A Trusting Lamb

“Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter, had not realized that they were hatching plots against me.” Jeremiah 11:19

This verse is so appropriate, for today is the Feast Day of St. Pedro Calungsod who was like a trusting lamb led to slaughter. He was born here in our country the Philippines, in 1654. He is one out of only 2 Filipino saints, the other one being San Lorenzo Ruiz. 

Pedro was a young catechist and sacristan when he accompanied Spanish Jesuit missionaries including Padre Diego Luis de San Vitores, from the Philippines to Guam in 1668. Their mission was to evangelize the Chamorros in Guam. These indigenous people engaged in ancestor veneration, and there is one account where human sacrifice was practiced to placate a “huge fish” that was believed to be eating away their island. 

Many natives converted to Roman Catholicism, but the missionaries encountered much hardship and persecution. One man, a Chinese exile named Choco, maliciously spread the idea that the missionaries were using poisoned water to baptize, and because some babies died after they were baptized, a few natives believed and turned against them. This culminated in a father throwing spears at Padre Diego. San Pedro who could have escaped, stayed by the beleaguered priest’s side, and both of them were hacked to death. Their bodies were thrown into the sea. Both Padre Diego and Pedro were beatified by Pope John Paul II on March 5, 2000; Pedro was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 16, 2012.

Indeed, young San Pedro was a trusting lamb who merely wanted to reach the Chamorros with love and God’s word.