By Father Seán Connaughton SSC

A student for the priesthood in Ireland used to be recognizeable by his black suit, hat, tie – with white shirt – and shoes. While walking in a field with my father in the summer of 1955, he said to me, ‘You need new shoes. . . will I buy you a black pair?’ I knew that whatever opposition I thought he and my mother had to my desire to be a Columban priest was over. Maybe they’d never opposed the idea but there was no one on either side of the family who had ever become a priest and I didn’t see myself as particularly religious.

For a long time I had dreamed of being either a teacher or an accountant. A secondary dream was to be a horticulturalist, perhaps because of all the planting we did when I was a child during ‘The Emergency,’ the name given in Ireland to World War II in which we were neutral.

Seeds of my vocation

Maybe the Lord planted the first seeds of my vocation during my high school years when religion was a very serious subject. Most of us were boarders in St Finian’s, a school for boys owned by the Diocese of Meath. In second year, to my amazement, I was given a daily missal on the day of the bishop’s visit. I think it was from this I got a real feel for St Patrick, who brought the faith to Ireland, and for the many Irish saints such as St Brendan and St Columban who subsequently took to heart the ‘go forth’ passages of the Gospel. For some reason these same passages stuck in my heart. The parable of the talents also struck like irremovable acid, especially when explained by the priest who taught us Greek.

Another item had never left my mind. This was the memory of how I almost drowned in a river while still in elementary school. Was it that life is ‘dispensable’?

What triggered me?

When I finished in St Finian’s I began to study accounting. In my boarding house I began to receiveFar East, the Irish equivalent of Misyon. ‘Who on earth is sending this?’ I asked myself. I never found out but later discovered that each student in St Columban’s was asked to send Far East to the address of a contemporary. The stories about China fascinated me. What we now call ‘social, political and cultural’ phenomena in community growth, and what seemed non-formal disorder, seemed well answered in the churches. I recall a sentence, ‘This may be what you are looking for; and if you don’t do it, who will?’ It seems a bit out of form for 2003. But it had meaning for me then.

No more China

I went for an interview with the Columbans early in 1955 and was accepted. My father bought me the new shoes I needed, along with other requirements, and I entered St Columban’s the first Tuesday of September. I had two negative experiences that day. One was the despicable, second-hand blacksotana I was given to wear during most of my waking hours. (By the end of the month I had my own new one.) The second was a lecture telling us very clearly, ‘No more China.’ The last Columban to work there had been expelled by the Bejing government the previous year.

Seminary life was a struggle. About one third of our class made alternative decisions during our seven years there. The human formation in those times of pruning, fostering, watering and cutting down to size, was often antiquated. But you were still free inside your own head.

Interest for China

China still intrigues me. A few years ago the China People’s Daily published a decree about upholding ‘materialism’ against the ‘opposing spiritualism.’ The authorities have been cracking down on theFalun Gong, a group in search of meaning in their lives beyond what the Chinese Communist Party can offer. They claim to have 100 million followers, three times the membership of the party. They’re trying to create a different ‘style of life’ and we learned in the seminary that that was one of the definitions of the spiritual.

Nevertheless, since the People’s Republic opened up some years ago some Columbans, including Filipinos, have been able to go in to teach English. Many teachers have gone in with the AITECE program (www.aitece.com) that the Columbans facilitate. As the poet John Milton said in On his Blindness, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ This is ‘a style of life’ chosen in order to prepare the way for the Lord.

Nearly all of my life as a priest has been in the Philippines. Of course I don’t regret the grace of being able to work for many years trying to build Basic Christian Communities. It seems it’s always been ‘ten steps forward and eleven steps back’. . . by no means successful. However, as Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, ‘What though the field be lost? All is not lost.’