It is striking how sincere David’s plan is in the first reading. He looks around, sees that he lives in a house of cedar while the Ark of God dwells in a tent, and he decides to do something generous for God. His intention is good. His desire is faithful. And yet God says, in effect, not this — not now.
Instead of accepting David’s plan, God offers David a promise. “The Lord will make you a house.” What David wanted to build with his hands, God intends to build through history. David’s vision is immediate and visible; God’s promise is long, patient, and enduring.
The shift from our plans to God’s promise can be unsettling. We often approach God with concepts of what faithfulness should look like. It is that part of us that wants to be useful, productive, successful. When God redirects us, it can feel like rejection, even when it is actually an invitation — an invitation to trust that God is at work beyond what we can see or control. A moment to let our inner-Martha become Mary.
The Gospel helps us understand why this redirection matters. In the parable of the sower, the seed is good every time, all the time. What changes is the soil. When Jesus describes the soil, He is describing hearts that are distracted, hardened, shallow, or soil/heart that are prepared and open. Fruitfulness depends not just on the good seed, but also on how prepared the soil is to receive it.
This is where the two readings meet. David is asked not to build, but to listen, to receive, and to let God work in God’s own way. His faithfulness at that moment is not action, but openness. It is the root understanding of “obedience” from the Latin “obe audire” – “to listen through.” In other words, David becomes good soil in listening to what God asks of him rather than what David expects of himself.
That is often the challenge of preparing the soil of the heart. It means letting go of control. It means allowing God’s word to challenge our expectations and reshape our desires. It requires patience, because God’s promises unfold slowly. The kingdom grows beneath the surface long before anything is visible.
For us, the question is not simply, “What am I doing for God?” but “What is God trying to do in me?” The temptation is to measure faith by activity. Jesus invites us to measure it by receptivity.
When the soil is ready, fruit comes; sometimes thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold. But that fruit is God’s work, not ours. Our task is quieter and harder: to listen, to trust, and to allow God’s promise to take root in us.
We have our own plans and expectations, but are we listening and trying to discern what God is trying to do within each of us? When we can discern that we might just discover that God is building something far greater than we ever imagined with, through and in our lives.
Image credit: Detail of “Sower Went Out to Sow” | Irish Dominican Photography | Brasov, Romania | CC-BY
At the start of the 20th century, U.S. and Japanese interests appeared to be aligned both nations supported the idea of an “open door” for commercial expansion in China. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt acted as a mediator at Japan’s request, and the two sides of the conflict met on neutral territory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the same year, U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft met with Prime Minister Katsura Taro in Japan. The two concluded the Taft-Katsura Agreement, in which the United States acknowledged Japanese rule over Korea and condoned the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902. At the same time, Japan recognized U.S. control of the Philippines. It seemed as though the great powers in the Pacific region had reached a detent.
The apparent stability in U.S.–Japanese relations after 1905 can be misleading if we assume it removed Japan’s own strategic imperatives. In fact, the Russo-Japanese War settlement and the Taft–Katsura understanding reinforced rather than reduced Japan’s incentive to deepen its position in Manchuria. Several interlocking reasons explain this.
Manchuria
Japan did not go to war with Russia primarily to win diplomatic recognition or goodwill from the United States. Its central objectives were security and economic survival. Manchuria was always the goal of the 1904-1905 war. The war was meant prevent a renewed Russian threat on the Asian mainland and to secure resources and markets unavailable in Japan itself
The Treaty of Portsmouth transferred to Japan Russia’s leasehold on the Liaodong Peninsula (Port Arthur, Dairen), control of the South Manchuria Railway (SMR) south of Changchun, and recognition of Japan’s “paramount interests” in Korea. These gains were geographically limited and strategically fragile. From Tokyo’s perspective, holding them required deeper penetration, not restraint. A narrow railway zone without political, economic, and military depth was indefensible. Taft–Katsura effectively removed constraints upon Japan rather than imposed limits.
From the U.S. perspective, the 1905 Taft–Katsura Agreement was seen as a mutual guarantee of peace. It is true that the Agreement established a recognition-of-spheres: U.S. acceptance of Japanese predominance in Korea and Japanese acceptance of U.S. control of the Philippines. But crucially, Manchuria was not restricted as the U.S. did not guarantee China’s territorial integrity in practice. So, on the Japanese side of things they concluded that as long as American core interests were untouched, it had room to maneuver on the continent. To the Japanese, Taft–Katsura signaled permissiveness, not partnership.
