Family holds such an important part in our lives. Ideally, although I acknowledge, not always, it is the place where we are brought into the world, nurtured, formed, taught to love and be loved. It is the place where we feel safe, as well as sometimes frustrated and annoyed! Family is on my mind because I am about to head home to Germany and Poland for a period of leave, to catch up with family and friends.
These days, we missionaries in the SVD are able to apply for home leave every three years. But it wasn’t always this way. Whenever I head off for home leave, I think of St Joseph Freinademetz, one of the first two SVD priests to be sent on mission to a foreign country.
St Joseph was sent by the founder of the SVD, St Arnold Janssen, to be a missionary in China in 1879. Aged 26, he said goodbye to his family, who lived in the small village of Oies in the Dolomites in what is now northern Italy, never to see them again. He sailed to Hong Kong first and then arrived in South Shandong, where he set about travelling on foot, donkey and any means possible, seeing the land and most importantly, meeting the people. He studied the language and the culture and got to know the people as well as he could. St Joseph called this enculturation ‘the work of inner transformation’. It is the work of every missionary – to let go of preconceived notions, prejudices, fear and to open oneself to the new culture in which you find yourself. After undergoing a massive inner transformation, St Joseph famously wrote to his superiors back home: “I assure you honestly and sincerely that I love China and the Chinese… Now that I have less difficulty with the language and know the people and their way of life better, China has become not only my homeland but also the battlefield on which I will one day fall…”. He wrote to his sister: “I want to live and die with the Chinese.”
St Joseph suffered much during his missionary life in China and experienced a good deal of opposition and ill health. At one stage he was sent to Japan to recover. He gained his wish to die in China, succumbing to Typhus on January 28, 1908.
One can’t help but think that if he was living today, in the age of jet planes and fast travel, his life and mission might have benefited from a few weeks at home here and there, regaining his strength through the love of his family. But as I set off for my home leave, I am yet again inspired by the story of St Joseph Freinadametz. In a time of cultural imperialism, he opened himself up to a new culture, new people and new ideas, and in so doing, he truly became one of the people he was sent to serve, while never forgetting that he was a missionary of Jesus Christ.
While St Joseph never got to enjoy home leave, he would be happy to see that over the past 50 years his birthplace has become increasingly a place of prayer, meditation and quiet recollection, as well as a place of pilgrimage. Each year thousands flock there. Well beyond the frontiers of Tyrol, Joseph Freinademetz has become a trusted intercessor in many situations of need. A small community of Divine Word Missionaries lives in the house in Oies; they are there for the pilgrims, to provide the possibility of recollection and encounter with St Joseph Freinademetz. In 1995 a church was constructed to take large groups of pilgrims. In this way, Joseph Freinademetz, the missionary who became a sign of God’s goodness in China, has finally made it back in some way to his beloved Tyrolean mountain home.
I will hold you all in my prayers during my home leave and ask you to pray for me. And I look forward to being back among you, my friends and confreres in the AUS Province, soon, refreshed and reinvigorated for the mission ahead.
