-wing groups protested before St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Tokyo

I myself witnessed a very disgusting scene on last Sunday when I came to St.Ignatius Church to attend the Mass. On arrival in Yotsuya, it was very different from the usual scene.

On the street next to the Church, there were some decorated cars running, people on the cars screamed in a very rude manner. For example, Matsura (the name of a bishop well known his left-wing activities) come out! You asshole! [sic] etc.

The main group which screamed before the church was Syukenkaifuku wo mezasu kai, The Association for the Restoration of Sovereignty. Their extremity in verbal expression is well known. Mr. Nishimura was the leader.

They supposed to came to St. Ignatius Church to protest the pastor for offering a waiting place to the study group on Yasukuni Shrine. In fact, It was canceled a few days ago. Nevertheless, they came to the church and begin their protest.

Some placards and banners were for this purpose, however, others apparently prepared to attack the Catholic Church Herself. I saw a placard which read "Catholic Church lead the Slave Trade, Shame on you! " It seemed that their true purpose is to demonstrate their hatred toward all Catholic not part of them which they at first targeted. The leader also yelled "No aggression to Japan by Christians!" and "No aggression to Japan by Chinese and Koreans!" He also said "let's protect Christians and Japanese!" While allowing anti-Catholic and anti-Christian slogans to be shown to us, what a contradiction of his words!

The other man mentioned that the Pope Pius XII once supported the war in China by Japan as a just battle and Fr. Bruno Bitter protected Yasukuni Shrine after the Pacific War. I wondered if they knew them, why they did not learn Catechism.

Regrettably, there were some Catholics who actively contacted with people involved with this protest. I watched a few of them stood by the leader of the protest. they just watched and not to try to stop them. Because of their political and religious tendency, they wanted to let the right -wing group to protest so that the left-wing groups in the Catholic Church would not be so active anymore. They also venerate Yasukuni Shrine to the point of their second religion.

During the Mass, the yell of the demonstrators even reached to inside the church which disturbed us very much. I tried to concentrate on prayer but most of the time, my heart was filled with the demonstration. At that time, I noticed there were only a few people waiting for confession, so I went to confession and finally could concentrate on prayer.

When the Mass is over, I went to the leader to tell him that the yell reached to inside chapel and it was very disturbing. Seemingly he did not expected my action, but soon he and other man who said he was Catholic retarded. Both side did not use violence anyway. Then, a plane-clothe policeman who looked like a businessman suddenly took me to the other side of the street. apparently he, in advance, tried to prevent any violence would happen.

I just went around the Yotsuya station and returned to the church about 5 minutes or so. They were no more. But police vehicles were still there. I prayed before the statue of Mary for the reparation of this event.

Even after this demonstration, some "conservative Catholics" dose not recognize their fault in supporting the right-wing group and continuing to defend them claiming they are polite and right and so on. Rather, they criticize those even nothing to do with any left-wing activities. It is very dismaying to see their arrogance.

I wonder if they are really our brothers and sisters in Christ. It is true that the left-wing groups and even communist has infiltrate to the Catholic Church after Vatican II and very problematic now, but we shall not ask any right-wing group for help. They claims to protect Yasukuni Shrine from left-wing groups but they are too unconscious of the sacrilege before a Catholic Church. The place of the protest was also very close to the statue of Mary and the entrance to the columbarium.

Religious dialogue and false ecumenism after Vatican II has made these "conservative Catholics" to act against the true teaching of the Catholic Church. They think people with other religions also will be saved without the faith in the Lord.

The only true weapons against errors in the Catholic Church are prayer and sacrifice. No matter how any other methods look easy and effective, we shall not rely on them.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us. Have mercy on us.

Persecution on Our Lady of Akita

Although today was the day of a miracle by Our Lady of Fatima, but it was also very special for Our Lady of Akita because Sr. Sasagawa recived the message from her on the coming punishments from Heaven if people would not repent their sins.

The Our Lady of Akita is now well known in the Catholic countries around the world but many of those who know Her would not imagine that there is a series of suppression on Her and people around.

I myself have visited Akita three times in my life. I visited there for the first time in 1987 or so when I was still an elementary school pupil. At that time, the chapel was somewhat a ordinary house around everywhere in countryside. Although I was not yet baptized, we prayed rosary before the statue of Our Lady there for hours. Honestly speaking, I was tired when we finished our prayer.

Second time, I visited to the convent for the first time in 16 years with my parents and younger sister to join in a group of pilgrimage in May, 2007. The chapel was beautifully built in the Japanese traditional style. We prayed rosaries together before the statue of Our Lady inside the chapel and went around the Japanese style garden.

