| Adaptation, Friendship, Service, and Collaboration |
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Fr. Provincial asked me to share with you today something about the Italian Jesuit missionary, Fr. Matteo Ricci, who spent 28 years of his life in China and whose missionary methods helped establish the Church in that great country. Matteo Ricci’s missionary approach and the way he lived his Jesuit life are still important and very relevant to all of us today—Jesuits, members of other religious congregations, and lay people alike. So this afternoon, I’d like to highlight four characteristics of Ricci’s ministry in China: adaptation, friendship, service, and collaboration. And, with your permission, I would like to make this a personal sharing. It was exactly 28 years ago, that my personal relationship with Matteo Ricci began to develop. That year, we were celebrating the 400th anniversary of Ricci’s arrival in China. Kuangchi Program Service—that is the Jesuit TV production center in Taipei where I work—prepared a TV Special to celebrate that event. I worked on that project. I still remember exchanging notes and ideas with Fr. Jim Reuter who was preparing a stage play about Matteo Ricci that same year. I was the one assigned to play Matteo Ricci in our TV special. I was certainly the not the best actor available, but I was definitely the cheapest! On the first day of filming, I was given a long beard and Ming dynasty garments to depict Ricci’s life as a Mandarin scholar in China. Ricci was selected for China because its mission Superior, Fr. Alessandro Valignano, insisted on having a scholar who could learn the Chinese language and adapt to Chinese culture. Valignano knew there was no other way for a foreigner to effectively share the Good News of Jesus Christ with the Chinese people. In fact, in our missionary and pastoral work today, all of us need to be like Ricci and imitate Jesus Christ, who became one with the people He came to serve. One method used by Ricci to do this was to dress like the Chinese. By dressing like a Mandarin scholar, he identified himself with the Chinese intelligentsia. I must admit that I enjoyed parading around our studio in the long robes of a Mandarin scholar. I knew that that would be the closest I would ever come to being like my missionary hero, Matteo Ricci. But on the second day of videotaping, things took a dramatically different turn. That morning, when I walked into our TV studio, the local barber was eagerly waiting for me with a razor and scissors. He quickly transformed me into an earlier version of Matteo Ricci—that first period of his life in China when he thought he should dress like a Buddhist monk in order to announce to the Chinese his religious identity. So, gone were the scholarly robes and the wise man’s beard. For the first time in my life, I found myself with a baldhead, wearing the thin gray robe of a Buddhist monk. Truly, Ricci was willing to go to any lengths to gain acceptance by the Chinese. I’m sure many of you have seen the movie Avatar. In Ricci’s time, Europeans knew about as much of China as Avatar’s main character Jake, knew about the planet Pandora. Jake had to struggle to learn the language and customs of the native Na’vi. Ricci had to do exactly the same in China. There were no language schools. Just as Jake learned from the lovely Neytiri, Ricci learned the language and customs from his Chinese friends. Well, Matteo Ricci was a genius, but even he made mistakes. After, dressing like a Buddhist monk for several years, he realized he was sending out the wrong message. Buddhists at that time were not known to be scholars. Ricci’s eagerness to adapt to local customs was admirable, but it took time for him to understand this totally new culture and its complex and mysterious people. This reminds me of when I was a young scholastic. I had just arrived in Taiwan. I was so eager to adapt to Taiwanese culture—including eating customs—that once I nearly had to be taken to the hospital after trying to swallow a strange fruit that turned out to be not an edible fruit at all, but a betel nut. As you know, betel nuts are meant to be chewed slowly and with respect. They are definitely not meant to be swallowed! But this and many other lessons I learned the hard way. I’m sure Ricci made far fewer mistakes than I did, but his desire to become one with a new people and their culture was always the model for me and many other Jesuit missionaries to China. Although Matteo Ricci is a model for missionaries, most Jesuits understand that we are not the giant that he was. Ricci was blessed with a remarkable intellect and a photographic memory. He was able to memorize and recite whole pages of classical Confucian text after reading through them just once. And then he astounded his Chinese companions by accurately reciting them forward and backward. He did this not to show off, but to help build a bridge between himself and the Chinese he wished so desperately to befriend. I also studied the Chinese language and literature, but even with all the dictionaries and tape recorders and bi-lingual teachers that I had—and that Ricci did not have—the best I could do was memorize the lyrics of a few Chinese pop songs and accompany them on my guitar. Not very impressive. But I discovered that in China a little good will goes a very long way. My clumsy attempts to master a few bits of Chinese culture opened the door to countless wonderful friendships. And this brings me to the second characteristic of Ricci’s ministry: friendship. Ricci instinctively knew that friendship was the only bridge by which he could effectively convey his Christian Faith to the Chinese people. Only by becoming a trusted friend, would the Chinese open their hearts and minds to this strange foreigner and his religious faith. In today’s globalized, multi-religious, multi-cultural society, I believe that friendship is still the best way to share our faith with others. I believe it is just as essential to today’s Jesuit mission and the Church’s mission as it was in Ricci’s time. In 1600, a young scholar from Shanghai made a special trip to Nanjing to seek out the brilliant foreigner who had drawn an astonishing map of the world that was causing a sensation throughout the country. Ricci welcomed him as a friend. This friendship blossomed into a collaboration