Anthony is the Director
of Campus Ministry at Xavier High School in Manhattan.
I have noticed that each time I tell the story of my vocation the current version is slightly different from previous ones. I would speak of the same story, but each time I found myself emphasizing different aspects of the events of my life. There were times when I have described events which I thought were important at the moment, but which later turned out not to be so. Likewise, there were moments which I have passed over all too easily, but to which I have returned and subsequently found to be important turning points and treasured touchstones in my journey with God. At first I was a bit worried by the lack of consistency. After all, this was the story of my life, and who better to tell it than I? Reflecting upon this jumble of stories, the one thread which runs throughout my (mis)adventures is not so much any consistency on the part of my actions or my thinking, but the faithfulness of a compassionate and passionate God. In season and out, God has bore with me and has walked beside me and before me, leading me ever so gently despite my own stubbornness and inconstancy. As I see this pattern emerge, I am tempted to believe that perhaps it is not so much I who am the author of my life, but God. It is not so much the story of my life, but the story of our life.
I was born on July 30, 1975, the day before the feast of St. Ignatius, the founder of the Society of Jesus (also known as the Jesuits). My parents, both immigrants from China, named me Anthony, but I was also blessed with a Chinese name. All my life I have responded to both. That I have two names, that I am at home and not at home in two cultures and languages, that I am both Chinese and American continues to be a source of consolation and challenge for me. I feel that I am doubly blessed by being able to move between two worlds. Yet also I have felt the sting of not being able to belong totally to either, always betwixt and between, a guest in two homes which will never be fully my own.
It is Jesus' faith in God which allows me to rejoice in the gifts which these two worlds have to offer. It is Jesus' hope which allows me to see beyond the difficulties and challenges (without dismissing their reality) of being always a guest, never fully at home. It is Jesus' compassionate love that makes real the passionate love of the Father which has led me to serve the Church through the Society of Jesus. Mine is a life of companionship in imitation of Jesus Christ. He welcomed the little children when his disciples wanted to send them away. He ate with sinners whom society had rejected. Finally, he offered his life on the Cross so that all, even the friends that abandoned him at the time of his need, might come to share in the reality of the love of God.
Each time I walk into a church I find that my attention is drawn to this Man, this Jesus, with his arms outstretched on the Cross. For me, it is a gesture of welcome. As Christ embraced the Cross so long ago and continues to do so today, so I find myself looking at Jesus with his arms outstretched embracing me and welcoming me, a beloved guest in his house. I have embraced Christ in the people with whom I have been privileged to encounter in my ministries as a Jesuit. I have seen the face of Christ light up and have heard his laughter as I have taught and have been taught by my students at Nativity Mission School and at St. Martin's School. I have prayed with Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus while caring for those with terminal cancer at Calvary Hospital. I have shared in the loneliness of Christ at Gethsemane in the tedium of long and sometimes frustrating hours of studies during my formation as a Jesuit. I have known the joy of the disciples who encountered the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus in the companionship I share with my brother Jesuits wherever I find myself in this world. God indeed has blessed my life with Jesus in this least Society.
Jesuits are called to be "servants of Christ's mission," willingly to be sent forth in a world scarred by sin to preach and live the reality of God's compassionate and passionate love. To be willingly to be sent means to be willingly to listen and to trust. What eventually brought me to the Society of Jesus was not some sudden revelation that was accompanied by heavenly lights or the booming voice of God instructing me what to do. Rather, by reflecting on God's slow and gentle work in my everyday life, taking note of the deepest desires of my heart, and being touched by God's own imagination, more and more I felt that I was being called to share in a life that is not my own. Every now and then I wonder to myself what it would have been like to continue my studies as an anthropologist and archaeologist, what it would have been like if I had chosen another path. Nonetheless, what keeps me focused on the present moment, what gives life to my vocation as a Jesuit, is God's faithfulness time and again and Jesus' arms outstretched welcoming me home.