The Augustinian Recollect missionaries, in general, managed to enter the Chinese soul for which they knew how to respect and value the cultural manifestations and traditions of the Chinese people have an indispensable condition to carry out their mission of evangelization.
Inculturation in missionary work
Inculturation is a central part of the evangelizing mission of the Church, a process of mutual dialogue and transformation, where the Church not only carries the Gospel to new cultures but also allows these peoples and cultures evangelized to become part of the heritage of the Catholic universality of Church. Inculturation is a requirement of faith. A faith that does not become Culture is a faith not fully lived.
The inculturation process is long and complex, involving stages of communication and assimilation of the Gospel through intercultural dialogue and interpersonal. It begins with introducing the Christian life and message in a culture, coinciding with the beginning of evangelization, and extends to the intimate transformation of cultural values through their integration into Christianity.
At the heart of this process is the mystery of the Incarnation, where, just as Christ became man in a specific sociocultural context, the Church seeks to embody the Gospel in native cultures. This path, traced by Christ and followed by missionaries, is one of openness, learning, and adaptation.
Through inculturation, the missionaries and, with them, the Church they represent, “they become a more understandable sign of what is and a more effective mission.”
But the end of the Incarnation is Redemption, bringing a new life of grace after a purification process. Inculturation is also a process of discernment, purification, and recreation, where the Gospel purifies the local culture of its aspects of sin. Thus purified, the local Church expresses its faith and the diverse elements of the Church’s tradition in new ways, therefore enriching the universal Church.
The inculturated evangelization seen by our missionaries
In the context of the Kweiteh/Shangqiu mission in China, the Augustinian Recollects missionaries faced the challenge of contributing to the incarnation of the Gospel in a rich and ancient culture. After their own missionary experience and guided by the teachings of the Church, our missionaries would come to express that the mission must be a work of “inculturation” evangelization that respects and follows the ways and cultural values of the people and with the virtue of the Gospel build in them a culture indigenous Christian, purified only of its elements and structures of sin. Monsignor Arturo Quintanilla expressed:
Missionary work must adapt to the environment, time, and place where it develops. Each town has its characteristic way of being, its customs, its culture, etc., and the missionary should not tend to destroy any of this but to adapt it to the great mold of the Gospel, within which all the peoples, […] “Go everywhere, Jesus said to his disciples, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” The universality of the Church is founded on this mandate and, at the same time, the force of its adaptation to all kinds of people. They came later with different means of preaching and evangelization and putting into practice Jesus Christ’s mandate. The missionary spirit must be broad, understanding, and generous. Nothing must be destroyed outside of that which goes against God or morality founded on the principles of the Decalogue.
The mission of the Church and therefore that of the missionaries, must not be in destructionem sed in aedificationem, not to destroy but to build.
This work must not only be enculturated but also “adapted” to its different types of interlocutors since the work of evangelization, “outside of cases most singular, miracles of grace, we say, work more or less according to the dispositions or adaptation of individuals to admit it». According to this, the missionaries distinguish, according to their own experience, between simple and rural people and people of culture and cities, as well as youth. For the first ones, the traditional evangelizing method developed by missionaries is very effective. Still, for the latter, entering the world of culture and, above all, everything from the schools is necessary. Therefore, the specific methods of carrying out the mandate missionary, «we must not be exclusivists; all those who are fit reasonable and best suited to the way of being and customs of these people».
As Father Jesús Samanes would say:
What to do? Take off your shoes to be able to walk through this pagan land, that is, leave what we have most dear, our tastes, and like Saint Paul, the work of the great prodigy of charity of becoming everything for everyone to save everyone, putting the sight at Christ, who is the one who gives us courage. […] Each town has its customs, art, and civilization, which must be respected; and nowhere else that in China, which boasts of an ancient civilization, the missionary must “do everything to save everything.
The inculturation of the Augustinian Recollect missionaries in Chinese culture was an adaptation process
After the meeting of two worlds and the arrival of the missionaries to the mission, they faced a process of adaptation to a new world in all aspects.
From mere physical adaptation to the climate to food and clothing, learning the language and culture, and entering the soul of a people.
A new world, completely different, if not contrary, to everything he has seen in his life and sense. It’s not just the landscape; it’s the customs, the character, the culture, and the Chinese soul. You won’t be able to reach the heart of that town, although he managed to master the language with its complicated ideograms and strange expressions if he does not also assimilate that Chinese soul. You will have to transform his soul to obtain what the first Colombian missionary in China in expressive neologism called “chinificarse” (become a chinese).
The native catechists’ figure was of great help in overcoming the barriers and cultural difficulties that the missionaries naturally encountered. These acted as bridge intermediaries who paved the way for rapprochement with the others and favored the resolution of the issues of ordinary life.
Thus, the missionaries tell how, upon their arrival at the mission, countless things seemed very strange to them and to which, little by little, they adapted until the end, they seemed normal to them. Like the dresses they saw the missionaries wearing that seemed ridiculous and strange to them, not drinking water but light tea, Chinese bread steam and without salt, the intense smells of garlic and leeks that at first almost knocked them down on their backs, and then they no longer noticed.
The religious adapted to the use of the missionaries by wearing the Chinese toga with the Roman collar, allowing lay vestments when they could not otherwise move or remain comfortably in the places where they were supposed to go.
Another characteristic sign of the missionaries from China was the growth of their beards Chinese style. The missionaries discovered its cultural meaning and importance for the religious to appear in the eyes of the Chinese with this bearing.
