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.)

God, Your Grace is Enough for Me

I am grateful for God’s call for me to become an instrument of evangelization for Him. During my first year of serving as a lay evangelist, I experienced that not only are teaching and prayer important, but pastoral counseling and personally accompanying each catechumen is also very important.  By accompanying catechumens through their journey, I learned that everyone is a unique individual.  Each person has different ideas, anxieties and doubts about the faith. They each have a different image of God in their mind. Many are young and inexperienced, and often were confused and lacked confidence.  Because I am young myself, I depend on God to give them timely help, to help them understand the teaching in my catechumen class, and to receive God’s love and concern through pastoral care. I am praying every day for our  catechumens, and that we all learn to trust God. I know if something is God’s will, it will be done.

As I have seen their faith grow, I’ve experienced God’s wonderful work in human beings. When we are willing to accept God's mercy and grace, the power of transformation shows in our life. I am also happy that through these ministry services, I am growing in social skills and faith life. Step-by-step, I am becoming more mature.

I am also grateful to God for Ms. Shumei Xiao, who was my classmate at Fu Jen Theology and who now works with me at Sacred Heart Parish. As Jesus sent his disciples out two by two (Mark 6:7), we work together to evangelize.  This last year, working together at Sacred Heart and Gwang-ren High School, over forty of our catechumens were baptized. 

The Lord is our fountain and strength, let us give thanks for the grace of God.  I give thanks to our benefactors for all their intercessions and support. Blessed are you who help spread the words of the Gospel.                                    (Lay Evangelist Yi-hua Lee, Taipei center)

Evangelist and Mom

In the beginning of the year, while I was teaching the catechumen course at St. Columban's Church, two young girls from a home for "problem girls" were brought to me by a religious sister. Later, those young girls brought two others, and gradually increased to five girls. They are between eighth to tenth grade.  Even though they were so young, because of their dysfunctional family backgrounds, they were desperate for love, and expressed this need openly. Their difficult life experiences caused them to grow up very quickly and to become overly sensitive;. In turn, this caused them to keep a distance from others.  So I asked them to call me "Mom" and tried to treat them as daughters.  Thanks to God, I was able to get closer to them and sometimes simply hold them in my arms.  Sometimes they gave me a bear hug back.  In this way, despite the tough life they led, trust started to develop between us. 

As the class continued, this trust motivated them to vigorously pursue God's Truth, to begin to pray, and to prepare for their future life, with its difficulties but also with hope and promise.

One day the Lord asked me during silent prayer: "Look at those children… I am sending you to them!" I cried: "Who is able to love them, except you, Lord? Since you have sent me, I know you will take good care of them." These last 9 month, they have touched my heart, they have given me much more than I am able to give them. 

The Lord arranged a married couple and a grandma to accompany this class. During the class sharing, they heard the voices of these children, which helped their own parent-child relationships. Conversely, the girls were able to hear their perspectives about the difficulties that parents face. In this way the Lord blessed all who attended the catechumen course. They were baptized August 19.  One of the girls told our staff: "I think Mom really loves God a lot, otherwise I just cannot see how in the world she will treat us so good." We started a new course on November 11, and these newly baptized girls desire to bring other girls from their "home", accompany them through the catechumen course and thereby also deepen their own conversion to Christ.         (Lay Evangelist Ying Jr-li, Taipei center)

Eucharistic Adoration and Evangelization

In response to the invitation of Chiayi Diocese, on September 8 we gave a workshop on “The Eucharist and Evangelization", which was hosted by our lay evangelist Chia-Yuan Wu and me. There were many lay people who attended. 

There were two sessions of the workshop. In the morning session I explained the meaning of Holy Eucharist Adoration. Then Miss Wu shared her own experience of Eucharistic adoration, as well as her experience of helping others begin the practice of Eucharistic Adoration. This was followed by leading the Catholics present in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Through Eucharist Adoration we are in a personal relationship with Christ and receive love from Him. We let the fire of His love change our heart, and we radiate that love to others.  Chia-Yuan shared her experiences of simply being with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in silence, communing with Jesus, and laying down in His lap like a tired child in the arms of her Father, peaceful and relaxed. Chia Yuan's personal sharing led to a group sharing session focused on deepening our personal relationship with God.

In the second session, we tried to connect the prayer of Adoration with the activity of Evangelization. During the time of Adoration, we asked the Catholics present to ask God, through inspiration and reflection, to bring to mind their non-Catholics who might be open to our Faith. We then asked each Catholic to immediately give these non-Catholics a telephone call. Some hesitated because they found this too much of a challenge. Others bravely called and some succeeded in making contact.  During the sharing afterward, one person said he had contacted a friend who was just leaving for a serious operation, and he was able to pray for his non-Catholic friend over the phone. His friend said he was very moved by this and felt blessed.

We are hoping that through these types of activities, which combine a deeper level of prayer and adoration with evangelism, the Holy Spirit will grant our Catholics the wisdom and courage to begin concrete evangelism. (Vincent Chiang, Prof. of Spiritual Theology)

Evangelizing Parish Cell Groups

In mid-2011 Fr. Aldrich asked me to begin to research and then apply the "Parish Cell Group System" for evangelism here in Taiwan. As our foundation, we used the system for parish cell groups developed in Milan, Italy: a system that is officially approved by the Holy See.  In January 2012 we began to discuss with the pastor and lay leaders the possibility of starting evangelizing cell groups at Sacred Heart Parish in Shulin. Fortunately, the "Parish Cell Group System" has been translated into Chinese, and we gave copies to all the key members of the parish, especially those on the Evangelism Committee. The plan was officially accepted by the parish in July, with special enthusiasm by the pastor, Fr. Paskais Bako. In August, we held three meetings to explain the concept of parish cell group  to any interested members of the parish.

From among these we formed a leadership and development team. Since September we have been meeting with this development team of about 30 Catholics. Our routine for each meeting is to read and discuss a chapter from the "Parish Cell Group System", as well as a chapter from Pope Paul VI encyclical "Evangelization in the Modern World."  Several Protestant Churches have used cell groups to evangelize: some with real success. We are using the official Catholic system because in the past, the attempts of some Catholic groups to use a Protestant model of evangelizing through cell groups has resulted in conflicts with the Church or a gradual drifting away from Church teaching and practice.  The Catholic Church's cell system is enriched by a comprehensive teaching of the faith, Sacramental practice, Eucharistic adoration and being "parish centered." Other lay evangelists have also started to research and organize evangelizing cell groups in the parishes that they serve.  It will be difficult to immediately organize many cells in the relatively small parishes of Taiwan, but we hope that from modest beginnings we will see real long-term fruit.            (Lay Evangelist Hsu Jr-syung, Taipei center)