THE CICM AS PIONEERING AND DARING: Through the Storm with the IncarnateWord

Context
Let’s Watch!

1. Watch the short video clip entitled " The Joy of Sacrifice"

2. Describe a significant experience inspired by the video.

Inspired Word of God

As you read the text from the Gospel of Matthew, be guided by the following
questions:

1. What was the predominant emotion in the disciples when the strong wind manifested
itself?
2. What was the reaction of Jesus when they woke him up?
3. What happened to nature after Jesus spoke and what did this reveal about Jesus’
identity?
4.How can a missionary be inspired by Jesus’ word and attitude?

Jesus Calms a Storm

Matthew 8:23-27

And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the
sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he wasasleep. And they went and woke
him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And hesaid to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little
faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men
marvelled, saying, “Whatsort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”

Church Teaching
Questions for Reflection:
1. By what force is God inspiring both individuals and church institutes to take up the
special Christian duty of preaching the Gospel?
2. Give at least two characteristics of a ‘frontliner-missionary’, mentioned by the text;
3. How long should a commitment as a missionary last?;
4. For what purpose will the missionary ask power and strength from God?
From the Decree AD GENTES: ON THE MISSION ACTIVITY OF THE CHURCH.

23. Although every disciple of Christ, as far in him lies, has the duty of spreading
the Faith, (1) Christ the Lord always calls whomever He will from among the
number of His disciples, to be with Him and to be sent by Him to preach to
the nations (cf. Mark 3:13). Therefore, by the Holy Spirit, who distributes the
charismata as He wills for the common good (1 Cor. 12:11), He inspires the
missionary vocation in the hearts of individuals, and at the same time He
raises up in the Church certain institutes (2) which take as their own special
task the duty of preaching the Gospel, a duty belonging to the whole
Church.
They are assigned with a special vocation who, being endowed with a
suitable natural temperament, and being fit as regards talent and other
qualities, have been trained to undertake mission work;(3) or be they
autochthonous or be they foreigners: priests, Religious, or laymen. Sent by
legitimate authority, they go out in faith and obedience to those who are far
from Christ. They are set apart for the work for which they have been taken
up (cf. Acts 13:2), as ministers of the Gospel, "that the offering up of the
Gentiles may become acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit" (Rom.
15:16).

24. Yet man must respond to God Who calls, and that in such a way, that without
taking counsel with flesh and blood (Gal. 1:16), he devotes himself wholly to
the work of the Gospel. This response, however can only be given when the
Holy Spirit gives His inspiration and His power. For he who is sent enters upon
the life and mission of Him Who "emptied Himself, taking the nature of a
slave" (Phil. 2:7). Therefore, he must be ready to stay at his
 vocation for an entire lifetime, and to renounce himself and all those whom
he thus far considered as his own, and instead to "make himself all things to
all men" (1 Cor. 9:22).
Announcing the Gospel to all nations, he confidently makes known the
mystery of Christ, whose ambassador he is, so that in him he dares to speak
as he ought (cf. Eph. 6:19; Acts 4:31), not being ashamed of the scandal of
the Cross. Following in his Master's footsteps, meek and humble of heart, he
proves that His yoke is easy and His burden light (Matt. 11:29ff.) By a truly
evangelical life, (4) in much patience, in long - suffering, in kindness, in
unaffected love (cf. 2 Cor. 6:4ff.), he bears witness to his Lord, if need be to
the shedding of his blood. He will ask of God the power and strength, that he
may know that there is an overflowing of joy amid much testing of tribulation
and deep poverty (2 Cor. 8:2). Let him be convinced that obedience is the
hallmark of the servant of Christ, who redeemed the human race by His
obedience.

As missionaries, the CICM congregation remains faithful to God’s call to go

beyond geographical and religious boundaries to share Jesus Christ with all those
who do not know Him. A CICM dares to go where the gospel values are not lived,
the marginalized are abandoned, the culture is not respected and justice is not
promoted.