It seems that there is no problem at all however, there was a great changes. when I tried to bought a book on Our Lady of Akita, there was absolutely no book written by Fr. Thomas Yasuda, S.V.D. but the one that tells the whole story of the convent; Our Lady of Akita is only a part of the contents.

The other thing very strange for me was that there was no name of the nun who witnessed the miracles by Our Lady of Akita i.e. Sr. Sasagawa. In the book, her name was only mentioned as Sr. S. What was the reason for this?

It was not only the chapel but the people there that changed very much. Although Our Lady of Akita is officially recognized by the local bishop now, but there was a series of suppressions on her. the former bishop Francis Sato of Nigata Diocese at first supported the miracles by Our Lady of Akita, but he changed his attitude toward them and even tried to dispose the cottons which wiped the tears and bloods flew from the Statue. In the convent, a group of liberal sisters took the power there and Sr. Sasagawa and Fr. Thomas Yasuda had to leave there. They lives far away from Akita now.

On the third time of my visit in May, 2008, when I prayed before the statue set left side of the chapel, I heard folk songs by DARC, a group for rehabilitation of drug addicts. It was very difficult to pray rosaries there.

Now I have no chance to visit there, but I hope the miracles and messages by Our Lady of Akita will be recognized everywhere and the convent again become a suitable place for prayers.

Sermon at the 150th Anniversary of the Anglican Communion in Japan

Here is an article from the official website of Archbishop of Canterbury.

150th Anniversary Sermon for the Anglican Church in Japan

Wed. September 23, 2009

The Archbishop preached at the Holy Eucharist to celebrate 150 years of Nippon Sei Ko Kai, the Anglican Church in Japan. The service took place in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St Mary, Tokyo.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, preached at a service attended by over 2000 people.

Presiding at the Eucharist was the Most Revd Nathaniel Makoto Uematsu, Primate of NSKK and Bishop of Hokkaido, along with other bishops from NSKK.

The Archbishop's Sermon

The Anglican mission to Japan had it beginnings in the ministry of several giant figures. Foremost among these was Bishop Channing Williams, whose arrival here 150 years ago we celebrate today. But I want to pay tribute also to another of those great servants of God who shaped the character and direction – another bishop, from a famous clerical family in England, Edward Bickersteth. His dedication, his prayerfulness and his pastoral gentleness come through very clearly in the book that his brother wrote in his memory. And among the many vivid recollections contained in this book, one that stands out is a picture recorded by a visiting English clergyman, who describes Bishop Bickersteth taking a confirmation in a room in a large private house in Nagoya. What struck the visitor was simply that the bishop took off his shoes to confirm – a mark of his ready sensitivity to the customs of the country.

But this little picture is, I think, more than just a record of good social manners. We could say that in many contexts the Christian mission arrived not only wearing heavy shoes but quite ready to tread on as many feet as possible. Perhaps mission is truly effective only when it comes with bare feet. Bare feet are often in Christian history a mark of poverty: we might think of the reforms of the Franciscan and Carmelite orders where the sign of a renewed commitment to simplicity of life has been a rule of going barefoot, or at least wearing only sandals. They are a mark also of being ready for discomfort or injury; and, as in the Bible, walking barefoot on your journey means that you will need someone to wash your feet for you at the journey's end. But most of all in the Biblical world, to take off your shoes indicates that you are on holy ground: when Moses meets the Lord at the Burning Bush, he is told to take off his shoes, because the soil on which he stands is holy.

What does all this suggest about the marks of mission? Mission is effective when it is simple; when it comes without a heavy protective wrapping of someone else's culture, someone else's politics and power. European mission to Japan always had a complicated relationship to politics and power, to trade and money. The terrible seventeenth century persecutions that nearly destroyed Christian witness in Japan for generations arose partly from fears related to foreign ambitions; and the rivalries between different colonial powers, Dutch and Portuguese, did a great deal to put the authenticity of Christian mission in danger. The opening up of the country to Christian mission again in the nineteenth century was bound up with the opening of Japan to foreign trade and foreign cultural influence. And sometimes Japanese Christians were so eager to throw away the heavy shoes of foreign culture that they were ready for a while to put their feet into the new shoes of national ambition and patriotic aggression – just like the European Christians themselves.

Simplicity means walking lightly on the soil – not imposing foreign expression of faith, and not imagining either that faith must be tied inseparably to whatever the nation finds useful or acceptable at any one moment. The courage in recent decades of the Anglican Church in Japan in its readiness to express public grief and penitence over past errors and to seek reconciliation with victims has been an inspiration to so many; I recall with great emotion the liturgy at the 1998 Lambeth Conference at which the representatives of this church shared this spirit of repentance and generosity – and did so on the 6th of August, a day when others might well feel they needed to approach the Japanese people with repentance, in search of reconciliation.

