austraLasia 789
CIMATTI'S MIRACLE - IT'S THERE TO BE SEEN
TOKYO: Sunday 11th January '04 -- Just one miracle is required for Mons. Vincent Cimatti's Cause to advance to Beatification. If God so wishes and Rome decrees, that may not be so far off, suggests Japan's local postulator for the cause, Fr. Gaetano Compri. But for the visitor, simply to catch some glimpses of this Province in action as it begins 2004 reveals another miracle, a 'healthy' miracle, the Salesian Japan that was bequeathed as the enduring gift of Cimatti's goodness so evident now in his spiritual sons and daughters.
What exactly is this gift? The Cimatti museum at Chofu and its energetic director the aforementioned Fr. Compri, leave one in no doubt that Cimatti's holiness and his gift to Japan's Salesianity was one of extraordinary and vital Christian humanism. Where did the man find the time to write those thousand personal letters, publish that multitude of scholarly articles on everything from Agriculture to Zen, collect and catalogue those myriad fossils, shells and butterflies, compose those hundreds of Tantum Ergo's, Operettas, Ave Maria's, perform those concerts with snatches of Verdi, teach those children - and form those Salesians?
Holy, God-driven energy in abundance, and you see it now in those he formed and through those, in those now being formed.
Is this why Bro Tanaka (Solomon Islands) also sings Verdi? Why Fr. Abe Nakamoro, pursuing his doctoral studies at Sophia University in Tokyo can write of the sense of beauty in Japanese life (the flower, for example) as the key to understanding the Christian revelation of God's loving providence - and by implication of the wonder of the Preventive System which also inculcates a sense of beauty? Why we come across Fr. Suzuki running around the courtyard with the Elementary kids after school at Kodaira and so obviously loved and appreciated by all the youngsters there and in the nearby Junior High? Is it in the kindness of Bro Mori at Provincial House, in the smiling face of Fr. Lam, the Rector there and indeed in the generous hospitality of each community and in particular the community at Salesian Polytechnic Ikuei?
The answer must be yes. It will also explain why Fr. Ishikawa bears a face of suffering after so much dedicated work in Scripture study, and why the ever cheerful, at-your-service Fr. Bob Zarate, missionary from the Philippines, has learned more Japanese in three years than many would in a lifetime. The Venerable Cimatti's influence is all-pervasive and rather obvious, when you think about it. He lived and taught self-sacrificing love, gentleness, joy and an appreciation of everything that is human. Add that to the finesse of the Japanese character and you have a brew more potent than the local saki.
If this sounds like a tribute to the Salesians in Japan it is! We need good news stories, and perhaps we need to hear more from a province that has gone on quietly developing and enculturating the Salesian charism in an Asian context all these years. The Province, too, is exporting some of this goodness through its missionary endeavour in the Solomons and volunteer activity in East Timor. But these are stories yet to tell.
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