Below are stories from past issues of Columban Mission magazine. The Columban Fathers publish Columban Mission magazine eight times a year. Subscriptions are available for just $15 per year. Sign up to receive our next issue. Read more about Columban Mission magazine.
On a September morning in 2014, I arrived in Iquique in northern Chile on a flight from Santiago. I was coming to visit the Korean Associates who work with the Columbans in a parish in the new city of Alto Hospicio which has formed in the hills above Iquique.
That encounter inspired me to be more with the people with my true self. You don’t have to pretend because people would notice it. People would be grateful to you if you stay true to yourself by means of accepting your limitations and utilizing your gifts.
Ever since I returned to Korea, people have asked me, “How old are you?” “Why don’t you dye your gray hair?” whether I’m at the market or waiting at a bus station. And my response would be: “It has already been dyed by God, in a natural way, so why do I need to dye it?”
Going on mission to Hong Kong in 1976 was both an exciting adventure and a shock to the system. Moving from the wide-open spaces, the peace and tranquility of a small Irish town to the closely packed high-rises, the noise, the over-crowded streets, was a new experience for me.
I call this article “men of the road” because in all my years in Japan, only one woman came to me looking for a handout. I was once advised to refuse all such requests for three months after I went into a new parish, or I would end up with an endless stream of petitioners asking for money.
The Paris Foreign Mission Society handed over pastoral responsibility for Jeju Island to the Columban Fathers in 1933. At that time it had two small parishes, one in the north and one in the south of the island.
Over the course of nearly 100 years, Columban missionaries have been caught up in major wars and insurrections in the countries where we live and serve. Columbans and other missionaries have grappled with the question to go or stay in times of crisis.
St. Columban, a great Irish missionary monk, died in 615 A.D. in Bobbio, Italy. Columban missionaries (who have St. Columban as their patron) have worked in Fiji since 1952.
A few years ago my priest companion in the Columban international seminary in Chicago, Fr. Leo Distor, and I were invited to join a pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Columban.
Thinking back on my life in South Korea, there was the humdrum of daily living along with surprises and the excitement that went with being part of new things happening and those challenges.
The Columbans are a society of missionaries, including priests and lay people, who minister to people of various cultures as a way of witnessing to the universal love of God.