According to the missionaries in an article in their missionary magazine, it is not conceivable in China, a man of pros without a beautiful beard. Furthermore, this cultural aspect, like almost everything in Chinese life, it was regulated by custom and was not left to personal initiative. Only those with grandchildren or were the head of the family had the privilege to wear a beard. Being an emblem of mature age, the beard inspired confidence and esteem, assuming wisdom and experience in the person who carried it, so when he saw them, he called them old men. When a man keeps or grows a beard after the death of his wife, it is an obvious sign that he does not want to move on to a second marriage, and if, on the other hand, he shaves his beard, it is a sign that he wants to retake a wife.
Therefore, by letting it grow, the Missionaries hold the label that they are not rentable, that they are not marriageable, but that they have renounced to the world to maintain celibacy, apply themselves to study and perfection and dedicate themselves also to seek the good of others.
In a similar, although different, way, the inhabitants of the place had to adapt to the presence of foreigners and their diversity in many aspects. The beginning of this meeting was always marked by curiosity towards I miss him. The missionaries had to live these types of experiences that they describe with grace and humor:
It was the same thing to go out into the street and start walking, then to start surrounding us. The number of children grew as we advanced until we reached nearly forty. The consequence of all this was that they looked into the doors to the rats to see the curious spectacle of three Europeans surrounded by all that herd of little savages, who not only hindered our passage but allowed themselves from time to time to touch us and sniff us as if We were fallen heroes of Mars, being useless to avoid these outrages, threats and slaps, then, if at first they dispersed like a flock of birds, it didn’t take long for them to leave us again, gathering cautiously.
Possibly, like one of those lively and curious children who would tell the season seven years when the missionaries arrived in 1924 in his town Palichoang, He was the one who would later become a religious and Augustinian Recollect priest, Father Lucas Yuo. He tells us, from the point of view of the natives, what the meeting with the missionaries:
The inhabitants had never seen a foreigner with blue eyes and deep, with long and high noses, with brown hair; the most curious thing was for them, when they came to greet him, or rather, to see him: he did not know how to speak, or only very few words. Then, all the people, men and women, adults and children, came to see the foreigners. When the missionary Father arrived in town, the inhabitants’ whole lives changed, and they seemed to celebrate the arrival from abroad; with maximum curiosity, they talked about being foreign (sic), thinking about the purpose and reason for his arrival. Well, the missionary Father in that season was a huge spectacle. Goodness; taking advantage of that opportunity curiosity, the Father could learn the language and explain to them the reason why he left his homeland and came there.
First Christmas
In this encounter between two cultures, an anecdote concerning the Christmas celebration occurred that helps us understand the process of adaptation and inculturation that missionaries must undergo so that their pastoral action and apostolic life are significant in the place where they go. In turn, they can discover new dimensions in new cultural modes that enrich understanding and genuine experience of the Christian mystery.
For missionaries who go to mission land, the celebration of the first Christmas is a time when distance and cultural shock become more evident. This experience was experienced differently by the parents in Kweiteh and the two fathers who had already left for the mission posts: Mariano Gazpio and Mariano Alegría.
The three remaining fathers from the first mission and the four newly arrived fathers prepared and solemnized the Christmas celebration in Kweitehfu just a month ago. In the afternoon, the missionaries arranged the vesper chapel by placing a crib with an image of the baby Jesus brought from Spain by one of the missionaries.
Father Francisco Javier Ochoa presided over the mass; the friars sang the Angelis Mass accompanied by Father Luis Arribas on the harmonium. At the end of the Mass, the friars kissed the image of the Child Jesus while they sang carols in the style of Spain. Let’s see how Father Julián Sáenz describes it:
«Once the Mass was over, the Holy Child was kissed, approaching to kiss everyone who attended it. This ceremony was new to many because of what was seen there. Well, instead of kissing the child, they do one or more bows, which is exactly what they do when they greet each other, and there was even the case that some of them put some straws from the cradle, believing, without a doubt, that the others had done the same”.
With this anecdotal and funny example, we can see the difficulty of letting go of cultural forms deeply rooted in the missionaries and the difficulty of understanding what others could not understand and what seemed very natural to them.
The Christmas celebration of the brothers alone in the countryside in the newly founded mission posts was very different from that of Kweiteh; it was so different from what they were used to, and it was so important to them!
During Mass, I did not hear, as in previous years, singing, Christmas carols, or tambourines; nor did I see on the altar that extravagance of lights and flowers with which it is customary in the Philippines and Spain decorate the main altar.
However, this sudden shock to which they were not accustomed led them to live in a more memorable way, more profound the mystery they celebrated. In the dispossession of their cultural forms, in the encounter with simplicity and poverty, they gained more clarity to grasp the depth of the mystery and beauty of the faith depth of those simple people. Let us listen to these profound words of the Father Alegria:
A chapel nine meters long by four meters wide, to the north an altar with six candlesticks, a small lamp that spreads its tremulous rays throughout the room, giving it the appearance that the catacombs of the first Christians must have had, some paintings on the walls… And nothing more. Everything breathes poverty in that sacred place. […] And yet, here are these few children of yours, confessing to you, King of heaven and earth, in the gifted mystery of the cradle of Bethlehem. There they went the shepherds, rustic and ignorant, those who adored You after knowing You, here It is also the humble who prostrate themselves before You; there was a manger covered with straws the one who received You from the womb of your Virgin Mother, and here you have a miserable hut for dwelling. The great ones of the earth did not confess, and the potentates who do not know you are here. “Glory to God in the heights and peace on earth to men of goodwill.” Yes, peace is a gift from Heaven for them: peace in their consciences, their families, and all. […] This poverty, silence, and loneliness have raised the soul higher than noises, music, and joys. The rusticity of how much has surrounded me has been represented to me as a transcript of the cave of Bethlehem, the vision of Christians kneeling and singing songs of joy before the cradle of the Newborn; I have been transported in spirit to the catacombs of the first Christians. One and the other have predisposed my soul to like, like never before, all the sweetness of this mystery of love.
