My mum’s baptismal name is Agnes

Columban Fathers & Korean Lay Missionaries working in Taiwan.My mum’s baptismal name is Agnes. I never knew this until I was 30 years of age when I asked her if I could become a Catholic. When my parents had married, my dad promised mum to go to Church with her but did not keep his promise. The reason was because his family was fervent Buddhists and did not approve. Therefore it was natural for me as a child to go to the Buddhist temple. I did not know any other religion.

One day when I was in primary school I saw on television a big event in the Catholic Cathedral in Seoul. It must have been a Christmas Mass. I was full of curiosity. ‘Who are they? Why do they cover their hair with a white cloth?’

It has taken 20 years for my curiosity to be answered. When I was young, my family suffered from the domination of my father. My mum was not respected as a wife. She was always patient with him however. I was not able to understand that situation. I just thought that my mum was a weak person.

One day my dad suffered a stroke. For the next four years he was paralysed before eventually dying. My mum took care of him with a loving heart. He lay in bed without any movement. Even when she was busy running her own restaurant business, mum continued to take care of him. In the daytime she worried that he might feel lonely and every night she slept with her arm around him. When the weather was fine she carried him to a Buddhist temple on her back. I was not able to understand her behaviour towards him because he had always been cold and remote towards her.

The only religion I had ever known was Buddhism. For some reason I carried around the feeling that I must be pitiful in God’s eyes. The more I heard the word “Catholic”, the more I longed to go to the Catholic Church. So I asked my mum, “Would it be ok to become a Catholic?” It was then that I found out that she was a Catholic and had been baptized with the Christian name of Agnes.

Matilda Su-Bin LeeShe was not a weak person. I then realized where her love, consideration and self-sacrifice towards dad and her family came from. Even if she had not practiced as a Catholic, she showed God’s love continually in her life.
For me as a Columban Lay Missionary, she is a good role model. When I dreamed of becoming a lay missionary, I expected to work in a poor foreign country, different from Korea. With this expectation, being sent to Taiwan made me feel disappointed, because Taiwan was near to Korea, Taiwanese people are similar to Koreans and the food, life style and culture are similar.

After living in Taiwan for about five months, I started to ask myself what I was doing here. Should I not be sharing the Gospel with the poor in a country a long way away! I began to lose interest, my self esteem suffered and I wanted to return to my family in Korea.

In time, things changed however. I have now been living in Taiwan for several years. I now feel happy to have encountered God here in a new way. God has been leading me to recognize His love in the ordinary life of people, just as Joseph and Mary lived an ordinary, everyday life with Jesus in the carpentry business.

I can now see how my mum’s life was like that of a lay missionary by sharing God’s love with people like my dad. As I also received God’s love from my mum and her ordinary life, so I also could follow her example in my missionary life, sharing God’s love with others.

Does my mum know how much I love and respect her? I would like to praise the God who led me to recognize His love through my mum who has been an inspiration to my lay missionary life.

Matilda Su-Bin Lee is a Columban Lay Missionary from Korea working in Taiwan.

 

Listen to TFE Audio  Listen to: My mum’s baptismal name is Agnes
(Duration: 4:34mins. MP3, 2.09MB) 

 

Read more from The Far East, October 2016