Economic Reality
Simply put, Manchuria was essential to Japan’s economic strategy. By 1905 Japan faced structural problems of rapid population growth, limited arable land, and dependence on foreign raw materials (coal, iron, soybeans). Manchuria offered vast resources of coal and iron, agricultural land and food supplies, a market for Japanese industry, and a base for settler colonialism, seen as a solution to domestic social pressures. The South Manchuria Railway Company quickly became a transportation firm, a development agency and a political and intelligence instrument. Economic logic alone pushed Japan beyond mere treaty rights.
The war with Russia had been a massive financial strain on Japan. The total cost of the war is estimated at around ¥17–20 billion. By comparison, government revenues in 1905 were only about ¥400 million, meaning war spending equaled roughly five years of peacetime revenue. Other war expense estimates range at nearly 11–12 times revenues. Whatever the case, Japan had to finance the war.
Roughly three-quarters of the war cost was covered by public bonds rather than taxes. A significant portion of this debt was sold on international markets, especially in London and other European financial centers, where Japanese foreign bonds found buyers through syndicates of banks supported ultimately by foreign credit. Around 40% of war expenditure was funded via overseas borrowing.
Japan’s banking and financial markets at the end of the Russo-Japanese War were under significant stress from heavy deficit spending, heavy reliance on debt finance (both domestic and foreign), and strained central bank reserves. The war pushed the government well into deficit territory by peacetime standards and transformed how public finance and capital markets operated in modern Japan.
Manchuria was the means to solve their economic and strategic concerns.
The Pattern
At the same time, China’s weakness invited Japanese incursions into Manchuria. Qing China was militarily weak, politically unstable, and had no means to enforce sovereignty in Manchuria. Japan simply followed an imperial pattern they had seen employed by the European powers: de facto control without overt conquests. It started with the railway zones, embedding imperial advisors in positions of power, instituting a separate police force, monopolizing the financial and banking systems, inserting itself into the local school system or offering “premium” schooling opportunities.
By 1905, outright annexation was no longer the preferred first step of empire-building among great powers. It was diplomatically risky and expensive. Instead, empires sought control without sovereignty. Manchuria remained nominally sovereign as real power shifted to Japan. Japan initially avoided annexation precisely because it wished to avoid provoking the U.S. and Britain and it could extract economic and strategic benefits without legal responsibility.
Control of the Southern Manchurian Railroad (SMR) might seem somewhat minor, but was exactly the means for controlled troop movement and logistics. The immigration of Japanese citizens to Manchuria was into settlements anchored on the railway. At the same time, the Chinese residents became economically dependent upon SMR services to transport their goods to market. In addition, by international norms of the time, railways created and defined extraterritorial “railway zones,” quasi-sovereign spaces. It is here that Japan stationed police, courts, and troops along the line. This allowed Japan to dominate Manchuria without governing all of it.
But who is in charge?
While Taft-Katsura recognized Manchuria as a “special interest” zone for Japan (since the U.S. had limited business interests there), diplomatically the U.S. held that Manchuria was part of China. As we’ve pointed out, Japan was slowly exerting increasing levels of dominance over Manchuria. But who was in charge of the Japanese strategy? The diplomats had negotiated Taft-Katsura, but it was the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) that drove policy in Manchuria. The IJA was of the view that Manchuria was the strategic barrier protecting Korea from the next Russian offensive. As a result they acted rather autonomously in the field, expanding their Japanese-held territories in Manchuria. Actions of the Japanese army (known as the Kwantung Army – Kwantung was another name for the Laiodong Peninsula area) set national policy as the government in Tokyo raced to catch up.
Where was the United States?
At this time the interests of the U.S. was maintaining the “Open Door” policy for China to ensure business interests, but also the U.S. has concerns about stability in the Philippines as well as being heavily involved in interventions and peacekeeping in the Caribbean and Central America, notably in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. As a result, the U.S. had limited military presence in East Asia, and as long as China trade was open, had other concerns. Only later, after immigration disputes, naval competition, and China policy clashes did Manchuria become a focal point of U.S. tension with Japan.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.
This coming weekend is the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The gospel is the beginning of Matthew’s well known “Sermon on the Mount.” In yesterday’s post we covered the nature and alternative outlines of the Sermon. Today we go a little deeper into the nature of the first part of the Sermon known as the Beatitudes.
