Richie's letters
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I do not want to pretend to be an expert about anything. Instead, what I thought to share are lessons I learned from fellow missionaries and the Cambodian faithful, and from my own experimentations and mistakes.
What is it I had found to love doing in the Cambodia mission? What kept me going ? What kept me happy and busy? What have I learned to love about parish work?
Making Our Churches Places of Welcome
I didn’t have any dramatic Abraham stories of strange visitors turning out to be angels, but I did find it fruitful to make our Churches spaces where people feel welcome. The late great Sr. Ath (one of the most respected founders of the Jesuit Mission here who is a sister of Providence) used to say that the way a simple garden is planted and tended can help make visitors feel welcome. Whether it was the occasional pilgrim or tourist passer-by that came through every once in a while, the Buddhist neighbors who liked to bring their children to the playground, or Dara (not his real name) our most regular parishioner who happened to suffer from slight schizophrenia – we tried, in the little ways we can, to give them sanctuary – be it in a glass of cold water, a place to sit in the shade, a gentle smile, a warm hello, a simple meal, or even a garden they can walk through or pray in.
Occasionally, we also got the desperate grandmother who came begging for her hungry grandchild, the parishioner whose in-laws had fallen very ill, or the youth with no one to turn to for scholarship support. We tried our best to share what we could, and never to make anyone leave empty-handed. Sometimes, it was some money or financial help we could offer, but even those to whom we could not afford to give money, we tried our best to extend kindness and compassion.
Being welcoming, for me, also meant having to learn to humor or make light of not-so-polite requests. I learned that I didn’t always have to say “yes”, but that I could still always be kind, even in the way I said “no”. Often, I failed at this, and caught myself not being as gracious in my response as I should have been. But this kept me grounded in knowing I am far from the ideal and must keep toiling at the hard work of cultivating the goodness that will make me a good shepherd.
Places Where God is Front and Center
Another one of my favorite past times was creating central spaces for prayer. With our many different projects, a lot of our time, energy and attention, and not to mention physical space, was appropriated for pastoral activities. In such a setting, I believe it was the priest’s role to constantly remind people why we do what we do. All of our service to others must be faith driven service. And such a faith can only be sustained by prayer and by placing God front and center of our lives, of our personal and communal spaces.
A little experiment I tried out in my different parishes was putting religious images in the central spaces of Church compounds. I put them in places people cannot ignore when they walk through our grounds, and not in hidden unobtrusive corners where they can easily be forgotten. These are also places of welcome, that immediately greet people when they enter our space. It was another way of saying we are not simply an NGO that wants to help others. We are a pilgrim people with a longing for God and always in search of ways to do His most Holy will.
Putting God at the center also meant turning to God, first and foremost, in our everyday. A beautiful morning ritual I have seen among many Buddhist Cambodians is the lighting of incense (and offering of fruit or whatnot) to the spirit-houses that are seen in almost every shop corner, house frontage, or public space. It is sincere and humbling, and without embarrassment.
I therefore asked the students who lived in our hostel to offer incense or flowers and to spend a minute or two before the image of Our Lady of Inclusive Love that stood beautifully in the middle of our Church gardens every morning before going off to school on their bicycles. I was happy to see that the practice caught on.
Seeking Out the Neglected and Forgotten
I still remember that in my very first month as Parish Priest, one of the things that first broke my heart was to visit the sick and elderly among our faithful in their homes. To be sick, elderly, and poor in Cambodia seemed like the worst of combinations. And so after bringing some of them communion one Sunday, I found myself asking in fervent prayer “What more can we do for them, Lord? Isn’t there more we can do?”
In less than a week’s time, this prayer was answered in a most unexpected way. There was a group of visiting doctors from the Singaporean faith community called ACTS (A Call to Share). Towards the end of their visit, one of the doctors, approached me. To my surprise and joy, she asked “Father, would you be open to having a program that will provide health care for your elderly and sick parishioners? Because if so, we have an interested volunteer nurse, and we can fund the medicines that she will need or some of the hospital bills of the patients.”
Elaine Siew, a volunteer nurse from Singapore became one of the most indefatigable members of our pastoral team. She saw patients and divided her time evenly across all our 6 mission stations. Dr. Angela Lim and her husband, Mr. Peng Huey, who conceived of the program and who also channeled their own savings and contributions of friends and family to the program, became our very good friends. The free medicines and the follow-up medical care they afforded our parishioners was a priceless gift to the community. They also helped me come to believe that when we seek out the Lord’s anawim, help is sure to come.
In my first year as parish priest, I remember how difficult it was to have to be in 6 different places at the same time. Since I was the only priest there for that year, I was saying masses three times on Thursdays, twice on Saturdays and thrice again on Sundays, in places that were 15-70 kilometers away from each other, on mostly rough roads. Thankfully in my second year, our kind Apostolic Prefect sent three more priests to help me out here in Kampong Thom!
Keeping the Pastoral Team Happy
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, I learned that one of the essential roles of a Parish priest is to keep the Pastoral Team happy. Let it be stated clearly and gratefully that I could not have done or learned any of this without my pastoral team behind me (or sometimes even ahead of me, showing the way.)
When I wrote this, the team consisted of the three other priests (Fr. Bae Jonhee a Diocesan priest from Uijeongbbu Diocese of South Korea; Fr. Vincent Chretienne, an MEP priest from France, and Fr. Kristofia Komlavi, a PIME priest from Togo (who would eventually succeed me as Parish Priest), three Thai religious sisters who had been in Kampong Thom the longest (Sr. Kanlaya, Sr. Sudathip and Sr. Jeeranan) all from the Congregation of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, three Cambodian Catholics who are staff of the parish but also volunteer parish council members (Mr. Thim, Aunty Eit and Ms. Channy), nurse Elaine from Singapore, and finally Ms. Priscilla (Bebs) a Filipina volunteer who is a member of the Missionary Community of Corpus Christi, and our young Cambodian volunteer artist Jeevon, who was helping us out at the student center, while waiting to go to the Philippines to study Digital Animation (thanks to a scholarship he obtained from a Jesuit University there). All in all, that was 13 members, 7 nationalities, with an age range of 24-64. You can just imagine how colorful discussions during our team meetings were! Over the years that I was there, Jesuit scholastics sent to the parish to help as regents (Br. Harry Kristanto, SJ of the Indonesian Province, and Br. Boram Lee, SJ of the Korean Province) were also of invaluable help.
These are my musings on parish life, seen through the eyes of a beginner-pastor. I hope some of these thoughts have helped you to think more about God, how we seek to turn to him, and help others turn to Him as well.
Fr. Mark was ordained in 2015 and has spent 7 years of his Jesuit life (2 as a Regent, and 5 as a priest) in the Cambodia Mission. He wrote this piece, (originally published in The Windhover: The Philippine Jesuit Magazine) before temporarily leaving Cambodia in 2020 for Doctoral Studies in Education at the Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He will be returning to Cambodia to continue his service there in 2024. Comments are welcome via mlopez@phjesuits.org.