2008
Xaverian
Volume 56, Number 1
S
Mission
Newsletter
“Who Draws the Lines Around Countries?”
everal years ago I read a book entitled Children’s Letters to God, and one of my favorites was a very short letter which consisted of a simple question. The question was this: Dear God, Who draws the lines around countries?
around the town. He was just ordinary, nothing extraordinary about him at all. They had him all figured out and fitted into categories. They did not believe in him and so he was able to do practically nothing for the people of his hometown, (Mt. 13).
So, who draws the lines around countries? Who makes the atlases and the maps? I’ve traveled by plane many a time, and as I looked down over mountain ranges and lakes, oceans and plains, often I could not distinguish where one state or one country ended and another began.
If you are a young woman or a young man who has traveled to or attended school in another state or country you have been given the opportunity to abolish categories and to break down the barriers which all too often keep us from knowing, accepting and trusting one another. You have learned that beneath all our differences of nation, color, race, religion, socioeconomic class, we are unique individuals, dreamed up in the mind of God, created out of love, and reflecting God in a way that can never be repeated. The other person, then, is always brother or sister. The other is always a child of God, a dwelling place of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and therefore deserving of respect and profound reverence.
We humans are the ones to draw lines around countries. We make limits and boundaries. We separate and divide. We create labels and establish categories. Jesus, too, had to deal with categories. He returns to Nazareth for the first time since leaving home and preaches a brilliant sermon in the synagogue, but as his fellow citizens listen to him, they cannot believe that a local carpenter could show such wisdom. They had undoubtedly heard stories about his miracles, but it was obvious to them that what he did best was make things like tables and doors. He was one of them. He had relatives all
Gifted with this experience, you are now being sent on a mission. Bear witness to what you have seen and heard and lived. Never give way to narrow categories or hasty generaliza(continued next page)
“All the Churches for All the World”
P
ope Benedict XVI, addressing the need and importance of the Church’s missionary action, also in our time, invites the local Churches - missionary by their very nature - of every continent to rediscover with renewed energy the urgency of “mission ad gentes”. Many are the challenges and the conflicting forces which affect today’s world, and the Pope calls “mission ad gentes” a must for the Church. This renewed call by the Pope leads me to reflect on my experience in Taiwan, on our Founder Blessed Guido Maria Conforti, our Patron Saint Francis Xavier and Cardinal Richard Cushing. So, I would like to take a walk, so to say, through this message by having as my companions these people and these experiences.
Once in Taiwan, one of the first Chinese phrases, Zhang laoshi (my Chinese teacher) thought me was “Tian Xia Yi Jia” which can be roughly translated as: under the sky we are one family. We may come from different lands, enriched by different languages, cultural backgrounds and religious expressions, yet, Chinese wisdom reminds us, we are all inter-connected and belong to the one human family created in the image and likeness of God. Pope Benedict calls his message “All the Churches for all the World”, and by it he summarizes this call to unity and interconnectedness. The churches of “ancient tradition” and the churches of “recent tradition” are to go back to the gift of faith received, a gift which makes all of them part of the family of (continued next page)