Internal Structure – Altogether there are nine beatitudes in 5:3–12, the ninth (5:11–12) is really an expansion of the eighth (5:10). Some scholars opt for a structure with three sets of three, the first eight exhibit such a tightly knit parallel structure that it is more likely that we should understand them as two sets of four. This is most consistent with Hebraic poetry forms which seem to be the literary background of the Beatitudes. Still there is an internal consistency within each “stanza/verse” as seen in the form of each pronouncement:
Blessed are they who… (a quality/activity in the present tense) for they will be…. (a verb in the future; except vv. 3 and 10)
This form is repeated each time with minor variations. The first and last beatitude have the same ending: “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Image credit: Cosimo Rosselli |Sermone della Montagna, 1481, Sistine Chapel, Public Domain
This coming weekend is the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The gospel is the beginning of Matthew’s well known “Sermon on the Mount.” In yesterday’s post we covered the nature and alternative outlines of the Sermon. Today we go a little deeper into the nature of the first part of the Sermon known as the Beatitudes.
Beatitudes are found elsewhere in Matthew (11:6; 13:16; 16:17; 24:46) and more frequently in Luke. They are based on a common form of expression in the poetic books of the Old Testament (e.g. Pss. 1:1; 32:1–2; 40:4; 119:1–2; 128:1), but nowhere in the Old Testament or other Jewish literature is there so long and carefully constructed a series as here. A beatitude (Latin) or makarism (Greek) is a statement in the indicative mood beginning with the adjective makarios, declaring certain people to be in a privileged, fortunate circumstance. It is not original to Jesus but occurs frequently in the OT as well as in non-Scriptural Jewish and other writings. Used here, the beatitudes reflect the Jewish use and setting: wisdom and prophecy. In the wisdom setting beatitudes declare the blessings of those in fortunate circumstances, based on observation and experience (e.g. Sir 25:7-9), and declare their present reward and happiness. In the prophetic setting beatitudes declare present and future blessings to those who are presently in dire circumstances but who will be vindicated at the coming of God’s kingdom (e.g. Is 30:18, 32:20; Dan 12:12).
In the first reading, great care is taken to describe the moment when the Ark of the Covenant is brought into Jerusalem. This is not simply a religious procession; it is a profound statement of faith. The Ark represents the dwelling place of God among the people. Where the Ark is, God is near. David dances, sacrifices are offered, and blessings are shared because God who has journeyed with the people since the time of the Exodus, continues to dwell with Israel and now in the holy city of Jerusalem.
Yet even here, something important is already beginning to shift. The Ark is not a talisman, charm, or amulet with magical powers. It does not guarantee blessing by its mere presence. What matters is how the people respond. Will they respond like King David with reverence, joy, obedience, and trust? David’s relationship with God is revealed not by possession of the Ark, but by his willingness to place God at the center of Israel’s life.
In the Gospel, Jesus completes this movement in a startling way. When told that his mother and relatives are waiting outside Jesus takes the moment and redefines what it means to a member of his family. “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” He is not rejecting his biological relationships, but pointing to something that is intentional and will endure beyond this lifetime.
With these words, Jesus moves us from a sacred object to a sacred community. God’s dwelling place is no longer an ark carried on poles, nor a tent or a temple. God now dwells in a people shaped by obedience to his will. The presence of God is revealed wherever lives are aligned with the Father’s purpose.
This is also where Jesus reshapes kinship. Belonging to God is not determined by bloodline, religious proximity, or external markers. True kinship is formed by obedience. It is formed by listening, trusting, and living according to God’s word. Mary herself is not excluded by this definition; she is its first and finest example. She belongs to Jesus not only because she bore him, but because she said, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”
These readings quietly challenge us. It asks us to examine our own religious thinking and practice. The Catholic Church has an amazing treasure of rituals, traditions and things sacred. Have we let our focus fall on those things in such a way that we remain distant from the heart of God? It is possible to honor holy places, rituals, and symbols — all good and necessary — without allowing them to shape how we live.
Jesus invites us deeper. He invites us to become a community where God truly dwells, not because we gather around holy objects, but because we choose obedience, day by day. When we forgive, when we act justly, when we place God’s will above our own preferences, we become the living dwelling place of God.
Like David, we are called to rejoice in God’s nearness. Like the disciples, we are called to hear Jesus say that we belong, not because of who we are connected to, but because we choose to do the will of the Father.
In that obedience, we discover something astonishing: we are not just servants of God. We are family.
