GOD is still at work: How I see God at work in the most unexpected places

Foreword

In my whole life as a Jesuit and a missionary, I have seen God at work in many different ways. During my years in Tokyo, where I was teaching for more than 17 years at Sophia university, I often went with students on pilgrimages. These trips in the footsteps of Saint Francis Xavier helped us to deepen our faith (a faith that became quite obvious in the actions of the students, who were actually the first on the campus to organise a collection when the tsunami struck Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka).

I first met Father Michel Remery when he was Vice Secretary General of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) and thus responsible for bringing us bishops together. He always did so with a great desire for stimulating dialogue and with a great capacity to listen. During our many conversations, I discovered that we both were sharing a passion for evangelisation and working with young people.

Times are changing quickly, and we are now more than ever in a great need of new approaches to being Church together, gathered around its centre, Jesus Christ. Father Michel is therefore continuously searching for new ways to proclaim and to explain the message of the Gospel by using any available means of our modern communication. His skills for organisation and synthesis, together with his ability to bring people together, stimulate dialogue and listen carefully can be perceived in his many initiatives (e.g. Tweeting with GOD, Online with Saints, Your neighbour is GOD and many more). I should really like to see the vast group of collaborators, volunteers, and friends whom Father Michel has brought together as a true online church community! They show us that it is possible to have deep and meaningful relationships and to grow together in our faith by being connected exclusively through online means of communications.

There is indeed a very important social component which is part of their ministry: it reaches out to all people, including those who are lonely and isolated, wherever they are living in the world. Furthermore, it demands attention for the underprivileged and those on the margins of society. Also, it fosters a spirit of election, formation, and sending out of missionaries into our world in order to bring Christ’s message of peace and mercy to everyone who wishes to welcome it. Every form of honest evangelisation is therefore also an act of charity and any missionary initiative needs to be based on a deep and personal relationship with Jesus and a strong bond with other Christians.

Father Michel demonstrates how it can be possible to build such a relationship and such a bond through modern media. This can open a path to new ways of life for our Church. While, as human beings, we always have a need for physical encounters (including in our church), much can be done online today. The Church should therefore support and also learn from these new initiatives and consequently adopt the results for its worldwide mission to live and share the Catholic faith.

I greatly appreciate Father Michel’s posts on social media as well as the various accounts of his travels in this book: the author shows a great capacity for seeing God at work in the life and work of ordinary people. Pope Francis, too, underlines the importance of recognising God’s actions in our daily life: ‘The life of the Church should always reveal clearly that God takes the initiative, that he has loved us first (1 Jn 4:19) and that he alone gives the growth (1 Cor 3:7). This conviction enables us to maintain a spirit of joy in the midst of a task so demanding and challenging that it engages our entire life’ (Evangelii Gaudium, 12).

The following pages contain a personal and thoroughly positive account of the experiences of a modern missionary. Every page expresses Father Michel’s desire to grow even closer to the very God who has sent him, and his search to be close to the people he is meeting. I wholeheartedly acknowledge the author’s observation that God is always at work in our world of today and I really do invite you to read this book and to consider it for yourselves.

Jean-Claude Cardinal Hollerich

Archbishop of Luxembourg; President of the Commission of the Bishops Conferences of the European Union (COMECE)

Preface

Let me take you on a journey, starting where you are right now. A journey of adventure, some hardship, many discoveries and great encounters. Together we will travel the world and visit people in their countries and homes, where we listen to their stories. They are passionate as they talk about their sorrows and their hopes, their questions and experiences, their seeking and their faith. It is an uplifting journey, sincere and profound, with our interest in whomever we meet and whatever we see. We get to know something of their culture, their interests, their architecture, and above all their passion for the faith. Gradually the distinct episodes will blend together into one great palette of human witnesses that radiates the joy of the Gospel and the beauty of human life in its many forms. Let me take you on a journey to see God at work.

Status check

If I were to ask you to comment on the status of the world today, you would probably soon mention wars, terrorism, viruses, unemployment, migration, environmental degradation… The list of problems seems endless, and you may wonder at times whether the end of the world is near. Globalisation brought a lot of good, but often we mainly see the difficulties and disasters. The global economy leads to great inequalities that are not properly addressed. The global increase of refugees and migrants dislodges many people who often do not find a new home as they feel forced to leave their countries…

If I were to ask you about the situation of Christianity in today’s world, you would probably take a similar approach and mention many problems. It is difficult to live the faith in our globalised world. Secularisation seems to take over everywhere. The message of the Church seems to be far away from the realities of daily life, from the joys we experience and the pains we suffer. While people of certain religions seemingly become more radical in their attempts to spread their convictions, the opposite seems to be true for Christians. Is the end of the Church near, you may wonder? Has God withdrawn from the world and stopped working?