that influenced the course of Chinese history and made possible the establishment of the Catholic Church in China. This scholar’s name was Xu Guangqi. When he was baptized, he took the name “Paul,” and became a close and lasting friend of Ricci and the other Jesuits in China. He also rose to the highest office in the land—Grand Secretary to the Emperor. Because of Ricci’s friendship and collaboration with this dedicated Catholic layman, the Jesuits gained access to the Imperial Court in Beijing. The Emperor’s fascination with the strange articles that Ricci had brought from Europe—like clocks and scientific instruments—insured the relative safety of the young and fragile Catholic community. Because of his relationship with Paul Xu Guangqi, the Emperor allowed Ricci to establish a residence in Beijing, where the Catholic cathedral stands today. In those days, near the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Ricci and the Jesuits in China made many friends, but they made enemies as well. (For those of you who know the Jesuits, this will not come as a surprise!) Out of misunderstanding, or fear, or jealousy, the Jesuits were periodically accused before the Emperor of serious crimes. Each time this happened, Paul Xu would send a memo to the Emperor verifying the innocence of the Jesuits. And he always added that if the Jesuits were found to be guilty of the alleged crimes and sentenced to the customary slow, agonizing execution, Paul Xu wished to share their fate and die with them. Each time, the Jesuits were acquitted. Paul Xu’s willingness to die for his Jesuit friends and for his faith in Jesus Christ is clearly the stuff of martyrdom. As more becomes known about these two friends—an Italian missionary and a Chinese scholar official, a priest and layman—and how they contributed to the establishment of the Church in China, there is a growing cry from Chinese Catholics everywhere that both Ricci and Paul Xu should be canonized as saints together. Friendship requires humble service. Service is the third characteristic of Ricci’s ministry. To be genuine “friends in Christ,” we need humility. We must be willing to listen and respect and do what our friends ask of us—as Jesus did when his mother asked him to provide wine at the wedding feast, or when a poor woman touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, or when a blind beggar asked Jesus to restore his sight. One day, Paul Xu came to Ricci and suggested that together they translate into Chinese the first six books of Euclid’s Elements. Then all Chinese could learn geometry and western logic. It would be a great service. Well, Ricci knew what a monumental task this would be. Did he come to China to spread the Good News or to spend his days translating the works of western mathematicians? He was reluctant to embark on this daunting task. But he listened to his friend, eventually saw the wisdom in his plan and agreed. Ricci had come to serve the Chinese people and if this meant helping them understand western scientific thought, he would do it. And yet, simply the desire to serve the Chinese people was not enough to insure success. Ricci needed the help of his lay partner, Paul Xu Guangqi. They needed to collaborate. And collaboration is the fourth characteristic of Ricci’s ministry. In the same way, Paul Xu would never have become one of the pillars of the Chinese Catholic Church without the help of his missionary friend Matteo Ricci. The two completed each other. Together, they turned their joint mission and ideals into reality. The result is that today, we have a dynamic Chinese Catholic Church—a church that is known not just for its baptisms and bibles and religious services, but a church that has brought science and art and social justice, as well as religion, to China—a Church that serves the whole human person, body, mind, and spirit. In our pastoral and missionary work today, Matteo Ricci and Paul Xu Guangqi remind us that every member of the Church has his or her unique and irreplaceable role to play in the history of salvation. Sometimes, we forget this and are overwhelmed by the hierarchical structure of our Church. Lay Catholics, especially, may feel they have little to offer in the face of so many priests and bishops and cardinals and theologians. Even worse, the clergy and religious may feel that the Church’s mission depends principally on themselves. The foundations of the Church in China, laid with the help of Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi, show us how wrong that thinking is. It was the collaboration of a priest and a layman that helped plant the Church in Chinese soil. And it was its dedicated communities of lay Catholics that have heroically kept it alive and growing until this day, through centuries of persecution, spiritual isolation and material deprivation. This is a vivid reminder that “we are the Church”—all of us equally in God’s eyes, each and every member. So today, let us celebrate this Ignatian Feast, not just by glorying in our history, but by renewing our commitment to live out our mission through adaptation—that is, by becoming one with our people; by nurturing friendship and mending broken friendships; by offering all of our God-given talents, large or small, to serve the needs of everyone on our planet; and finally to do this in collaboration and community; as priests, religious and laity working hand-in-hand as equals, as brothers and sisters, to make God’s Kingdom come. May God, through the intercession of Matteo Ricci and Paul Xu Guangqi, grant us all this special blessing! - Jerry Martinson, SJ Homily delivered on the anticipated celebration of the feast of St. Ignatius, 25 July 2010 Ateneo de Manila High School Covered Courts |
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The more than 300 men of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus serve in five universities, numerous schools for basic education, two diocesan major seminaries, three urban and five rural parishes, four retreat houses, and a variety of centers for spirituality, social action, communication, and socio-pastoral services. In addition, we have Jesuits serving in the foreign missions, in Cambodia, China, and East Timor.
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Provincial
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