At this point in the series we have reached 1905. The Russo-Japanese War had just concluded with a peace settlement reached, moderated by the United States. China was technically at peace, but as we’ll explore later in this post, there was a lot of conflict ongoing within China’s borders – foreign states fighting one another and internal actors seeking to overthrow the Chinese Qing Dynasty government (the last of the Chinese imperial governments established by the Manchu people of northern China). What becomes confusing is the ebb-and-flow of the control of “areas” of China in the first half of the 20th century. This post will attempt to offer a primer in area and names that will be bandied about in the following posts.
The major “areas” are as follows – and some of the nomenclature is mine in an attempt to (hopefully) make it easier to follow the storyline:
China: the southern part of the nation nominally in control of the Chinese government(s) and unoccupied by a foreign power. Under the China “Open Door” policy (not a treaty but a working understanding) most European powers had enclaves in port cities and important cities of the interior prior to WW2.
Manchuria: the traditional area in the northernmost bounds of the nation of China that was occupied, reoccupied, and in conflict between non-Chinese nations for the first half of the 20th century. It shares a border with Korea and Liaodong to the south and Siberia to the north. Importantly the railroad across Manchuria connected the TransSiberian Railroad to Russia’s eastern port of Vladivostok.
Northern China: a “made up” term that will be used to describe the area south of Manchuria and north of the rest of China. It is the area during the Second Sino-Japanese War (b. 1937) and incidents leading up to that conflict in which Japanese and Chinese forces clashed. While not exactly accurate, it is an area north of the Great Wall of China.
Inner Mongolia: a crescent shaped area north of “Northern China” and west-southwest of Manchuria. It largely borders Mongolia (a Russian state) with some shared border area with Russia (Siberia)
Laiodong (Kwantung): a peninsula west of Korea peninsula that is important for its warm water ports (notably Port Arthur) and the terminus of a railway system that connected the ports to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Chinese Eastern Railroad will later be called South Manchurian Railroad and later designated the North Manchurian Railroad
Korea: the boundaries then are the same as now. In the early 20th century it was technically an independent nation with its own king and queen.
Formosa: now known as Taiwan.
Korea
Korea has its own rich and varied history, but for purposes of this post, by the 20th century Korea was either a tribute state subject to China or a battleground for China, Russia, and Japan. Korea had once been a land of the “Three Kingdoms” – Goguryeo, Paekche (Baekje), and Silla. At the height of its powers the three kingdoms occupied the entire peninsula and roughly half of Manchuria and small parts of the modern Russian Far East. Goguryeo controlled the northern half of the peninsula, as well as Liaodong Peninsula and Manchuria. Paekche and Silla occupied the southern half of the peninsula.
Paekche was a great maritime power and was instrumental in the dissemination of Buddhism and its culture/skills to ancient Japan. This included Chinese written characters, Chinese and Korean literature, and technologies such as ferrous metallurgy and ceramics, architectural styles, sericulture (silk worms) and Buddhism.
The history of Korea is far more complicated than the “Three Kingdom” but that was the foundation that became modern Korea (after many twists and turns!) In the late 19th century, the government implemented a strict isolationist policy, earning Korea the nickname “Hermit Kingdom”. Like Japan, the policy had been established primarily for protection against Western imperialism, but soon the ruling dynasty was forced to open trade, beginning an era leading into competing Chinese and Japanese pressures. Prior to the First Sino-Japanese War, Korea was a tribute state to China. The 1895 post-war settlement gave them independence and the King became the Emperor of Korea.
Japan, Russia and China were the major foreign powers with interests in Korea, but at the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the Korean Empire effectively became a protectorate of Japan. At point of great contention, then and now, is that the 1905 Protectorate Treaty promulgated without the Emperor. It was not dissimilar to the U.S. annexation of Hawaii in 1898. Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and so things remained until 1945 and the defeat of Japan.
There is a long history of animosity between Korea and Japan stemming from the 1905-1945 period. Even today, Korea feels that Japan has not sufficiently acknowledged numerous injustices from the period, with grievances focusing on an alleged lack of a clear, straightforward admission of historical wrongdoing, denial of specific atrocities, and failure to provide appropriate reparations to individual victims. The list of injustices includes:
Sexual slavery (“comfort women”): the forced recruitment of tens of thousands of women, mostly Korean, into Japanese military brothels across Asia and the Pacific as sexual slaves.