Questions for Reflection:

1. Read 1 Cor. 12, 4-11. After reading about different CICM missionaries and their variation
of qualities, how would you apply the text fragment by Saint Paul to the reality of a
missionary congregation?
2. What does Saint Paul teach us that may clarify the real situation in an organization of
missionaries?

(a) The CICM missionary as martyr: the example of Ferdinand Hamer and others

Bishop Ferdinand Hamer, CICM

He is a Dutchman who belonged to the pioneering team of CICM in Chinese Mongolia. He

was accepted as a member of the congregation in July 1865, shortly before the first journey to
China. CICM founder Theophile Verbist had a very good impression about him, who was only
twenty-five when they left for China, while Verbist himself was forty-two; “F. Hamer, who is by far
the youngest member at the age of twenty-five is quick in learning Chinese and he also adapts
easily to the life in China. His wish is to become a Chinese amongst the Chinese as soon as possible.”
Father Verbist further mentions that “F. Hamer is invaluable to the mission” and that he is a model
of missionary perfection: “Our Lord granted us a perfect missionary. The Christians love him as they
love a father; he lives entirely for them.” When he came back in 1891 from a vacation in Europe,
he had a lot of gifts with him. However, even as he “thought of building churches and chapels, he
prefers to spend this money on emergency aid”, after learning about robberies and famine that hit
his mission.

The most striking anecdote about F. Hamer is about the end of his life, when he already was vicar-
apostolic of the Ortos region (South-Western Mongolia). However, at the end of the decade, a so-
called ‘palace revolution’ in Pei-ching re-kindled hatred against the Christians. It was the start of
the so-called ‘Boxer Revolution’. They were not afraid to fabricate and spread false rumors about
the Christians and their foreign missionaries. In Eastern Mongolia, Father Joseph Segers was
captured and buried alive. The mission of Sung-chu-tsui-tzu was saved thanks to a Russian military
battalion; Xiwanze (Si-wan-tse) in Central Mongolia. Being advised by the Mongolian prince of
Djüngar to move West to a fortified residence for his security, he told his priests: “I cannot expose
you to such a great danger and a certain death. If there is a way to save you all, then I have to do
this. I cannot bring the mission of whom I am the head, in danger of losing all its priests. The only
solution is a hasty retreat. I therefore order you to leave for San-cheng-kung tonight. As I am an old
man, I shall stay with the Christians. So, if God wants my life, I shall offer it to him gladly in order to
save my Christians and my good missionaries." After the missionaries, forced to heed the words of
the bishop due to their vow of obedience, they left the bishop with a thousand Christians and
catechumens taking refuge in the church. After having fended off the first attacks, they were
convinced by military mandarins that the danger was gone, just to find out that this advice was a
hoax. In the attack that followed all children of the Holy Childhood were killed, while women were
sold as slaves. The bishop was found kneeling in his chapel, brought away and subject to public
humiliation and horrific torture. He was eventually set alight, while his corpse was afterwards
beheaded and desecrated. His six missionaries had to cross the Ortos and Gobi deserts to Outer-
Mongolia in difficult and dangerous conditions, and then, together with nine confreres, travel all
the way through Siberia to Europe; fortunately, they got a warm welcome upon arriving in Scheut.
Even in the Philippines, some CICM missionaries have paid their service to the Lord with their lives.
At the end of World War II, five missionaries were killed in separate incidents, that took place in
Baguio City, in Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela provinces. Among them was former SLU “founder” Fr.
Seraphin Devesse,CICM . Fr Conrado Aquino, CICM was hit by a bullet in Tinglayan, Kalinga while
on his way to Baguio City. Fr. Elias Bareng, CICM died while being caught in the crossfire of warring
tribes in Tanudan, Kalinga, in 1979. Fr. Leonard Vande Winkel, CICM disappeared in 1988, in
Lubuagan, Kalinga. He had received death threats after openly criticizing an armed group guided
by an ideology he believed to be against the teachings of the Gospel.

