LONDON: 7
January 2012 --
When I was receiving the missionary crucifix at the Basilica
of Mary
Help of Christian in Turin, last September, I was asking
myself ‘What
am I doing here?’ Looking at the departing missionaries from
Korea, I
was asking myself if there was a need for missionaries to go
abroad,
given the amount of work in our country yet to be done. I
thought about
myself and felt that God's call really is a mystery. In this
way, I
felt afresh that only through God’s providence could this life
commitment be an answer to his call. Also, looking at the
autumn trees
losing their leaves according to natural law the ‘giving life’
looks
very beautiful.
It seems that missionary life is another call received from
God in
religious life. My vocation started with the call to
live and give my
heart for poor people, to live in a place where I am needed.
Obviously
I need purify this motivation, listening more carefully to
God's call
than at the first moment of my vocation.
My missionary vocation started this way: I fel that the Korean
SDB
province would have no problem if I were not around. If I were
not
around, nobody would notice, since this province has already
'grown
up'. This thought then grew - I wanted in my heart to
live in some
more needy place. This way my heart was inclined to the
missionary
vocation.
Of course, as missionary I still must purify and grow in my
vocation,
but this was the first movement of my heart. And with
this heart I was
praying that my life would be full of faith and zeal and
become a
sacrifice for the proclamation of the Gospel.
As part of ‘Project Europe’ I was sent to London, UK, and have
been living there six months already.
From our Rinaldi community at Battersea I was studying English
at the
language school. It was a short period, but it gave me an
experience of
what missionary life, with some of its difficulties, is.
The GBR
province has about 80 confreres. Some six communities are
involved
mainly in parish and school ministry. Nowadays their main
challenge is
the ageing of the confreres. Among the 80 Salesians only 25
are younger
than 70 years of age. There are no new vocations and when we
think
about how the situation might be some ten years from now we
might even
sense a crisis - that our Congregation will disappear here in
the near
future. Due to the confreres ageing, there is a lack of
Salesians
involved in youth ministry and it is difficult to animate it
in a
Salesian way. The whole Church seems be declining.
Generally, the people believe they can do what they like, it
is only a
question of money and time; many live as if God did not exist.
As a
result material goods are plentiful but I sense their inner
poverty.
True happiness, deep joy is lost. This is the reason why many
young
confreres should be sent to Europe, not only to England. It
seems that
the ‘reverse mission’ era is needed.
Before leaving for the missions, I was listening to the many
challenges
of missionary life: food, climate, language, fraternal life,
discrimination, were among the worries of many candidates. Now
I
know why they mentioned these. Without strong faith I
would have
already been overwhelmed by all these difficulties. In this
situation I
have begun to pray as never before; my life has begun to
change under
this ‘pressure’, to a real missionary life. If I do not
meet God personally,
one to one, face to face in prayer, I will not be able to
endure, resist these challenges.
Here is the paradox: there is no better life path to
holiness than a missionary life…