Forced labor: millions of Koreans were forced to work in harsh conditions in mines, factories, and on construction sites in Japan and its colonies with little to no payment.
Cultural suppression: Japan implemented policies aimed at erasing Korean national identity, including banning the Korean language in schools and public spaces, forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names, burning Korean historical documents, and converting Korean temples to honor Japanese deities.
Massacres and war crimes: Koreans highlight several mass murders and atrocities committed by Japanese forces, such as the Gando and Kantō massacres, not acknowledged by Japan.
Legality of annexation: There is an ongoing dispute over the legality of the 1910 Annexation Treaty itself, which many Koreans view as having been signed under duress and therefore invalid.
Japan and Korea
Japan had long been interested in Korea, “the dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.” Neutrality was not an option. Japan wanted control as part of its vision of strategic buffers. But in addition, Japan needed Korea’s food production, natural resources, and land for Japanese emigrants due over population concerns in the home islands.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives. | Map courtesy of MapWorks 2005
This coming weekend is the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The gospel is the beginning of Matthew’s well known “Sermon on the Mount.” In yesterday’s post we cover the context for the Sermon as well as some overarching views of the Sermon regarding its context and audience. Today we consider the nature and alternative outlines of the Sermon.
The Beatitudes, which begin the “Sermon on the Mount” have a tendency to lead readers/hearers of the text to assume that Matthew has constructed a general ethical code which forms the core message. Craig Keener (A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, 160) notes that there are more than thirty-six discrete views about the sermon’s message. He summarizes 8 of them:
The predominant medieval view, reserving a higher ethic for clergy, especially in monastic orders;
Martin Luther’s view that the sermon represents an impossible demand like the law;
the Anabaptist view, which applies the teachings literally for the civil sphere;
the traditional liberal social gospel position;
existentialist interpreters’ application of the sermon’s specific moral demands as a more general challenge to decision;
Schweitzer’s view that the sermon embodies an interim ethic rooted in the mistaken expectation of imminent eschatology;
the traditional dispensational application primarily to a future millennial kingdom; and
the view of an “inaugurated eschatology,” in which the sermon’s ethic remains the ideal or goal, but which will never be fully realized until the consummation of the kingdom.”
It is perhaps the ethical view that is most common. Many scholars trace this popular predominance to the influence of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy whose literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus centered on the Sermon on the Mount (The Kingdom of God Is Within You). But this ethical reading alone does not do justice to the whole of Matthew’s text. Jesus is describing a standard that is nothing less than wholeness/completeness, being like God (5:48). As St. Irenaeus wrote in the 2nd Century, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.”
Appearing in today’s gospel is a passage that is sure to lead to questions: “Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” (Mark 3: 28-29) It is a question I am regularly asked. Sometimes out of curiosity; sometimes out of concern for their souls. Perhaps beneath the question is seeking assurance they are not somehow guilty of a sin that is unforgivable. My first response to the question is the very fact that they are worried and essentially asking“Have I done this?” is itself a strong sign that they have not. But let’s explore the question.
First of all one has to discern the context of the words. In Mark 3, Jesus speaks of “blaspheming the Holy Spirit” in response to a very specific situation. The scribes are witnesses of undeniable acts of healing and liberation, they recognize that something extraordinary is happening, and yet deliberately claim that this work of God comes from Satan. It is one thing to wonder about who is this person able to do the works of God. That would be the spirit of inquiry even if accompanied with a measure of confusion or doubt. But that’s not what they do. They willfully misname God’s saving work. They have closed their hearts to the Spirit of God – for what? To protect power, status, and control? Jesus’ warning arises from this hardened posture.
It is important to clear away common fears, misconceptions, and poor catechesis. Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is not a sudden angry thought, a careless word spoken in frustration, a season of doubt or questioning, falling into serious sin, feeling distant from God, or even rejecting God for a time and later returning. Think about it. Peter denied Jesus, Paul persecuted the Church, David committed grave sin and all were forgiven.
Across Scripture, the Fathers, and the Catechism, there is remarkable consistency. Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is a settled, persistent refusal to accept God’s mercy by rejecting the Spirit who offers it. St. Augustine put it this way: “The sin is unforgivable because it refuses forgiveness.” The Catechism (CCC 1864) says: “There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repentance rejects the forgiveness of sins.”
In other words, the Holy Spirit’s role is to convict the heart, reveal truth, move us toward repentance, and open us to grace. To blaspheme the Spirit is to shut the door from the inside.
