Shine On, Farmer Boy

One of the great missionaries of the century was James Walsh, the Maryknoll Bishop who spent many long years in prison in China. His great love for the poor and the marginalized of the world came to the surface in a moment of illumination which he describes here. Though these words were written long before the Vatican Council, they anticipated its spirit and have a power that we can feel even today.

I saw him in the ricefield. He stopped working as I approached and leaned on his hoe. The sweat of a hot day under the South China sun glistened on his brow. His coolie suit of blue denim was covered with dust, and the end of his frayed trousers disclosed a clumsy pair of stub-toed bare feet. He was a big boy for his age, but there was no comeliness in him twice. He was a clodhopper.

I knew his father, a blunt old farmer, respected, hardworking and honest. I knew his elder brother, who was being educated at a city school. I inquired about the family. I spoke to him of his brother’s progress. Then I tactlessly asked if he also would not like to do to the city and study books. He looked up in naïve surprise, turning his whole countenance upon me with the openness of a sunflower. Complete frankness was in his gaze, gaze, but a mist of puzzlement also clouded his eyes. I had hit upon something he did not quite understand, although he knew only too well the answer. He replied very simply and without a trace of feeling. “I am not bright enough to go to school; my family says I am good only to work in the fields.” His father was not a harsh man; he was merely a truthful one. He had read his son aright and had told him that he was not made for anything else but a life of labor. The boy did not question this. He merely did not understand it. He did not resent or rebel. He was not envious of others more normal, more gifted. He was content.

But he was also puzzled. And I knew he was to remain puzzled through a whole drab life of obscurity and toil, until God gathered him in His arms to explain the mystery to him in the realms of light.

That puzzled resignation written in his honest eyes imprinted itself indelibly on my memory, and it stirred me as I have seldom been stirred. I have known love. I was not insensible to the ties of affection that bound the members of a singularly happy family, and the very name of my mother was to me like a song of angels. I have had friends that I thought were cherished in the fiber of my soul. I have lavished admiration and affection on every special object of God’s creation on saints and sunsets, geniuses and golf courses, on babies, birds and bunnies and on many other things besides. In short, I have had my transports. But I thought I had never scratched the surface of love before as I felt the fiery surge that came to me now. It was romance, if you will. Certainly it was predilection.

“I choose you," sang in my heart as I looked at my awkward farmer boy, perfect picture of the underprivileged soul. “I choose you, and with you the countless million of God’s children like you: men – white, black and brown; souls impoverished and unendowed, I choose you, and dedicate myself to you. I ask no other privilege but to devote the energies of my soul to such as you. For in this sudden revelation shines an incarnation of my life’s ideal. You are my father and mother my sister and my brother; you hold the center of my dreams. Men of no attraction, you attract me, soul of no distinction, you draw and dazzle me. Clodhoppers of the world, for your own you claim me.”

There is, of course, a special reason for the deep impression made on me by this living symbol of the world’s need, I am a missioner, I am a man sent by the Catholic Church to minister to such as he. That Church has the recipe for every need of all the sons of men. She overlooks none. There is guidance for the gifted. There is opportunity for the energetic. There is development for the rugged and the strong. But for the frail and the forgotten, for the puzzled and the poor, there is also something; for that Church is a true mother and it is for her weakest children that she reserves her deepest interest and her tenderest care. I am proud to be a missioner, with a vocation that has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor.

Shine on, farmer boy, symbol to me of the thousand million like you who drew the Son of God from heaven to smooth and bless your weary anxieties and your puzzled brows. Come to me often in your barefooted squalor and look at me from out those hopeless and bewildered eyes. Do not let me forget that vision, but stay by me and preside over my dreams. Teach me that souls are people. And remind me everlastingly that they are magnificent people like you.

Salamat sa Maryknoll

“I Love The Chinese People”

As a Christians we have always realized that people are ‘souls’ James Walsh reminds us of complementary truth that ‘souls’ are people! The evangelist must keep these two truths together.