Cultural Shock

Catholic Church of Korea is sending missioners both lay, religious and clerical to overseas missions in greater numbers, and we are beginning to hear stories about their experiences. Many are diocesan priests who volunteer for a period of years and return to their dioceses and pastoral work.   

One such priest writes about his experience after two parishes in which he worked as an assistant and sent to Bolivia. Missioners receive a certain amount of formation but they usually are persons with a recent desire for mission so the thought and new experience brings fear. How was he going to live by himself and adapt to the new culture? He spends some time in his article for the diocesan bulletin, explaining one of the difficulties he brought upon himself.

He was at a mission station that became a parish. One of the girls in the mission station came to speak to him. He had finished the study of Spanish and worked in the parish for about 3 months but when the girl spoke he didn't understand her. He asked the girl to repeat what she said and she did, and this continued a number times. He told her: "padre, no entiende nada"  (Father doesn't understand anything).

As soon as he heard these words  he uttered, he was overcome with anger and returned home. He felt disregarded and his self esteem plummeted. His  guilty conscience made him so distraught he was not able to sleep that night. With time he regained his composure. He reflected on what transpired that day, and realized  the reason for his anger was not the child but himself.

An adult, a priest he felt snubbed and it was hard to accept. His self worth had been damaged and he looked strait into the face of his pride. It was a great learning  experience.

He thanked  the child for helping him to face his problem. Because of his position there is the danger of looking down on others;  when his own self esteem is hurt he can lose his stability.

We are all of us of great value. Jesus gave us  a running description  of how to accept  being snubbed and disregarded and we know  who he was. Humility and  love were his response.

Year of Mercy

Many initiatives made in society and within the Church often remain slogans that sound and make us feel good, but with little follow-up or change in what we do.  

"Merciful Like the Father" is the motto for the Jubilee of Mercy, we  began last year on Dec. 8th, and will continue to Nov. 20th. We try to reflect God's mercy in our everyday actions and as Pope Francis stressed to bring about a "revolution of tenderness."

Both Catholic paper gave us a report on the  priests in one diocese, who decided at a general meeting, as a group of 114 priests, to show mercy in three different ways. They discussed this among themselves in deanery meetings and on their own, initiative concluded with three distinct actions.   

They will love the Sacrament of Penance and  experience the mercy of God in their time in the confessional. Secondly, they will tithe and give the money to the needy, and  in their  dealings with parishioners will show kindness, make efforts to be warm and  work for understanding  with all those they meet.

As messengers of mercy, they will  make this known to all the religious working in the diocese and all the parishes. The  motto is "Happiness of the Merciful."
 
After the visit of Pope Francis in 2014, the bishops of Korea also decided to prepare a bank book to help the poorer churches in Asia. This year they will help four of the churches, and continue in the future. Bishops and clergy of one of the dioceses, have set an example for the whole church. This has great meaning for all of us, were the words used in one of the editorials.

'Beads gathered together need to be threaded to be precious,' is a Korean proverb that the editorial mentions.  We need actions on these movements  if  thy are not to remain only slogans. The editorial  notes that the parishioners will be very happy to hear of the resolution, and hopes the example  will spread to other dioceses. The editorial concludes with applause for the bishops and priests.

Hidden but Important Work

Cleaning is a difficult job, and those that have experienced the drudgery of this work know it is never finished. There is always more to clean and little results are seen and quickly all returns shortly to the original condition. It is a war of attrition that continues. Rarely conscious of who, where and what, and easily forget the smell and the dirty environment.

Church buildings are also in need of cleaning. After many functions and events the cleaning awaits. After the events we leave behind litter but few are those who will spend time putting everything in its original spots, for we think it is the work for others. We who are Catholics have been given the mission of taking care of God's creation but she wonders how many are conscious of this mandate. A religious sister wants us to reflect on this issue in her article on the opinion page of the Catholic Times.

We need to consider the culture with its incessant drive to consume and to ignore  the ecological issues in our society. Trash, nuclear energy, environmental destruction, pollution, radioactivity and the like are put on the back burner, and even talking about the problems is considered out of place in many quarters.

There is always a minority who  see the problems and are willing to sacrifice for them. Korean Bishops during their spring meeting have decided to set up a committee to consider the problems we have with environment. She hopes priests will use the information in their sermons.

She wants us to be more sensitive to the many who work in the cleaning jobs of the world, who without notice, quietly work at their tasks. She hopes that we will be interested in their joys and sorrows  and she wants us to express thanks for what they do to care for our health and well being from early morning.

She concludes with the hope that when we use and discard anything we will give the action some thought. With the new committee she hopes the Church will take more interest in God's creation and its care and will be waiting to hear their voice.

God And Mammon

In the Seoul Diocesan Bulletin, a music critic gives us some thoughts on giving up love for gold. She goes back to her childhood, when she  occasionally saw neck scarfs made from the skins of foxes and weasels. She recalls how scared she was when she saw the face of the fox with its pointed nose and tail. The animals seemed ready to come back to life. They were killed to be of service to humans, and she found that sad.

Many years later when she was in Germany studying; she went to a natural history museum where she saw many fur coats on display. One of the coats was a leopard fur coat, with this explanation attached: "If you want to wear this beautiful coat it will mean that three leopards have to die." It was beautifully made, like a flower in bloom.

When she was visiting  there was a group of elementary school children present, and she over heard them say it was beautiful, and "I will never wear a fur coat." This was, she noted, the very feeling that those who  prepared the exhibition wanted  to hear. Educational results were quickly seen.

On German TV, you often see the places they raise animals, and the cruel ways the animals are killed for their fur. These scenes are shown to the viewers with the hope that shocked those buying fur coats will decrease. If citizens don't want them, the killings will end is the intention.  