Realism

For many, these questions express a realistic view of the global status of the world. They remark sceptically: ‘Where are the great miracles the Bible tells about? How can God allow all the suffering and disaster we see on the news every day?’ Here, churches are emptied because of secularisation and attractive ‘worldly’ temptations, while there, churches are destroyed because of the persecution of Christians. Again, elsewhere, the message of Christianity seems to have lost all relevance.

However understandable these observations are, they are not in agreement with what I have seen myself. Yes, there are many different reasons why people are suffering and experience difficulties or inequalities in our global world. There is such a great need for global sharing, to protect minorities, to help the needy... This is where we have to hear God’s wake-up call. In spite of our lack of action, God has not abandoned us. He continues to inspire people to let their better side speak; to selflessly help others in need, providing for both their physical and spiritual necessities.

There is always hope

Among all the problems in the world, the spiritual problems are often overlooked. How many people suffer from depression, do not see a purpose in their life, have suicidal thoughts... Often this is caused by a lack of perspective and future. It may be hard to recognise reasons for hope around us. And yet… there are great signs of hope to be seen! God himself wants to give us hope. The greatest hope he offers us is the realisation that by terms like ‘life, death, resurrection of Jesus’, the perspective of our lives has drastically changed. There is no need for depression and negativity, even when everything seems lost, for with Jesus there is always hope. By hope we are saved, Saint Paul said (Rom 8:24), and Saint Augustine added that we are Christians in virtue of our hope (Civ.Dei 6.9).

That hopeful message is at the heart of this book. God is still at work. Not so much in world-shocking miracles, but in the quiet events of daily life, unseen if you do not pay attention. But if you do, it changes the outlook on your whole life, wherever you are! When I told our Australian publisher a few of my experiences, they insisted I share some of these experiences in writing. Although I am the narrator, I intend in no way to be the protagonist of the book. That is probably the main reason why I needed so much persuasion before starting to write. The protagonist of this book is God.

God at work

In this personal account, I share some of the ways in which I have seen God at work during my journeys, looking as a priest, engineer, theologian, architect, academic, faithful... It is, therefore, not a full and systematic presentation about the countries I visited. Nor is it a faithful description of the life of a priest. I do not tell you how I celebrate Mass or take time for prayer every day, how I myself am in regular need of forgiveness, how I spend my life when not travelling... It goes directly to the highlights, the moments where I recognised how God is working great things today. For their privacy and protection, most people are referred to with pseudonyms, but they and the encounters related are very real.

Through Scripture God tells us: ‘I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?’ (Is 43:19). If you open your eyes, you can see how God is working today. How Jesus keeps his promise: ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Mt 28:20). That indeed the Kingdom of God is among us (Lk 17:21). You only have to look around you with the right mindset to recognise God’s work. Let me take you on a journey and show you how I see God at work in today’s world.

Father Michel Remery

1. The purpose of life in the Surinamese jungle

I sit on the prow of a fast-moving boat making its way over the broad muddy Copename river with the Amazonian rainforest protruding over the water on both sides. The rhythmic singing of the native boatsman makes my eyelids heavy... Our boat is being paddled to the rhythm of the monotonous singing of a long row of natives. In the prow, amidst his boxes and portable altar, sits a bearded missionary with his long cassock and pith helmet, shielding his eyes against the sun with his hand as he looks at the shores… I awake with a shock when the helmsman calls out: ‘Hold on, rapids!’ My helmet is a baseball cap, my eyes are shielded by sunglasses, and the paddling natives have been replaced by a powerful outboard motor, but for the remainder this could have been a scene from the days when the first missionaries made their way upstream to proclaim the gospel to the population of the rain forest!

Rapids & alligators

It is February 2006. I am in Suriname, a former colony of the Netherlands, where Dutch is still the national language. While our boat speedily makes its way over the water, I continue to take in my surroundings. At times a trunk floating in the water causes some diversion, as it needs to be carefully avoided. With our speed the effects of a collision would be disastrous. From time to time we hear a troop of monkeys screech as they sling from tree to tree on the shore. When the helmsman reduces speed and tells us to hold on while we pass through some rapids, I see an alligator lounging at the side of the river, lazily opening its huge jaw halfway as if it is considering whether lunch will be on us!

