Wishes 2013

 

Taipei, 4^th of January 2013

My dear friends,

This year 2013 began a few days ago and I want, through these few words, to give you some news about my missionary work in Asia. It is not that easy to put my experience here into words! I have been in Asia for more than five months and my life has completely changed! Everything is different! The way of thinking, the way of feeling, the way of eating and so on! So I try, day after day, to adjust and to fit into this place where the Lord has sent me!

I am now posted in a parish in the centre of Taipei! This parish is far different from what I could ever experience back in the UK or in Paris! In Europe my former postings tended to be in very wealthy places! I could enjoy the stillness and the calmness of the city as well as the beautiful surrounding area… Here, the district where I live is quite crowded and noisy! Nothing comparable with Chelsea’s Cadogan Street! For instance, in front of the parish gate we have a huge flyover with at least 6 road bridges which, as you can imagine, brings a lot of noise into our place! Although it is not that beautiful, the parish atmosphere and the people here bring a real sense of vitality, friendship and harmony! The Christian community is very small yet lively and friendly! Of course, everything is in Chinese so I can’t help the parish priest very much! I do slowly try to get myself on track by reading a very small part of the Eucharistic Prayer and trying to meet as often as I can with the parishioners! I try with the little Chinese I have to build relationships. This brings me a lot of joy because I can discover through them the purpose of my coming here: to serve God and his people!

My daily routine is very simple! Day after day, I go to school to learn how to speak the language of Confucius! Learning Chinese is a kind of paradoxical experience! I do feel very enthusiastic about learning and speaking this very different language, but at the same time I am quite frightened and apprehensive when I see what I have to put into my brain! But slowly the words come out properly, and the pronunciation of the tones comes out in a much clearer way! Chinese is a language which really takes time to learn! If you learn it too quickly your tones will be wrong and you won’t be able to make yourself understood! Therefore, when you don’t pronounce a word properly you can make some very funny mistakes which can produce tears of laughter! Once, I was chatting in the underground with one of my Chinese teachers and I wanted to say “tube” but instead I said “marriage”. All the people around us who could hear me laughed… As soon as I realised my mistake, I apologised and tried to speak a better Chinese in front of them! At the end of the day, learning Chinese makes you learn patience and humility… So, I would say it is a good spiritual experience!

Learning Chinese and living in such a different place is somehow experiencing the mystery of the Incarnation. St John says at the beginning of his Gospel: “the Word was made flesh”. Being here, and learning this language, makes you experience in the flesh what this incarnation means! When you arrive here you don’t understand anything; you are like a small child unable to speak, to understand and to get around very easily! But day after day you realise that you have gone a step further! I do believe that when Jesus came into the world his experience was the same! He tried to learn the culture, the customs, the words that human beings were using! God by His incarnation embraces our way of life and this is the way that each and every missionary, no matter where he is, has to experience: trying to discover and adapt himself to the place where he is posted in order to manifest the tenderness and the closeness of God!

As you can realise by reading these few words, the beginning of a missionary life does not consist of doing a lot of things to help and to serve the people of God, making brilliant homilies or giving lots of care to the people around you… I would rather say that the starting point is very much down to earth, trying to learn the language, to build relationships, to discover the church and to get used to the novelty of your environment! This brings solitude but, at the same time, a very deep and inner joy of new beginning!

By these few words I wanted to express the reality of the life of all young missionaries who try day after day to settle down wherever they are. This is a good occasion to pray for one another in order for each of us to be faithful to our own vocation.

I hope all of you are well wherever you are in Singapore, Malaysia, London… I wish you a blessed new year filled with joy and peace! I wish that all of you may discover the beauty of the Word of God. May the words of St John “the Word was made flesh” take root in you and help you to discover the wonders of following Jesus step by step, because this brings true happiness and joy!

With all my prayers and best wishes,

                                                                                 

Fr Etienne Frécon, mep