CHAPTER 37 - CHINA
Mei Li was beginning a new chapter of her life. The local Chinese doctor encouraged her to work for him and study with as his disciple. She would develop the rudimentary Chinese medicine skills she already possessed in order to help others and provide for her family’s future. The grateful woman gave Brother Francis a gentle embrace as he entered Theresa’s minivan for the drive back to her house. The bumpy trip evoked a few electrical jolts in his shoulder but was otherwise uneventful. That evening the tired monk sat quietly in his room in Theresa’s house and read a few lines from the ancient parchments.
"Whether we live or whether we die, we belong to God," St. Francis de Sales wrote.
St. Jane de Chantal responded with, "I shall always remember when you told me to do all through love and nothing through fear."
Brother Francis flew back to Pennsylvania thoughtfully. He had an intimate encounter with both of his founders, both through their hidden letters, as well as through his encounter with them in what some might call a “near-death experience.”
Brother Matthew picked up his abbot at the airport and got the jet-lagged monk back to his little community. Several days later the community held a chapter, a community meeting which traditionally opened with a chapter from the rule of the monastery being read aloud, during which everyone brought one another up to date.
Brother Francis and Mei Li’s father-in-law had a long talk while the abbot recuperated. He asked Brother Francis for a blessing before they parted for the last time. The Abbot placed both hands on Mr. Chen’s head and recited a prayer from Trappist monk Thomas Merton. It was as if Merton, who gave the world deeper insight into monastic life by his writings, was speaking to the two new friends:
Help us to be masters of the weapons that threaten to master us. Help us to use science for peace and plenty, not for war and destruction. Show us how to use atomic power to bless our children’s children, not to blight them. Save us from the compulsion to follow our adversaries in all that we most hate, confirming them in their hatred and suspicion of us. Resolve our inner contradictions, which now grow beyond belief and beyond bearing. They are at once a torment and a blessing: for if you had not left us the light of conscience, we would not have to endure them. Teach us to be long-suffering in anguish and insecurity, teach us to wait and trust. Grant light, grant strength and patience to all who work for peace. Grant us prudence in proportion to our power, wisdom in proportion to our science, humaneness in proportion to our wealth and might. And bless our earnest will to help all races and peoples to travel, in friendship with us, along the road to justice, liberty and lasting peace. (Merton, 1981)
A cycle of pain, destruction, and hatred that may have spanned centuries had finally been broken. Mei Li’s father-in-law was free. He was much more at peace and it looked like the Salesian family had a new member—one who would devote the rest of his life to studying the scriptures and Salesian writings and doing whatever good he could during his remaining years. His daughter-in-law and grandchildren had someone to lean on and love.
The abbot showed the community the old parchments. Sister Scholastica had them carefully duplicated and then the originals were passed on to the Salesian Resource Center in Stella Niagara, New York, for further study and publication. Both the parchments and the abbot had finally made it home safely.