Ours is the lightest boat with the strongest motor and the best helmsman. Even so it will take us the best part of two days on the river to get to the village that marks the furthest point of our destination. With no roads, it is the only way to reach this isolated place. This is the district of the Wayombo indigenous tribe. We stop for the night in Corneliskondre. From the water, the village looks very pretty. The roofs of the adobe houses are covered with banana leaves or corrugated iron. As soon as they hear our boat, the villagers come out to greet us, the kids running ahead, screaming and waving joyfully.

Surf and turf

My companion is Father Esteban. He is parish priest of this region and tries to visit the villages every few months. Because of the enormous distances that is the best he can do. He also has a parish in the capital, Paramaribo. We are met by Agnes, the village catechist, a sturdy elderly woman with sparkling eyes. She has been trained to accompany the parish on a day-to-day basis, organise Sunday prayers and lead funerals. She also prepares children and adults for the sacraments, which are administered whenever a priest can visit. Agnes brings us up to date about the situation of the faithful in the village. Most of the inhabitants are Catholics; the Protestant village is further upstream.

As she empties a dustbin from the church into the water, Agnes complains that the Protestants are polluting the river... ‘The river is our livelihood: the main source of income comes from the fish we catch’. Every day the fishermen go out in their proas with nets and spears. The local delicacy is piranha, a fish known not only for its sharp teeth, but also for its many bones and very fishy taste. The women work small patches of land, where they grow cassava and other necessities with the hope of generating some income. Fish from the river and cassava roots from the land form the main items on the menu, bringing the extravagance of the Western ‘Surf and Turf’ back to its basics.

Efficiency

The engineer in me immediately starts looking for ways to make this process more efficient. And then I stop myself, somewhat startled. Could it be that efficiency is not always the answer? The amount of fish these people need to feed themselves is not enough to overfish, so nature has time to restore itself and continue to be the plentiful treasure cove it still is here. Indeed, the burning of a piece of rain forest is a loss to nature, but in comparison to the vastness of the jungle and the small amount of tribes here, the damage is negligible and the fire even helps renew the forest. But when technical and economic efficiency takes over, there is a great danger that the rainforest is exploited on an industrial scale, for example to produce palm oil for use elsewhere in the world.

These people live in harmony with the nature around them. So much so, that in most indigenous religions you find animistic elements, with animals, plants, and even rocks being alive. This brings one close to God-created nature. But there is more. As the great scholar Augustine said, only when he discovered the unique love of the Christian God did he feel he had arrived home, and he humbly asked to be baptised so he would belong forever to that one God. He considered baptism the sacrament of life, for through the water of baptism he started a whole new life with Christ; a life that continues even beyond what we know and see. That hopeful outlook is why he became a Christian after a life of searching, and propagated the Christian vision wherever he could.

Baptism in the forest

Agnes has helped the parents to prepare ten children for baptism. To my joy and awe, I am asked to baptise them. Now I stand here, a simple priest from Europe, deep in the rain forest, after a boat journey of two days, facing these honest people who want their children to be baptised. Nothing around me resembles home in the Netherlands, apart from the amazing fact that I address them in my native tongue deep in the jungle. The parents stand in a line and hesitantly answer when I ask them a series of ritual questions, interrogating them gently about the reasons why they want to baptise their child.

I secretly wonder whether they fully understand what is happening. After all, Dutch is the national language, but in daily life they speak another tongue. But when I ask them outright: ‘Do you want your child to be baptised?’, they look up in surprise and say: ‘Yes, of course! We want our child to live, to give it life with God!’ It is impressive to see their faith and desire, which makes me think of the passionate Saint Augustine. I only have to look at the faces of these people to learn that baptism is necessary for supernatural life with God. How true is this, and how profoundly theological. It is with a renewed awe for the grace of the sacrament of baptism that I bless the tea-coloured water from the river in the simple basin. This water will bring these children life! That is what the salvation Jesus wants to give us is all about: life in abundance (Jn 10:10).

