Finally! Our 4 postulants from Myanmar are with us. Welcome!
Fraternity
While I was in China, I enjoyed a wonderful privilege. I had the opportunity to visit the Catholic places in the remote areas of Mainland China. The churches there were founded by French missionaries.
Since their expulsion by the previous regime, no priest has been living there, and only on rare occasions does a priest visit them. In some places, I was the first priest they saw in more than a year. I was very curious to see how a Catholic community was able to manage without practically everything that we usually take for granted in our churches here. Like for example, how they celebrated the Mass without a priest, and how they kept their faith and shared it with one another. I was dying to learn what kind of faith these communities had.
I knew the standard of living was painfully low. Some of them didn’t even use money, yet they still managed to survive with the scarce crops and little livestock they had raised. They shared the room of their houses with chickens and pigs. A child had to stay with his grandparents because his mother had been sold. Running water and electricity were luxuries that most could not enjoy.
That day was the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a Friday. The bell of the church was an old and rusty car tyre, but it was effective enough and soon summoned a huge crowd to pack the church. I had to stay outside for there was no place for me inside. The catechist started the Mass as usual, read the readings and preached in their dialect. I did not know what he preached about, but I did remember that one could hear a pin drop in that beautiful old European-style Church. The rest of the day passed without fanfare.
After dinner, people started to place their chairs facing one of the walls where posters of Mother Mary hung. Then, everyone knelt and the head of the household would start to sing to liveliest form of Rosary I’ve ever heard. This happened in every house, I was told. Some managed to know I was a priest and begged me with tears to visit their elders for they feared they could not pass the winter without absolution and last sacraments. That night I prayed I could have as much faith as they had.
Well, this is what I witnessed in China. Allow me now to put you through a little exercise. I would like you to reflect about what you were thinking when I was elaborating. I guess you would never have thought about my faith, or me, for that matter. You would probably admire those Chinese and the way they kept their faith. At best, you could have thought about how lucky I was to have this opportunity of witnessing their faith.
Well, this is what giving witness is all about. It is the act of disappearing behind the testimony. Rather than making people look at you, giving witness is about making people see through you. It is becoming transparent for others to see what is behind you.
This was the mission of St. John the Baptist, and he did it well. John knew that he had to grow smaller for Jesus to grow greater, and this made him the greatest of the prophets. He knew how to “disappear” for Jesus to “appear”. He knew how to give witness. And his witness was about Jesus being the “lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Those strange words refer to the prophecy of Isaiah telling about the Suffering Servant.
John identified Jesus and his suffering as a way of removing the sin of the world from our midst. For him, this was more important than himself: the solution for the sinful situation in which the world lives, was coming his way.
Now, how about us? What is our testimony? How do we give witness? To what do we give witness? Giving witness is not only about being a Christian, but about everything we think is worth witnessing. It can be a movie, a friend, something that made us happy, something that made us feel fully alive – it could be anything.
This is the type of witnessing today’s world is thirsting for, and we ought to quench that thirst. Today we are called to “disappear” for our experience of God to “appear”. We need to become transparent for God to shine through, to be the light to the nations like the first reading tells us.
A friend of mine told me that his dream was to live in a poor country working in a slum without anyone knowing about him. That struck me. I know many who want to live with the poor. But his desire was to pass unnoticed as he served others. He knew what giving witness is about. Perhaps, this should be our way of pure witnessing for our neighbours, and for our children: that they see through us the brightness of God.
