Director's Words

The message of the Christmas season is that God the Father has sent His Son, Jesus, into the world to reveal His Love, to save us from our sins and give us eternal life. Proclaiming this message to the Chinese people is the mission of Chinese Lay Missionaries and the benefactors who support our lay evangelists.  God has truly blessed us to share in this great mission, and I will pray along with all our lay evangelists that the Holy Trinity blesses each of you during the Christmas season.

Through our mission of proclaiming the Gospel to non-Catholics in Taiwan, we are continually striving to find better, more effective methods.  While it is true that no method will succeed without our full cooperation with Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and constant prayer, we must also strive to find the methods that are most aligned with Chinese culture and Jesus’ desires. Since the first step in evangelism is attracting non-Catholics to a catechumen course, I will briefly share with you two attempts we are now making. Because many of the Chinese communities in the USA are also striving to evangelize better, you might eventually try them in your communities.

The first method of evangelism is "evangelizing through cell communities."  I have asked our lay evangelist Hsu Jr-syung to research and share how such cell communities have functioned within the Catholic Church (there are such communities in Italy, USA, South Africa, etc.) and then share his research with our other lay evangelists.  As a result we are starting to organize such evangelizing cell communities at Sacred Heart Church in Shu-Lin, Our Lady of China Church in Hsin-dyan, Assumption Church in Yung-he, Resurrection Church in Tai-chung and Sacred Heart Church in Taipei. In another part of this newsletter evangelist Hsu will share in more detail about these cell communities.  Our key challenge is to ensure these cell communities actually evangelize.

The second method of evangelism is a one-day retreat that attempts to integrate adoration of the Blessed Sacrament with "one Catholic brings one non-Catholic" evangelism.  This method could also be used in communities in the USA.  In fact, if enough communities are interested, we could send Professor Chiang Tsu-hwa, who teaches spirituality at our Faculty of Theology, to lead such retreats in USA. He could also offer other talks discussing the spiritual life.  Professor Chiang explains this retreat in greater detail in this newsletter.

We are raising funds now for the coming year (August 1, 2012 to July 31, 2013).  We hope to add four full-time lay evangelists for that year.  So please continue to be generous as we continue our common mission together: to bring Jesus to birth in the hearts of Chinese people.       (Fr. Lou Aldrich, S.J.)