DIFFERENT BOAT PEOPLE
FROM VIETNAM
Brave Voyage Sisters
A hundred years ago a small boat sailed from Vietnam to our shores bringing with it a unique group of “boat people” ---seven brave French nuns, none spoke a local language and only one could correspond in English. They were not seeking refuge in any of our seven thousand islands; but, rather, driven by love to serve Jesus in the midst of our people they were the ones who offered our elders a safe shelter under a new devotional understanding of Christ’s way of teaching, caring for the sick and serving the various needs of the poor.
Seven brave nuns who took the words of an American Bishop Frederick Rooker, in faith, to cross the seas and come to a relatively known town and ended up teaching catechism to the young girls in Dumaguete. But it did not take them long to stretch catechism to its logical end - - - the integral evangelization of the human person. And so the first religious sisters of St. Paul of Chartres in the Philippines easily turned from chapel catechists to teachers in the classrooms. And from there the same sisters accompanied the young girls through the many streets of life assuring them that chosen path was the right one that led to the Kingdom of the Father. Was it sheer religious women to settle in Dumaguete and start their Far Eastern mission there? Coming to the Philippines was not just the result of human desiring even for reasons of founding a mission.
Intimacy with Christ makes a good Religious Missionaries
"The consecrated life eloquently shows that the more one lives in Christ, the better one can serve him in others, going even to other furthest missionary outposts and facing the greatest dangers." So Pope John Paul II reminds us. (Vita Consecrata, 76). It was because those seven sisters loved God so much that they could not fail to love others as their brother and sister s; and in obedience to Christ they went to commit themselves to the mission ad extra. (Vita Consecrata, 77).
But that was exactly what, 308 years ago a French Pastor, Father Louis Chavet of the Church within sight of the great cathedral of Chartres, had in mind when he founded the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres as dedicated to the works of Charity. The works of Charity precisely revealed God to an unbelieving world. Thus the task was to show him as the God of Love to the world. And it did no take long for the St. Paul of Chartres Sisters to go to the missions. Soon countries like Guiana, China, Korea, French IndoChina (Vietnam), Africa, Thailand and others, including some European countries saw these French Sisters with near umbrella wide-veils then roaming the streets, working in hospitals and teaching the youth.
The Philippines is a relatively new dot in the long history of the SPC History of Grace. When the seven missionary sisters came to our shores the Religious Congregation was already 208 years old.
The Philippine Presence
What has happened since the coming of the first seven SPC missionaries was nothing short of the phenomenal. With a membership of 551 professed sisters the SPC sisters are now the second largest religious congregation of sisters in the Philippines. One hundred years and 35 schools, colleges and universities; administrators and healers in 10 hospitals and leprosaria, pastoral workers and rural missionaries in parishes and many rural communities.
More than in a hurry, the sisters were on fire; they were on fire with love for their Beloved whom they sought to bring to others. In the process of sharing this love for God with others a few of the SPC sisters were singled out for the distinctions so worthily deserved as they served in many institutions in the country. Thank God for these wonderful sisters.
But there were still many Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres who did just as heroic a task but they were lost in anonymity somewhere in the barrios, in the hidden-ness of workroom, the secretarial desk in a grade school or in some Church Official’s Office.
A visit to a very difficult area in Mindanao that nearly ended in a tragedy once made me swear that no one could have ventured through that thick jungle except for the early Jesuit missionaries of years back. To my shame I learned that an SPC rural missionary was there a few weeks before, teaching the talaadigs the practice of alternative medicine and catechesis. They are the hidden offerings like this that gain the love of the lord for this religious family.
Prayers of Praise and Thanksgiving
October 29, 1904 when the seven religious sisters of St. Paul of Chartres finally alighted from their boat at the makeshift piers of Dumaguete the prayers of these French missionaries could have been a prayer of thanks for having arrived safely at the site of their new mission. Their first letters could have been to the sending Sisters Convent in Vietnam. Farther still the news were brought to the Chartres in France. A new mission outpost for French Religious Sisters had been established finally at the edge of the great Pacific Ocean. That was as Far East the Chartres missionary sisters had gone.
Their acclamation surely was Deo Gratias!
At the close of the yearlong Centennial Celebration of the Sisters of St. Paul Chartres in the Philippines we continue thanking the Lord for the hundred years of consecrated life that ignited the love for God in the lives of nearly six hundred young women who commit themselves to God “in Servitio Caritatis.”
In the end we go back to the mission to Thessalonica when Paul, fearing that the Thessalonians could have been unsettled by hardships in keeping the Faith, sent Timothy to find out. Upon Timothy’s return Paul discovered that the Thessalonians had remained faithful in their faith and in their love. And the Apostle broke into a song of joy. “And so your faith has been a great encouragement to us in the middle of our own distress and hardship; now we can breathe again, as you are holding firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you, for all the joy we feel before God on your account.” (I Thess. 3:6-9)
Reverend dear Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres, together with the Arch/Bishops, Priests, Religious and laity of the Philippines, We make the words of Paul our own today “How can we thank God enough for you, for all the joy we feel before God on your account?” From the acclamation DEO GRATIAS let our song now be ALLELUIAH!
Congratulations and God bless!
+ G.B. Rosales
Centennial Celebration of SPC Sisters Presence in the Philippines
Manila Cathedral
25 October 2004
|