The heart of the issue is why is it called “unforgivable?” It is not that God refuses to forgive. It is that the person refuses to be forgiven. Forgiveness requires recognition of sin, openness to grace, and willingness to be changed. Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the deliberate choice to say: “I do not need mercy,” “I will decide what is good and evil,” “God is wrong; I am right.” As long as that stance remains, forgiveness cannot take root not because grace is absent, but because it is rejected.
One thing that always needs to be said pastorally and clearly in order to give the person reassurance is that anyone who is worried about having committed this sin has not committed it. Why? Because fear, sorrow, regret, and concern for reconciliation are movements of the Holy Spirit, not signs of blasphemy. The unforgivable sin is marked by certainty, not anxiety; self-justification, not repentance; hardness, not fear; and indifference, not longing. A closed heart does not ask for reassurance.
Jesus is not trying to terrify fragile consciences. He is warning hardened ones. He is saying be careful not to explain away grace, to label God’s work as threatening or to protect yourself so fiercely that you refuse to be converted. This warning is itself an act of mercy. It is a final attempt to shake open a heart that is closing.
The last word is always this. As long as a person can still say, “Lord, have mercy,” then mercy is already at work. God’s forgiveness is inexhaustible. The only real danger is refusing or denying it.
And so when parishioners ask, “Have I done this?” My answer is “No. The very fact that you’re asking means the Spirit is still speaking, and your heart is still open. But tell me more.” That last part of the response very often leads to the grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
One of the most subtle spiritual dangers is not outright rejection of God, but the slow closing of the heart, intentionally or not, in what amounts to some form of self-protection.
In his letter to Timothy, Paul writes with urgency and tenderness. He knows how easily fear can cause a believer to retreat from the fullness of gospel living. Perhaps we pull back on ministry or sharing our faith in parts of our lives where we might be judged or dismissed. That is why he reminds Timothy that God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control. We know the experience of being in love, how it opens our hearts. We know the experience of fear when we close in and begin to shield or protect some part of ourselves. Perhaps it is to protect our reputation, our safety, our comfort, or our standing in the community. Faith quietly loses its courage.
The Gospel shows what happens when self-protection hardens into resistance. The scribes are confronted with undeniable evidence of God’s power at work in Jesus. Rather than allowing the truth to challenge them, they reinterpret it in a way that preserves their authority. They choose explanation over conversion. In doing so, they close themselves off from the very grace meant to heal them.
Jesus’ warning about blaspheming the Holy Spirit is not about a single careless word. Let me suggest it is about a settled refusal to recognize God’s work when it stands plainly before us. A closed heart no longer seeks truth; it seeks justification. Once that happens, repentance becomes impossible not because God withholds mercy, but because the heart will no longer receive it. Paul tells us “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5) We have closed off our hearts and refused entry to the Holy Spirit.
Paul offers a different path. From prison, stripped of security and status, he refuses self-protection. He entrusts himself to God and encourages Timothy to do the same. His confidence does not come from being safe, but from being faithful. The truth of the Gospel is worth the cost, even when it leads to suffering.
You might think, “I don’t think I have a closed heart.” A closed heart often begins as a cautious heart, a heart that wants to avoid risk. Where are we cautious? Where might we be choosing comfort over truth, silence over witness, control over trust?
The Gospel does not grow in protected spaces. It grows where people are willing to be changed.
Today we are invited to pray for hearts that remain open; open enough to be challenged, open enough to repent, open enough to trust that God’s Spirit is at work even when it unsettles us. Because truth received brings life, but truth resisted for the sake of self-protection slowly shuts the door to grace.
May the Lord keep our hearts open, courageous, and free. May our hearts not be governed by fear, but shaped by the Spirit who leads us into all truth. The Spirit that is poured into our hearts.
The First Sino-Japanese war marked Japan as a military power – but was Japan capable of engaging a western military power? That question would be put to the test in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905.
In the previous post we noted that the transfer of Liaodong Peninsula and its warm water Port Arthur were ceded to Japan in the treaty that ended the First Sino-Japanese War. Via the “Triple Intervention,” (of which Russia was the primary animator), Japan reluctantly agreed to return Liaodong to China in 1895, the same year the war ended. In 1898 the ports of Liaodong and Port Authur were leased to Russia. The news was not received well in Japan. Beyond the humiliation, this meant the very thing Japan feared: a western imperial power gaining a foothold in what Japan considered its “security zone.” But Japan also realized Russia’ long term goals and objectives were even more ominous.
