Back to Chennai (South East of India) to meet my indian confreres

In our modern world, people travel abroad for various reasons. They do tourism, business, humanitarian work, ... We travel as missionaries! The approaches and the understanding of the visited country differ greatly according to the motivation for the trip. Tourists are looking for entertainment, gastronomy and a touch of exoticism, businessmen and women want to make money, humanitarians want to make themselves useful to society and meet people. Paradoxically, missionaries do not have very specific expectations. They let themselves be shaped by what awaits them, they let themselves be welcomed by the locals, often surprised by their kindness and availability. Time is one of the great assets to understand people’s culture and background. When foreigners spend years in a country, they go through three successive stages: wonder, disenchantment and finally realistic adaptation. Progressively the new environment discloses its charm, its beauty but also its limits which are a source of incomprehension and frustration. Those who stay a long time in a country adopt in part the local habits and mentality, while remaining deeply imbued with their culture of origin.

India, its evangelization started already in the 1st century, a country full of traditions.

The Spiritans have been in India for twelve years. Six years ago, they joined the Taiwan-Vietnam province. Taiwan separated from the group in May 2021 and we are now the Vietnam-India group. During the two years of pandemic, contacts between India and Vietnam were limited to phone calls and mails. In July, I was able to visit the community of Chennai (South of India) for three weeks. This was my second visit to India and my first as Superior of both countries.

Spiritan presence in India in the 19th century, 54 spiritans worked in India for decades

Our Spiritan presence in India today is a drop of water on a huge continent. The community in India is made up of 4 priests, a deacon and 4 brothers in formation (who belong to the 1st, 3rd and 4th year of formation). Three of the four priests work abroad (but they were there when I visited). The community is therefore very fragile and its future uncertain. The young people in formation are dynamic but formation is a lasting process (12 years) and family worries or lack of personal perseverance can lead our brothers to leave the community during their vocational journey. The priests themselves struggle to find their place in a Church where urban Churches do not lack personnel but rural Churches do. In rural areas the priests would get some work and means of support. However, the institutes of formation in religious life (philosophy and theology schools) are in the city. For the sake of community life, it is necessary to stay in the city. But how to get by financial support and what pastoral work to do there? This is not a simple question. Besides, the community had no house of its own. One of the local benefactors puts a large but very old house at its disposal, and he has made it clear that in a year or two he would like his property back. So much challenges for the coming years...

Street sellers and taxi three wheels, no doubt we are in Asia !

Life in India is charming. Asian society is very much alive, the people who live outside, the traffic is crazy, people cook and serve meals in the street, and people’s life is impregnated with religion and religiosity, so far from the western world which decided that God belonged to the past and that only man had the control of his destiny (at least for most of the people). Coming from Vietnam, I was pleasantly surprised by two things in particular. First of all, the mastery of English by the high class of the society, which allowed me to participate in celebrations and even conferences that I could fully understand (so happy!)  and meet families and chatt with its members. I was surprised to see that the Indian family (at least in the city) is quite similar to the Western family. Indeed, in Vietnam, invitations are always made during large festive events, minimum thirty to forty people attend it, men on one side, women on the other. In India, the families I visited were nuclear, and surprisingly, the children were happily participating in the adults' conversations.

Outing to the city zoo with three of the 4 young spiritans in formation.

During my stay, I also had the chance to go to the biggest pilgrimage place in South India for Christians, Our Lady of Velankanni. We took night buses and I was surprised to see that the bus station at 1am was so crowded. People had to rush to get a bus (fortunately ourselves, we were taking a destination much less popular than the one taken by the local workers). After Our Lady of Velankanni, I was also welcomed in the family of our Indian deacon, and I appreciated the simplicity of the rural life but also the fact to hear that little by little the peasants of today have a life a little less hard than their parents. Drinking water, electricity and motorcycles are more and more popular but wages in the countryside are still very low, which explains why the exodus to the cities continues nowadays.

Vailankanni shrine in Tamilnadu State draws 2 millions pilgrims a year !

Three weeks is a limited experience, but I really appreciated the kindness and welcome of my confreres. I was happy to meet the young people in formation, and to my indian confreres, I said: take your future in your hands, we are here to help you even from a distance to make the right choices, have confidence in Providence, be united, generous and enthusiastic in what you do, my prayer and my friendship accompany you.