Life

The first child is a tiny baby who squeals her lungs out while her mother holds it resolutely over the basin with two strong arms. I scoop some water with my hand and pour it gently over its head, saying: ‘Ik doop je…’, ‘I baptise you…’ Immediately the baby stops crying and seems to look me directly in the eyes. It is as if it goes through an internal change. Completely calm now, it sits happily in its mother’s arms. When I perform the rites after baptism she even seems to smile, together with her grateful parents: their baby has become God’s adopted child through this sacrament! It has received new life in God!

While not all the other babies react in quite the same way – in fact there is a lot of crying going on – I will often think back to this moment. We can say it so nicely as theologians: ‘Yes, baptism is essential, but God’s grace is greater than the sacraments so there is no need to be overly hasty about it’. While this is true, the great faith in the sacraments which I witness here demonstrates both the necessity and the urgency of baptism for life itself! Through this sacrament, God adopts these children as his own and sets them firmly on their path to eternal life with him. Whatever happens, no one can take this opening to supernatural life away from them! Like for Augustine, their lives now have a very hopeful outlook, whatever problems they may have to face in their lives.

Piranhas

That evening I sleep in a hammock in the tiny annex to the church which is reserved for visiting priests. Upon arrival we cleared out the vermin that found shelter there since the last visit of a priest, several months ago. I leave the sanitary arrangements to the imagination of our reader. We bathe in the river and have a swim in the clear, deeply tea-coloured water. Father Esteban tells me: ‘Every now and then one of the villagers is bitten by a piranha. Their razor sharp teeth easily slice through the skin and flesh’. He warns me that it is better not to go swimming if I have any little wound, for the blood could attract the predator fish. I feel a little daring when I swim to the other side of the river and back.

As I clamber out of the water, I have to leap aside for a water snake quietly waiting in the mud for a prey. Then I quickly need to cover up because of the many mosquitoes that surround us. On the way to our quarters, a cry from Father Esteban causes me to freeze. As I look down, I see a scorpion continuing on its path right there where I wanted to place my foot, protected only by a slipper. Soon it is pitch dark. The generator that sometimes provides energy for electric lighting has broken down, so we turn in early. I am happy to lie down after an intensive day, although it takes some time to get used to the unusual position of my body in the hammock.

Abundance

Lying there, I muse about life. Jesus wanted to bring us ‘life in abundance’ (Jn 10:10). The adjective ‘abundance’ is exciting, but also makes me wonder whether the children I baptised today into supernatural life with God have received life in abundance in a natural sense. Seeing the older children running, swimming and screaming joyfully, you would say so! From a Western point of view they have so much less than their peers in other places. And yet, these kids are probably closer to the ideal of life in abundance than their Western peers who have so much to protect and keep for themselves! Ignorance indeed is bliss in this case!

Did the great Greek philosopher Aristotle not say that everything has a purpose, and that this purpose is to flourish and attain some good? He wanted more than the hedonism propagated by some of his fellow philosophers. For Aristotle, all our activities are directed to a greater good. If someone plays basketball it is not just because they want to bounce a ball, but because the game and the competition brings them happiness. We do not only build a house because we like playing with adobe and banana leaves, or bricks and mortar. The deeper purpose is to have a place that will safeguard us against danger and the elements. Again at a deeper level, we hope that this house will contribute to our happiness! For Aristotle, happiness is something final and self-sufficient.

The Purpose

So, is the ultimate purpose of life happiness? The medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas thought so and again added a deeper level: for him the ultimate purpose of life was the beatific vision, the heavenly bliss at the moment we will stand before our Creator, see him, and relate to him directly. Considered from that perspective, the poverty and worries I saw in the eyes of the parents this afternoon are only temporary: something better is awaiting their children in heaven!

How easy it is to say this when I am at home in my study preparing tomorrow’s homily. But here I find myself searching for a more immediate purpose too. That truly blissful future is still a great many years away for those kids. This realisation stimulated the Enlightenment thinkers to focus more on the individual human being who lives here and now. Some mainly saw emptiness and nihilism, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Others, like Kant, spoke about the highest good as the final end of human conduct. Existentialists like Heidegger focused more on the existence of the individual and how their actions can make a difference right now.

Blossom

Such thoughts led in our Western societies to individualism and a focus on the here and now, often returning to a hedonism which forgets the ultimate purpose which Aristotle and Aquinas wrote about. In theory, an attitude of live and let live allows individuals to blossom and become happy through self-realisation. But we also know that when one rises above ground level in our societies, there are always individuals and groups which try to bring them down again. And what about the defence of the weak and needy?

Creeping scorpions and buzzing mosquitos sustain and defend their