I
n July this year, Hildegard Kang, a first year high school student from Korea, visited poverty-stricken neighbourhoods in Manila, the Philippines, as part of a Columban-organized mission experience. Hildegard found the experience difficult, quite shocking, emotionally draining and horrible at times. The experience helped to change her thinking and attitudes to others. Her powerful story challenges all of us to move out of our comfort zones and encounter the reality of those in need. It challenges us to find ways to respond to these needs.
This issue carries the stories of many Columban missionaries as they seek to respond to situations, often desperate, such as those which Hildegard encountered during her mission experience.
Among poor families in Juarez, Mexico, Columban Fr William Morton helped develop an educational programme for 280 children from kindergarten to university. This programme helps offer a way out of poverty through education for these young people. Matilda Lee is a Korean Columban Lay Missionary assigned to Taiwan. She writes movingly of the role her mother played in her missionary vocation to respond to the needs of others.
For 40 years the Columban Sisters have responded to the needs of the poor in Chile. Columban Sr Ita McElwain shares their story with us. Columban Fr Donald Hornsey made a recent visit back to the parishes among the poor in Chile, Brazil and Peru where he worked for more than 40 years. Columban Fr Feliciano Fatu shares with us his missionary journey from Tonga to Fiji, to the Philippines, to Peru and to Pakistan and now to the Columban Formation programme.
Mushtaq Asad is a catechist in Pakistan. He writes of the way his vocation has changed and developed over the years, particularly after the death of his wife. He works closely with the Columbans there.
This issue also has an advertisement for the 2017, 'In the Footsteps of St Columban Pilgrimage', through five European countries. This pilgrimage follows the same route as the successful 2015 pilgrimage following the missionary journey of St Columban from Ireland, through modern day France, Austria, Switzerland and Italy where he died in 615AD.
While missionaries are called to respond to the desperate situations like those Hildegard met, Columban Fr Noel Connolly reminds us that missionaries must do this with attitudes of attentiveness, graciousness, humility and contemplation to discern with the people what the Spirit is calling all of us to do.
Fr Daniel Harding
tfe@columban.org.au
Read more from The Far East, October 2016