In the past people who lived in cold places needed warm skins of animals to keep them warm but today more than warmth they are captivated by the beauty and hope it will reflect their own beauty, and a symbol of their personal abundance. However, fear that it will be lost is also the results of their possession.

A person who has an old car and another who has just bought a new expensive car and parks in front of an eating place their thinking is different. Where your treasure is there is your heart, Luke 12:34.

We can't find words that come right to the point, and said so clearly as these words of Jesus.
 
She brings to our attention the opera by Richard Wagner: The Ring of the Nibelung in which he used the mythical gods of the people of North Europe. A ring made from the gold from the Rhine River would give the owner all the power and wealth you'd want with only one condition: you give up loving and being loved. The water spirits were given the task to guard the gold; no one would be interested, they thought, and the gold was stolen.  

Her conclusion is the same as what Jesus said in Luke 16:13. "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other or be attentive to the one and despise the other."

Voting Wisely

Korea and the United States are both preparing for  elections, and one of the columnists in the Peace Weekly introduces us to the words of  the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church at the beginning of his article. 

"Political parties have the task of fostering widespread participation and making public responsibilities accessible to all. Political parties are called to interpret the aspirations of civil society, orienting them towards the common good, offering citizens the effective possibility of contributing to the formulation of political choices. They must be democratic in their internal structure, and capable of political synthesis and planning" (# 413).

The columnist after careful reading of the document sighs, lamenting that our political parties are far from what is envisioned in the above paragraph.  We are just a few weeks away from election, still don't have all the candidates, and continual discord within both parties.


Where is the effort to "interpret the aspirations of civil society and working for the common good?" Where do we have "offering citizens the effective possibility of contributing to the formation of political choices, democratic in their internal structures and capable of political synthesis and planning?"

On second thought, the columnist brings to mind the possibility of the discord coming from efforts to pick the best candidate for the National Assembly and the good of the country.

Here we can't turn our back on what is going on but need to work for a better future, and that requires that we participate in the voting process, and it should not stop with the vote.

The candidate should be the ones who will  work with all their abilities for the common good. When it comes to voting, and in our opinion, we don't have the best candidate we have to vote for the one that is least harmful for the country. It is then that we are  truly participating.  

Plato pointed our clearly: "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics, is that you end up governed by someone worse if a man will not himself hold office and rule." This comes from 2300 years ago  but as valid today as it was in Plato's time. This is true not only in politics, but for all those we select to work in service to others. 

Thoughts on Hope

At the end of Lent and the beginning of the Easter Season, we bring with us the joy and hope that belong to our lives as Christians. Both hope and despair are strong realities of life. In the Vigil Mass of Easter, we come away with a live hope: words introducing an article in View from the Ark of the Catholic Times.

The columnist tells us about a Japanese TV serial drama that he saw a  number of years ago at the recommendation of a friend. The drama was later adapted to a Korean audience and also proved popular. 'Midnight Restaurant' was the name of the drama. He wants us to see what the restaurant can tell us about our life as Christians and religious people.

Open from midnight to morning in the middle of Tokyo in a secluded alley and named Rice House, which in itself brings a smile to our lips. One can't help but see it all as laziness: the place, the time, the name are all contrary to what we know about  market strategy.

Customers are many and the reasons are not for the tasty food, nor mainly because they are hungry. They congregate at the Rice House like birds to their nests, proving the words of Jesus that we are not hungry only for bread.

The owner of the restaurant offers only two things to his customers. Gives them their rice and listens to them. A person of few words, and does not come across as the owner. If you look carefully, the writer says, he is always taking a step backwards. Moreover, each episode you have another person in his place, which would make you think it wasn't good for business; however, they keep on coming to share their lives and stories.  

This reminds the columnist of an oasis in a desert, and the many different groups within a Church. God's house is humanity's house, and like the Midnight Restaurant, an Eucharistic Table where people come to speak what is in their heart and receive food.

Pope Francis' certainty is that all pastoral work begins by listening. The columnist recalls a line from a poem that keeps ringing in his ears: " I am in the Church but keep on longing for the Church."  And he hears the words of the Lord said with a smile: "Are you not the Church?"

Happy Easter

In a parish monthly bulletin we have the greetings and meditation for Easter,  and its meaning for us in the here and now.

One of the famous quotes from Thoreau: "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." If this was true in Thoreau's time it's probably truer today for many. Certainly, it should not be so for Christians.

We are alleluia people who should be singing these words at least in our heart. This gift of faith and joy that comes is not for us to keep to ourselves but to  give to the  world. Our problem is without this feeling of joy in our hearts we are not able to pass it on to others: a great tragedy.

Christians know that God works in the present moment but when we  can't get out of the past or when future worries keep us from the present moment we miss opportunities:"Enough, then, of worrying about about tomorrow. Let tomorrow take care of itself. Today has troubles enough of its own"  
(Matt. 6:34).

Creation's natural rhythm of life should teach us much. Each new day comes with a beginning and end. We go to sleep for the body is tired only to wake up again to a new reality and new day. We are a different  person we were the day before, for God has worked through us with his graces and the works of the Spirit. We should be singing a new song, we are a new creation: born again. 

This same rhythm can be seen in spring  a  symbol of the Resurrection. Farmers are digging the earth; seeds are planted; flowers are blooming all nature is coming alive.

We  have liturgically lived the paschal mystery. We are not able like Jesus to raise the dead, but we can help to give life to those who have lost hope, and fallen into despondency. This is a mission that we have received as Christians. When we are working to give life to others and help them enjoy the gift of life, we have the joy of the Resurrection. Happy Easter!