By Sr Mary Ignatius C Aquino OSB

Sister Ignatius, who has written before in these pages, tells of her experience in forming the first Tanzanian members of the Missionary Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing. This congregation, founded near Munich, Germany, opened missions in the Philippines and in Tanzania in 1906.

By Fr Niall O’Brien

More than thirty years ago when I arrived first in the Philippines and was learning the language in Kabankalan I was called out one night on a sick call. A young man had been stabbed. I can’t remember now what I did. I suppose I anointed him. But I do remember that as soon as it was clear that he was dead, his brother cried out to the heavens with a terrifying voice swearing that he would have revenge. I was profoundly shocked. Maybe I wouldn’t have been if I had known a little more about my own ancient Celtic heritage. Now I know that in the pre-Christian Irish tradition and even many years after St. Patrick Christianized Ireland, revenge was considered almost a sacred obligation.

Photo: Benjo Rulona

By Kris Mina

Malate Church and parish community is in the heart of Manila. It is aware of the growing catastrophe being caused by the destruction of the environment all over the Philippines and all over the world. Part of its response is to set up the farming community called Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning (CELL), an hour’s drive from Manila. There in Cavite, Kris and Roberto Mina have done something wonderful to our eyes – they have created a beautiful world which the parishioners and diverse visitors are invited to experience and learn from. Below, Kris tells us about this extraordinary experiment in promoting God’s Kingdom in a novel and vital way.

We are into organic farming, but we do more than just farming. Our family lives and works in an ecological spirituality center, my husband Roberto and I being staff members. We are on land not our own, with an area of 1.2 hectares, a quarter of which is devoted to receiving visitors who stay for a day or overnight. They usually ask at the beginning of their stay, “Where is the farm?” They look for vast rice fields and rows of vegetables and cash crops, and we have nothing much of that. The kind of farming we do is PERMACULTURE, which encourages food to be grown and forest, animals and flowers.

By Fr Enrico Eusebio SJ

Nigeria is one of the largest and richest countries in Africa yet it has more problems than most. Its famous oil fields are in chaos and it has just emerged from a series of military dictatorships which were very destructive and corrosive. At present it is faced with an entirely new danger: many Muslim areas wish to introduce Sharia Law, the law based on the Koran, into daily life. Naturally the Christians are against this; for example a woman (not a man!) caught in adultery will be stoned to death. Being on mission in Nigeria today is no easy task though Fr Eusebio, in his story below, rightly looks on the bright side of life, as indeed a Christian should.

When I was a novice in 1986, the superior of the Jesuits in Thailand came to Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches, Quezon City. During one of our recreation nights he shared with us about missionary work in Thailand. He invited us and encouraged us to consider the foreign missions in the future. That night I didn’t think about foreign missions at all.