Richard Ho Lung
REVOLUTION, UPHEAVAL, confusion and even chaos have been the hallmark of the last 30 to 40 years. There is a great cleavage between our world of the 1950s and 10 years after to present time. It seems that this period is marked by never ending change and never ending destruction. And yet, there is a new springtime of hope coming already it has begun. Our culture of death shall give way to a new culture of life.
It seems that this period is marked by never ending change and never ending destruction. And yet, there is a new springtime of hope coming already it has begun. Our culture of death shall give way to a new culture of life.
Every moral position has been challenged and debunked in certain quarters even death has become an attractive alternative to life for abortionists and those who will euthanise. Anti-family folks don't want to have children or to see others have children. How then shall we survive as a human race?
LOSS OF FAMILY LIFE
One of my greatest fears is the loss of family life. I believe that worldwide, a respect for woman as a homemaker has been looked at askance; it has been denigrated by men and also women who do not see the value of women building a human nest of love and care to be of the greatest importance.
Moneymaking has become the most vital activity in our world today and all it ensures pleasure, power, and the pride of life. Yet the sensitivity and tenderness, the constant care and labour required of a wife and mother is never ending, and requires the intuitive and intelligent skill, and self-sacrificing love that cannot be measured by money.
Moneymaking is only a means to an end; it is not an end in itself, as many seem to believe and practice today. Family life in God is the first and most important. It is foundational in forming a nation and the human race. What will happen, as the tendency seems to be, if every woman left homemaking and forfeited it for the sake of moneymaking?
Womanhood is losing its true concept and meaning today. Woman is the primary source of love in the human family. Woman has always been the major source of compassion, and that most important of values, self-sacrifice, which lies at the heart of our Christian faith and signals the highest level of civilised humanity.
How can our world exist without woman as the homemaker? It cannot. Generally speaking, men are not as abundantly blessed as women are with the deep-spirited and profound care of human life. In our macho world, men do not understand or respect their women as homemakers. It is a labour that no quantity of money can repay. Men should labour and give their entire salary over to women in order to do that fundamental work of taking care of building a family and the home, without which there can be no happiness.
WORLD VISION
Even God Himself is a family: Father, Son, and Spirit totally one in heart and mind, a holy and undivided Trinity. Through Mary, Joseph, and Jesus their Son, human communities and families that are holy are produced. This is the world vision of the Lord Himself: that we be one family and cry out, "Abba, Father."
One of the most central principles in our lives as Missionaries of the Poor is to live as a holy family. Already, there are 14 races in our community, yet we live as one family.
True we are a family of men, but we also do the washing, cooking, cleaning, medical care of one another, pray together, teach one another, defend and protect one another as a family of God. At our homes for the homeless locally and on our overseas missions the basic concept is to build a family of God among the most forgotten and alienated, those who have no love nor care.
VOW OF POVERTY
If you visit our brothers at our monasteries you will find the happiest of human families although we live under a vow of poverty. Also, if you visit our centres for the homeless and destitute you will find great happiness as we encourage the poor to take care of one another. At the heart of it is God our Father, Jesus our Brother, Mary our Mother, and Joseph our foster-father.
I am sometimes father or mother and the 350 brothers and priests are my kids. Also, the hundreds of poor are our family members. And God the Provider gives all that we need, because we trust in Him and know it is His kingdom in which we live, and by our faith in Him, we know that together we are a holy family.
Father Holung is Founder and leader of the Missionaries of the Poor.
