I am from Kailua. Jeff is from Honolulu. Both of us studied at Punahou School and embraced religious life after. I taught in Taiwan back in the 1980s. Jeff will complete in July his first year of teaching at Taiwan’s Fu Jen Catholic University. I came home to minister to the unmet needs in Hawaii; Jeff remains available under the Chinese Province of Jesuits responding to the unmeetable needs in Taiwan. In the following conversation over the Easter break in Taipei, Taiwan, I get caught up with Jesuit Father Jeffrey Chang.
Sister Malia Dominica: How did you make your journey from the United States to Asia?
Father Jeffery Chang: After graduating from Punahou, I went to study at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where I completed my BS in foreign service. It was there that I met the Jesuits and was inspired by their energy, the evident meaningfulness of their lives. I entered the novitiate in the Maryland Province. From there I continued my studies at Fordham University and then onward to GTU (Graduate Theological Union), Berkeley, where I met Father Larry Silva before he became Bishop of Honolulu.
Before ordination in 1999, my provincial superior asked me, “Where do you feel called to go?” At that stage I had already taught in a high school and directed a high school dormitory in Maryland. I had also spent a semester in China and another semester working on a project in Cambodia. When I entered religious life, I never really expected to go abroad. The only travel outside of the country I experienced before was when my family took a summer vacation in Canada. That was a great exposure.
I didn’t really know what I wanted to spend my time doing in life. Did I want to be a parish priest? Teach in a high school? Work in a soup kitchen? The Jesuit vocation is to find God in all things and to go where there are greater unmet needs, be that geographic, or in types of work, or with types of people.
After a very long process of discernment, I realized that God wasn’t asking me to volunteer to go to Cambodia, nor was he telling me that I didn’t need to go there. In the end, I asked to be sent to where there was greater unmet need in the Society of Jesus in the church and in the world, wherever and whatever that might be. That’s how I ended up in Asia.
Sister Malia Dominica: When I was in Taiwan, I taught English conversation at Sheng Kung Girls’ School, studied Mandarin and worked on the formulating of an Eastern Christian Spirituality with the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception and the Jesuits of Fu Jen University. What has been your experience in Asia?
Father Jeffery Chang: I originally went to Taiwan to do pastoral work and Chinese language studies. Being that I was residing at the Fu Jen University ecclesiastical faculty of theology and afraid that I would get bored with Chinese language studies, my provincial superior suggested I also do the doctorate in sacred theology which was offered in English.
In 2009, I was sent to the Philippines to meet the need for Chinese-speaking spiritual directors and professors. There was an increasing number of mainland Chinese religious going to the Philippines for formation and studies. I was also assigned to work with the Jesuits in formation at the Ateneo de Manila University.
Last year, I was brought back to Taiwan to take care of the mainland Chinese religious at Fu Jen University where I also teach. With a three-year study permit they are able to get their BS in sacred theology or religious studies. This June, about 12 from the second group of students will be graduating. In our first class, we had two students.
Sister Malia Dominica: In ministering in other lands, there are natural challenges. I have returned to Hawaii, but you have remained in Asia. How do you view yourself in ministry?
Father Jeffery Chang: My vocation is not a foreign missionary one. I am not here because my ancestry is Chinese, or because of St. Francis Xavier, or Father Matteo Ricci, S.J., but because of Jesus. The day-to-day basis has its challenges, pains and difficulties.
As the years have passed, I now understand my first request as more of a vocation to be made available to be sent to the greater unmeetable need in the Society of Jesus in the church and in the world — those things that, almost by definition, no one can do. Mine is a Jesuit vocation: to go wherever Jesus calls me. If Jesus were to call me to be a parish priest in Hawaii, I would be very happy. And I know my mother would be extremely happy. However, it doesn’t seem very likely to happen, because others can fill that need.
Here at Fu Jen University, our student body in the theology department has doubled in a space of four years. But, we really haven’t prepared yet a local staff to carry others into the future. For myself, not being Taiwanese, and not being mainland Chinese, can be very inconvenient in matters of language and culture, but it also offers a number of opportunities on social levels. I am not sure to which continent the mainland Chinese religious are going next, but I may have to follow. The priesthood is not only meaningful, it is a lot of fun.
This year marks the 25th year since I entered religious life. The meaningfulness and life-giving energy that attracted me back then, has been cultivated with 25 years of the Spiritual Exercises and Jesuit formation (that takes forever and a day). But at least I have a little more interior knowledge of what that spirit is about and that wakes me up in the morning and carries me through each day.
Sister Malia Dominica: What reflections can you share on the election of the Society of Jesus’ Pope Francis?
Father Jeffery Chang: I would not consider Pope Francis a “Jesuit” pope. Rather, he is a pope for the church and for the world. Some people ask, “Is he choosing a simple lifestyle because of Franciscan spirituality? Is he choosing to open new avenues and to break with tradition because of his Jesuit background?” I think conventional explanations miss the point. St. Francis of Assisi chose to set aside his family’s riches and to live simply because of Jesus. He wanted to live as Jesus lived, to be an apostle as Jesus sent his apostles, without money bag, walking staff, etc. It wasn’t because Jesus told them to live in such manner, but because he did.
Pope Francis is very Christocentric. And that is the heart of Ignatian Jesuit spirituality. To know Jesus, to love him more deeply, and to follow and serve him. He is calling attention to Jesus.