Reconciliation comes when we learn to walk lightly, to let go of both the pride that cannot admit sins and errors and of the bitterness that cannot let go of past injury. This church has shown great grace in its ability to walk lightly in this way; and such freedom is a central aspect of the mission that it can exercise in this society and more widely. To walk lightly is also to understand that we do not have to depend for our value and meaning on achievement, past or present, but are welcome guests on the earth, held in the hands of a loving creator and redeemer. We do not have to struggle without ceasing, so as to keep ourselves safe and successful, since God supports us and promises his unfailing mercy, whatever befalls.

And this means that mission involves the readiness to be hurt by the stones in the soil, by all the ways in which reality fails to turn out as we might like it to; and to let our own skin and flesh be marked by the earth we walk on. Christ himself walks lightly on the earth, yet his feet are stained and bruised by the obstacles along the human journey – and at last they are wounded by the nails of rejection. When he is raised from the dead, his bare feet still show the marks of this journey into danger and suffering. If we walk with him, we shall seek to share his freedom, his light step on the earth, but we cannot expect to escape the bruises and the wounds.

Mission is most truly itself when it walks along the same road as those who are suffering in body or spirit. Only then does it walk the way of Christ. And once again, the Anglican Church here has shown a great readiness to stand with and walk with those who are forgotten or despised, the poor in city and country, women who have suffered violence, children and migrants. Walking in this way will not guarantee success or safety, but it will be a true fellowship with Jesus; without that true fellowship with him, there will be no true reaching out in love to others, and without reaching out to others there is no fellowship with him.

So this leads us into the third set of ideas that are associated with going barefoot – taking off your shoes because the ground is holy. Bishop Bickersteth, taking off his shoes so as to be at home in a traditional Japanese household, was doing something apparently very simple. But as a foreigner adapting to the custom of the country, he was also recognising that the home itself is a holy place, that another person's welcome is a sign of God's presence – and that a missionary needs to know that, wherever he or she goes, God has gone before and made the place holy. It is not that this or that country or culture is in itself holy in a way that no other is. But where God leads us in mission, he leads us into the holy space of human lives that he longs to touch and heal.

It has taken us a long time to learn this, but we do not walk into a new context as if we were taking God there for the first time. He always walks ahead of us; and true mission looks for the signs of where he has been and what he has done to prepare the way. Mission involves listening as well as speaking, listening before we speak, so that we can give proper reverence to the God who has made a path for us. Mission does not simply say a complete 'no' to what is in front of us, so that the ground can be cleared for God to come along behind us. It looks and listens for God and approaches those God wants us to encounter with the deepest respect and gratitude, so that we have a truthful idea of what the questions are that people are asking and what the needs are that they want to express. Mission means reverence for people.

So after one hundred and fifty years of Anglican presence in Japan, we are asked today, as we give joyful thanks for this heritage, to think about how we now approach this nation, this society, with the good news.

Simplicity comes first. We do not proclaim ourselves, says St Paul, we don't offer ourselves as the answer to everyone's questions. We bring the knowledge of the great gifts God has given in his promise of reconciliation and renewal, and we bring our own struggles to live in the atmosphere of reconciliation and renewal – pointing always to God as the one who begins the whole story and brings it to its full realisation. We learn to walk lightly and to travel light, grateful for the gifts of human culture but not making them an absolute.

Risk and solidarity come next. We don't seek to protect ourselves, to do no more than keep the little circle of the Christian family warm and secure. We walk along the roads of human suffering, accompanying the lost and anxious and oppressed in the name of Jesus.

And reverence comes third. We approach our neighbours not with arrogance and impatience but with a readiness to learn and a willingness to rejoice in the rich texture of their human lives, individual and cultural. We look and listen for God in all that lies before us.

If we can continue in this 'barefoot' mission, we shall be opening ourselves up to the simplicity of Jesus himself and so to the transforming grace and beauty of his own mission. God has blessed Christians in Japan, not least Anglican Christians, with great courage, great endurance and great willingness to 'walk lightly'. May God walk with us and speak through us as we seek to present to his beloved children in this country the possibilities of freedom and peace and hope, of meaningful and reconciled life, which the Good News of Jesus Christ offers to all.

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2531

Prayer to St. Michael

Prayer to St. Michael

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio; contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae Caelestis,
satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute in infernum detrude. Amen.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray: and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.