Russia had a similar view of Japan and sought to construct “security zones” that provided protection, strategic depth while providing economic and diplomatic leverage. Russia’s Far Eastern policy aimed at the warm-water port of Port Arthur. In addition Russia wanted to extend its influence southward from Siberia into Manchuria and Korea. This would link the Pacific coast firmly to European Russia.
All this brought Russia even more deeply and directly into Japan’s perceived security zone.
Precursors to War
After 1895, Russia steadily entrenched itself in Manchuria as it had gained rights to build the Chinese Eastern Railway across Manchuria to connect to the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1898 the aforementioned lease of Port Arthur was secured and in 1900 the Russian military took advantage of conflict and occupied Manchuria during China’s Boxer Rebellion. Then Russia failed to fully withdraw from Manchuria afterward, despite repeated promises. Japanese leaders interpreted this as bad faith and evidence of permanent annexation plans. All this transformed Russia from a distant empire into a direct territorial rival.
Although Manchuria was vital, Korea was the emotional and strategic trigger. After 1895, Russia increased diplomatic, financial, and military involvement in Korea. Russian advisers appeared at the Korean court. Russia was giving all the signs and indications that their goal was for Korea to become a Russian protectorate, mirroring what had happened in Manchuria. Japan was willing to compromise on Manchuria; it was not willing to compromise on Korea.
From 1901–1904, Japan sought negotiated settlements, proposing that Japan recognize Russian predominance in Manchuria in exchange for Russian recognition of Japanese predominance in Korea. Russia repeatedly delayed responses and when they did reply the concessions or counters were vague or conditional. At the same time the Russians continued strengthening their military position. Japan rightly concluded that Russia was using diplomacy to buy time.
Internal pressures pushed Japan toward war. After the Triple Intervention, Japan believed its status as a great power depended on resisting further humiliation. Many Japanese believed they must fight before Russia completed the Chinese Eastern Railway and achieved overwhelming superiority – it was now or never – and the nation, for 20 years, had been investing in the military for a contingency just like this. Further delay favored Russia and so “now” seemed to be the window for victory; a window that might soon close. War increasingly appeared to be the least bad option.
How to understand the Russo-Japanese War
The Triple Intervention’s legacy went beyond immediate grievance. It convinced Japan that international law and diplomacy favored the strong, hardened Japanese elites against reliance on Western goodwill, and reinforced the belief that only decisive force could secure Japan’s place. The Triple Intervention was not a cause of war, but a lesson learned.
Other world powers had their own concerns about Russia. Britain and the United States preferred a strong Japan to check Russian expansion and applied no serious pressure on Japan to back down. In addition the Britain–Japan Alliance (1902) reassured Japan that it would not face a multi-power coalition. And so Japan did not fear diplomatic isolation in the way it had regarding the First Sino-Japanese War. All of this gave indications that perhaps Japan was being accepted as a world power or at least acknowledged as the preeminent Asia power.
Meanwhile, Russia never prepared for war. On one hand Russia was far more concerned with European matters and internal court intrigue. On the other, Russia severely underestimated Japan’s military power, the existential threat they were imposing upon Japan, its willingness to attack a European power, and other factors that likely included racial and cultural assumptions that Japan was a “second-rate” power. Besides, time was on their side; or so they believed.
Over time, historians have developed different views of the war. In part, because more primary source information became available and the lenses of understanding changed between generations. Up until the 1950s, the understanding was that Russian aggression and imperial expansion were the primary causes; Japan fought a defensive, pre-emptive war. It was believed that Japan exhausted diplomatic options and struck only when delay became fatal. Overall, the clash is viewed as a case of a rising regional power resisting European imperialism. Any Japanese imperial ambitions are downplayed and priority is given to the perceived threat from Russia.
In the 1960s the assertion was that Japan deliberately chose war to secure imperial expansion. Russia was cautious, divided, and often defensive while Japan overstated the Korean security threat to justify expansion. Captured by internal politics, Tokyo rejected workable compromises to avoid diplomatic limits on its freedom. At the same time, military and naval elites used war to secure budgets, cement political influence and validate the expenses of the modernization efforts. Russia, lacking a coherent Far Eastern strategy, repeatedly sought delays. This view underplays how threatening Russian actions appeared to Japanese decision-makers at the time.
