When I felt drawn to religious life – particularly to become a missionary, in the mid 1990’s, my perception of the world was still very simple. I think Robert Frost’s famous poem captures it very well: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood….”. I was young and idealistic, but not knowing much of the complexity of life, I chose one path believing that it would lead me through the yellow wood of life and to an encounter with God. I didn’t realise that life wasn’t so simple and many other roads diverged from the path I had chosen.
I worked for ten years as a missionary with children who had disabilities and then struggled to build and maintain a small Christian community in a poor area of Peru. My perceptions and ideas about life and my faith underwent a radical change during this time. Through my experience of living and sharing life with the poor, I began to see my life and my faith through a different lens.
My perceptions were again challenged when I assumed the role of formator of our young Sisters in the Novitiate. My own formation in Religious Life had taken place in my own culture in Korea but with an Irish formator. But 25 years later, the context of formation had changed. It was a different world and reality in the Philippines. Our International Novitiate was formed in Manila amid the unpredictable reality of the Covid pandemic. The location offered a rich context for formation at a time when many Congregations had few vocations and few younger members with whom they could experience religious companionship. I still remember my feeling of amazement when I attended an inter-Congregational formation program with our novices. The statement of the Asian Bishops’ Conferences was flashed out before my eyes: “Asia, blessed with diverse cultures, religions, languages and ethnicities, is the world’s largest continent in terms of both geographical area and population”. It was an eye-opening experience to see participants from all over Asia and from different Congregations get together, sharing their own richness, challenging the biases of one another and together building companionship. It is rare to have such an intercultural formative experience. The vision and the contribution of the participating Congregations was large enough for the young men and women in formation to experience the intercultural-community life and ecclesial societal life that is a requisite for Religious Life today.
‘Diversity’ was the word to describe our own community. When seven of us from the Philippines, Korea, Peru and Myanmar settled in the Philippines, we often got lost or in trouble, not because of the big ideas like Religious Life or our Charism. It was in the making of simple daily life choices that we often experienced unexpected feelings, thoughts and different opinions that distanced us from each other. For example, when some saw the bright and beautiful longi fabric from Myanmar, one person wanted to use it to decorate the chapel, while another was disturbed by the idea of placing something secular – worn as women’s skirts – on the altar. Still another argued that times have changed and we need to move beyond dualistic thinking about what is sacred and what is secular. I cannot deny the many times I did not have answers for these valid points. But the true temptation here was to bypass the conversation, justifying the notion that this was only a very minor thing in our daily lives, and not have the unpleasant conversation that would reveal our own bias…etc. Little things were big things!!
Later, I realised the importance of unfolding the small and uncomfortable things. Here in our honest sharing, we opened up our wounds and vulnerability to one another, and experienced pain and forgiveness in the community. Formation, after all, is about conversion and transformation of our heart. How we see our differences and the way of resolving conflicts leads us to the question of our values as Columbans and what binds us together as Columbans.
The choices that we make are what make us who we are and shape our contributions to life in our small and large worlds. Personally, my time working in Formation was also a formative period for myself, enlarging my perception and vision and deepening my faith. Becoming missionary disciples of the Lord is not something achieved once and for all as I had believed before, when I chose my particular path. It demands continuous conversion, growing in love “to the measure of the full stature of Christ (Eph 4:13). Formation is the process of becoming more and more a disciple of Christ.
By Sr Young Mi Cho for Far East Magazine
Sr. Young Mi Cho served on mission in the Philippines and Peru and later assumed the role of Novice Directress. She currently serves as a member of the Congregational Leadership Team