When our house discussed different proposals that we wanted to make to our parish, we recalled each other to what we truly desire: that any project have at heart the faith of each person, that the relationship with Christ mature and become the criterion with which to live everything. Through the relationship with a parishioner, A-Xin, I have seen how God gives us persons who understand this need of ours and who desire to collaborate to bring it to fruition. A middle-aged woman, A-Xin grew up in a parish and for a year now, has been helping us in the education of young people. The first thing that struck me about her is the way with which she grasped the true content of the proposal that we want to do, not only to the kids but to all the parishioners.
At the end of the summer vacation, an event that is always well-attended and impactful, we had an assembly with the adults to judge the work done. After various persons had manifested some perplexity regarding certain new choices, A-Xin intervened: “I grew up in the parish,” she said, “and in the last 40 years, I have seen many different ways of realizing the camp which we all look forward to so much. However, it seems to me that the priests of the Fraternity, from the time they arrived, have had only one goal: our faith.”
After the summer camp, A-Xin and another collaborator told us: “We don’t fully understand what you all are proposing but your way of doing things, which is so different, interests us.” I responded to them that the best way to understand is to come on the vacation with us. Just a few days after that, in fact we were going away with the community of Communion and Liberation of Chinese speaking peoples on vacation in Macao. A-Xin and her friend immediately went to take vacation and book flights. And so, two weeks later we got together to play and sign together with our Chinese friends from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
What is most important to us in our proposal is the faith
Back home, A-Xin tells us the newness that she saw and what struck her about the speeches made at the assembly. Then I also invited her to the School of Community. In a recent dialogue, she confided to me, “You know Father, I am realizing more and more that faith for you has something to do with everything you propose. We Taiwanese traditionally are very careful in trying to value everyone, so that no one feels excluded. Thus, it is typical that during an assembly we applaud what everyone says. For you, however, it is different. Those who speak are taken seriously but without applause. This is how you educate people to set their eyes on what is essential and not on personal recognition. You educate us about what matters, with simple gestures that, however, make the difference between a person who seeks Jesus and one who wants to affirm himself in what he does.”
Listening to A-Xin, I am moved by how the Lord is maturing in her the awareness of what we hold most dear in our proposal: faith, the relationship with Christ.
Our friendship with A-Xin is founded on what the Lord sowed through the presence of the Fraternity in Taipei in the last 17 years. I do not know how much she was involved in the past with our priests, but the close collaboration of the last year has allowed her to discover a desire to participate in the work that the Lord has entrusted us. Recently, during the visit of some Missionary Sisters, Sr. Rachele and Sr. Eleonora, A-Xin told me with a smile, “If I had met them 20 years ago, I would have left everything to follow them.” A-Xin, who stays home to care for her aging mother, desires for herself the same radicality of life for Christ. And so, she too plunges into the mission with us: another sister for whose faith we can thank the Lord.