Among the Filipino CICM missionaries assigned in foreign missions, Fr. Conrado dela Cruz, CICM
went missing in Guatemala in 1980, while other CICM confreres were either killed, disappeared, or
were forced to leave the country. Fr. Pacificador Laranang,CICM drowned under rather suspicious
circumstances along Guatemala’s Pacific coast in 1984. Martyrdom is not just something of the
remote past but can occur in recent times as well.

(b) The CICM missionary as church leader: Bishop Wenceslao Padilla, Bishop William
Brasseur, and others

1. Bishop Wenceslao Padilla, CICM

Not all CICM ‘heroes’ were martyrs. One example is Bishop Wenceslao Padilla,CICM. The mission in
Mongolia started on July 10, 1992, when three CICM confreres, the Reverend Fathers Robert
Goessens, Wenceslao Padilla, and Gilbert Sales (SLU President since 2015) - arrived in that North
Asian country, after pope John Paul II, through the Propaganda Fide, had sent them to establish
the Catholic Church community there. Evangelization in Mongolia almost had to start from zero.
The CICM missionaries of 1992 had to adjust to the harsh climate, the scarce and different food;
they had to learn something of the different language of the locals, as they were dealing with non-
Christian religious conservatism as well as indifference among the locals. As Christian missionaries,
they also had to deal with the sometimes “aggressive” missionary methods of their non-Catholic
counterparts. Even as progress was very slowin the beginning of the 1992 missionary drive, Bishop
‘Wens’ and his team managed to baptize several hundreds of Mongolians “without proselytizing”,
“come and see” being their main slogan.

Father ‘Wens’ knew that – today more than ever – missionary work is a complex and difficult task,
that requires huge amounts of patience, tactful communication, and
well-considered, selective use of local cultural elements to make the Christian message better
understood and appreciated by the population. He particularly heeded the CICM pledge to
engage in Inter-religious dialogue. The CICM Constitutions declare: “We sincerely love and respect
the people to whom we are sent. We adopt a listening attitude and try to gain knowledge and
understanding of their socio-economic, political, cultural and religious realities. Aware that the Spirit
has been at work everywhere, we discern the evangelical values present in these realities.”

Other examples of CICM leadership include Bishops Constant Jurgens (Tuguegarao), Albert Van
Overbeke (Bayombong), Carlito Cenzon (Baguio), Prudencio Andaya (Tabuk); special attention
befits the person of Bishop William (Willy) Brasseur.

2. Bishop William Brasseur, CICM

He arrived in the Philippines in 1931 and became rector of the Baguio Cathedral in 1945. He
became CICM-provincial superior in 1946. In 1948, he was promoted to the function of bishop, as
vicar apostolic of the Mountain Provinces. The timing suggests that he had a tremendous task to
rebuild churches, chapels, convents, schools, dispensaries, dormitories, etc., that had been badly
damaged or destroyed during World-War II. He also used new communication media in
disseminating the good message of Christ creating The Mountain Province Broadcasting Company
in 1965-66. He is also remembered for being the founder of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart
of Mary (S.I.H.M., commonly known in the Cordillera as the ‘Tuding sisters’) in 1952. Among the tasks
of the sisters are aspects of the typical missionary’s apostolate: “catechetical work, education in
the schools, social education, health improvement”. The bishop is presented as the leader who
creates an organization with its leaders, to help him in leading his flock… Team work is a value that
is not only cherished by CICM members, but also shared by them with other groups in the Church.
Bishop Brasseur retired in 1981, and was succeeded by Rev. Emiliano Madangeng.

