The Social Apostolate: An Important Ministry in our Chinese Province
Matthew Hsu, SJ Social Apostolate Assistant Chinese Province
I am Matthew Hsu, SJ. I am the assistant of Chinese Provincial for Social Apostolate. There are 3 institutes under the Chinese Province, Casa Ricci, Rerum Novarum,andHsinchu Social Service Center. I studied social work when I was a student in the university, though I didn’t practice it later. I think that is why my Provincial wants me to be his assistant for Social Apostolate. I did my tertianship in 2018. Before my tertianship, I stayed in a parish as an assistant pastor and later I was appointed as the director of Apostleship of Prayer, now called Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, in Taiwan. I was not quite satisfied with just doing pastoral work in the parishes. During the 30-day Spiritual Exercises, I prayed for my future work to serve God where He wants me to serve. Social apostolate was one of my options.
I felt that I have the desire to dedicate myself to help people who are poor and marginalized. I wrote about this to my Provincial and he assigned me as his assistant for Social Apostolate because the person who was in charge of the work was old and wanted to retire.
Before I became the assistant for Social Apostolate I had already been a board member of our Jesuit Social Apostolate Center for several years. I found an interesting thing; the Social Apostolate in the Chinese Province began with the efforts of individual Jesuits, who saw the need of the Society and started the work by themselves. They dedicated themselves to the social apostolate with the Ignatian charisma and formed a very dynamic team to work together with them. They did a lot of wonderful service for the people in need in the past. However, after the founder retired, our Province had to see if it would continue the work and set up the governance for the institute. In fact, nowadays, Jesuits just stay in the board and rarely participate in the direct services. Furthermore, some of the directors are even non-Catholics and they are not very familiar with the Society of Jesus. The task for these social service centers is to keep their identity and their relationship with the Society of Jesus, and to use its Ignatian charisma to become a sign of God’s mercy in the Chinese society.
I am grateful that the Society of Jesus has come out with the Universal Apostolic Preferences (UAPs), 2019-2029. The UAPs confirm the social apostolate as an important ministry of the Society of Jesus. Besides serving directly people in need, the UAPs also remind us that the path we seek to stand with the poor is one that promotes social justice and the change of economic, political, and social structures that generate injustice. Finally, they also emphasize that we have to deepen our collaborationamong Jesuits and with our companions in mission; together with our collaboration among the ministries and apostolic units, other bodies in the Church, and all the persons and institutions. All these things are like lighthouses that help me find the direction to work on social apostolate in the future. I hope we Jesuits in our province can really follow the spirit of UAPs and continue to serve people in most need.