From the 1990s onward the view judges that the war resulted from mutual imperial ambitions, compounded by misperception, bureaucratic politics, and structural insecurity. This approach does not split blame cleanly but asks, “Why did compromise fail when it seemed possible?”
The general conclusion is that diplomacy failed because Russia’s bureaucracy was fragmented causing delays which Japan interpreted as deception. Both sides believed time favored the other, creating a commitment trap. Along with other factors, war was not inevitable, but once certain thresholds were crossed, it became likely.
When one looks at the analysis of the later Asian-Pacific War, you will discover elements of the same pattern. Often these phases are described as orthodox, revisionist, and modern (sometimes followed by neo-orthodox). It is especially in the last phases, when more primary source documents become available that specialists begin to view through specific lenses reflecting what the historian thinks is the primary driver: economics, diplomacy, policy, politics, security, and more.
Why do I mention this? Because later in this series we will review that same morphing historiography as concerns Pearl Harbor and the Asia-Pacific War.
The War
After years of failed diplomacy, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in February 1904. Japan quickly seized the initiative on land and sea, winning major battles at Liaoyang, Mukden (remember this name), and decisively at the naval Battle of Tsushima, where Japan destroyed Russia’s Baltic Fleet. Tsushima turned a prolonged war of attrition into a rapid path to Japanese victory.
Despite Russia’s larger population and resources, she suffered from poor leadership, long supply lines, and domestic unrest all of which crippled her war effort. Japan’s modernized army and navy achieved rapid, coordinated victories but at high cost. The war ended with the Treaty of Portsmouth (1905), mediated by the United States, recognizing Japan’s predominance in Korea, transferring Port Arthur and southern Manchuria to Japan, and confirming Japan as the first Asian power to defeat a European great power in modern war.
The Aftermath
The Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War is described as coming “at high cost” because military success pushed Japan close to the limits of its manpower, finances, and social cohesion, even while it won on the battlefield. The costs were real, visible, and politically destabilizing, leaving deep scars beneath the triumph.
Japan won most major engagements, but often through frontal assaults against entrenched Russian positions. The losses (deaths and casualties) were exceptionally high for a small nation. Total casualties (killed, wounded, missing) were 70,000–80,000. While the Russian losses were higher in absolute numbers, the losses were not as devastating or proportionally large. Further, for Japan the losses fell heavily on young, conscripted males, straining villages and families. The army began to fear it was winning battles faster than it could replace men.
Japanese doctrine emphasized an offensive spirit and tactical mindset regardless of the cost. While it worked tactically in this war, attrition favored Russia in the long run. Japan’s leaders quickly came to understand that they could not sustain another year of fighting. By early 1905 ammunition stockpiles were low, replacement soldiers were less well trained, and the army was nearing exhaustion. Victory arrived just before exhaustion became defeat.
In a certain sense Japan lost the war. Japan had financed the war largely through Britain and U.S. loans supplemented by heavy domestic taxation. As a result national debt skyrocketed as war expenditures consumed well over half of government spending. Japan emerged victorious but financially dependent on international credit, and most importantly, had no leverage to impose a punitive peace as it had done after the First Sino-Japanese War. Punitive peace was the expectation of the people after such a great sacrifice.
But unlike earlier wars, Russia had suffered casualties and loss, but overall their army and navy were still substantial, no Russian territory was occupied, and the regime of Russia was not really threatened, nor was the Trans-Siberian Railway. In addition, the U.S. had moderated the treaty/settlement. President Roosevelt’s priorities were ending the war quickly, preserving a balance of power in East Asia and avoiding Russia’s complete humiliation which might destabilize Europe. Roosevelt pressed Japan to drop indemnity demands and accept territorial and political concessions instead
Japan accepted because it needed peace more than money.
Back home, the public expected indemnity payments, territorial expansion of more than Korea and southern Manchuria, and some step-up in recognition. The perceived gap between sacrifice and reward sparked riots in Tokyo and a growing disillusionment with the current political leaders. Victory felt incomplete, even humiliating to some.
The war reinforced dangerous lessons for the Japanese military that cemented the bushidō philosophy in their ranks. It became, not just an understanding, but doctrine that bushidō spirit could overcome material disadvantage. Also, that decisive victory required willingness to accept massive losses. These lessons contributed to later tolerance for extreme casualties in future wars. In a way, the cost was not only human and financial, but ideological. And to the western mind, irrational.
Image credit: various photographs from Naval Aviation Museum, National World War II Museum, and US Navy Archives.
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