(c) The CICM missionary as anthropologist: the example of Morice (‘Maurice’)

Vanoverbergh and others

Missionaries ‘ad extra’ go out from their home country and culture to proclaim the good news of
Christ to foreign peoples. Doing so effectively requires a serious effort of immersion, so as to perfectly
assess the culture of communication in a certain place including the local languages. Therefore,
CICM missionaries already have shown interest in local dialects and cultures at an early stage.
 1. Fr. Alphons Bermyn, CICM

He became the Provincial Superior of South-West Mongolia in 1890 and Vicar Apostolic of Ortos in
1901, Father Verhelst states: “For quite a long time, A. Bermyn has been compiling a Mongolian-
French, French-Mongolian dictionary of the spoken language. It is aimed at the young members of
the Congregation who will need to speak the language... The dictionary contains 11,000 words with
all their meanings, and also examples.”

2. Fr. Morice Vanoverbergh, CICM

He took his first vows in 1904, and arrived in the Philippines on October 24, 1909. He was first assigned
in the mission of Bauko, Mountain Province, with a boys’ dormitory and a small school. Another
significant mission station was in Apayao province. This was a particularly challenging assignment
for him, as his superior obviously wasn’t very much aware of the situation on the field. The Apayao
territory of those times also comprised parts of Cagayan province, and had a total surface area of
2,000 square miles. Forsuch surfaces, they were exactly two (2) CICM missionaries. He usually was
accompanied by a catechist while travelling, also for safety reasons: “Those trips were very perilous
since we had to continually cross rivers. In order to reach Dagadan, we had to cross the river fifty-
nine times in one morning. The river was, in fact, the road, and every time the river touched a
mountain, we had to try to reach the other bank... It was, therefore, always necessary to have a
companion. We could have drowned, and nobody would have known it.” It was during this time
that Fr. Vanoverbergh was recommended to do research on the Negritoes (Called ‘Agta’ or ‘Eta’)
of Northern andEastern Luzon. His findings on the tribal religious beliefs and practices brought him
praisefrom nobody less than pope Pius XI. Also, around that time, in 1928 or 1929, the wooden
church of Kabugao was built, as well as dormitories to accommodate students for the nearby
public school. During World War II, he was assigned in Sabangan, Mountain Province. That’s where
he built a church again – for an amount of five to six thousand pesos. When the Japanese imperial
troops entered the village, Fr. Morice had told themnot to flee, since this would likely have led to all
houses being burned to the ground. Instead, he went to greet the Japanese commander and
showed him his passport that displayed stamps of four visits to Japan. The officer was satisfied and
no violence was committed. Most damage occurred during the American bombardments at the
end ofthe war. They got weekly bombings for nearly three months. The people had to flee and Fr.
Morice, who was working on an Iloko grammar, lost a part of his manuscript. After the war, he was
again assigned to Bauko, where a new church and convent were put
up. Towards the end of his life, he retired in Home Sweet Home, Baguio City. Although nearly blind,
he was still able to finish his Isneg dictionary in 1972, and an English- Kankana-ey thesaurus in 1981,
the year before his death.

(d) The CICM missionary as healer: the example of Fr. Joseph Rutten,CICM and others.

We may conclude from the story of Fr. Morice Vanoverbergh,CICM, that not all CICM heroes were
‘martyrs’ in the strict sense, but that all have excelled in dedication to their work as missionaries,
and in love for God and for His people. This is also what has been the basic motivation for attempts
to find a solution for exanthematic typhus, an illness caused by a bacterium (Rickettsia Prowozeki)
passed on to humans by lice or ticks. The illness is sometimes confounded with typhoid fever. What
was at stake was obvious: at least 72 CICM members had probably died from typhus in China
between 1910 and 1930 alone. In 1868, the CICM founder, Father Theophile Verbist, had already
been a possible victim of the same disease after barely twenty-seven months in his Mongolian
mission. His case was not an exception, since several foreign missionaries had died of any such
disease in the area, including Father Alois Van Segvelt, who died on April 5, 1867.

1. Rev. Fr. Joseph Rutten, CICM

“Exanthematic typhus” is a term that doesn’t appear in the letters of missionaries in 1868; however,
in 1930, CICM superior general Joseph Rutten mobilized an international team of experts to find a
remedy against the disease. In February 1931, he arrived in the Vicariate of Xiwanzi (or ‘Hsi-wan-
tzu’), accompanied by a Hungarian doctor, Stefan Gajdos, to vaccinate the missionaries against
exanthematic typhus. After visiting pope Pius XI in Rome, the superior general had gone to Poland
to contact the vaccine developer, Dr. Rudolph Weigl. Fathers Verhelst and Pycke describe the
continuation as follows:

"In 1931, J. Rutten, together with his ex-student from Nan-hao-ch’ien, Dr. Joseph Chang, started a
laboratory for the preparation of the vaccine in the Catholic University of Fu-jen. This vaccine
means the end of the deadly outcome of typhus, but not of the illness itself, which will still plague
the missionaries.

The CICM had, still under the leadership of Joseph Rutten, put up their own hospital in Kuei-hua-
ch’eng (‘City of the Return of Civilization’, also known as ‘the Blue City’). In 1923-24, a General
Catholic Hospital was built under the supervision of Father
Leo Vendelmans, who was among others also the architect of the Baguio Cathedral in the
Philippines."

When the CICM received compensation money for the sufferings endured during the so-called
‘Boxer-rebellion’ – during which several confreres died as martyrs- China and Belgium agreed to
use the money exclusively for infrastructural, educational and charitable projects in China,
including for the hospital.

2. Rev. Fr. Oktaaf Vandewalle, CICM

When the CICM missionary pioneers came to the Philippines in 1907, most of the country had
already been Christianized. In spite of this, the ‘missionary instinct’ of combining preaching with
caring did play a role as missionary practice, especially in remote areas. One of the pioneers, Fr.
Vandewalle, has integrated medical aid for the people among his apostolic methods. He made
sure that there was in every town or barrio a local leader who would inform him if any urgent matter
had to be addressed, like somebody who got seriously sick. He is also said to have cured the sister
of an Aglipayan leader in Solano while he was staying at Bayombong.

As we are returning to the CICM and to her founder, Fr. Theophile Verbist, the words from the
founder in a letter to his confreres in Scheut – in which he was referring to political developments
both in his native country and in that of his mission - acquires an ominous sound in the light of the
current global Covid-19 health crisis:

“Farewell, my dear friend, take well care of yourselves and give us a lot of news. Europe is really
sick, but China hasn’t healed. What will happen to the world? Let’s hurry to accumulate some
merits, since the end of life could be near”. [T. Verbist, Letter 394 – To J. Bax & T. Rutjes]

Sickness and health have always been a part of the missionaries’ lives, as they have tried at all times
to prevent illness, to mitigate, or to eliminate it. Missionaries aren’t afraid to face illness and put up
efforts to overcome it, since they count on the unfailinghelp of God’s healing Providence:

“I don’t easily give up and get away from hardships. The more trials the better!” [W. Padilla, bishop
of Ulaan-Baatar 2002-2018]

(A longer version of this "Church Teaching" section is attached in your flash drive for your reference.
The title of the file is CICM Missionaries as Pioneering and Daring)
Missionary Response

With reference to the CICM missionaries' pioneering and daring

accomplishments, compose a prayer expressing gratitude for their missionary
projects. Be creative in your output. Include relevant symbols, pictures, or
themes in your composition. You may do this manually or digitally. You may use
a separate sheet for your output.

Criteria
Relevance to
the topic: 8
Creativity: 6
Clarity: 3
Originality: 3

Your creative prayer composition offered to the CICM missionaries is one of the
many ways where you can integrate the selfless examples of the pioneers.
Offering prayer is a meaningful and important way to experience God as the
believer can communicate with Him. Our Lord frequently spent time in prayer.
Prayer made the CICM missionaries overcome the challenges in their mission.
Remember the old adage:"Seven days without prayer makes one weak."