“When his family heard about this, they said….’he’s out of his mind’ “ (Mk. 3:21).
It’s not surprising that many of Jesus’s contemporaries felt he was crazy. All that stuff about ‘love your enemy, give away your possessions, lay down your life for others’, etc…….it must have sounded insane at the time. Yet, these are the ideas that we Christians hold dear, and that Columban Missionaries have long sought to put into practice. Who cares if many think our mission is “A Mad Thing to Do” (the tongue-in-cheek title of Columban Father Neil Collins’s 2017 book)? Yes. We Columbans are ‘crazy, for Christ’ – and proud of it.
Just look at the story of the Collier family, natives of Clogherhead, Co. Louth in Ireland. Three of their members became Columban priests – Uncle Tony, Uncle Kieran and nephew Ray. (If that wasn’t enough, Ray had two aunts who became nuns – Auntie Rea with the Franciscans and Auntie Freda with the Enclosed Dominicans.)
Tony went to Korea in the 1930’s, survived four years of Japanese internment during the Second World War, then – incredibly – agreed to return to Korea in 1950 despite the threat of another war. He refused to abandon his parishioners when hostilities finally broke out and, as a result, was executed by the invading Communist soldiers (so becoming the first recorded foreigner to die in the Korean War). It was four months before news of Tony’s fate reached Ireland.
Kieran served for over thirty years in the desperately poor Kachin state in the far north of Burma (now Myanmar), an area constantly riven by conflict between government and separatist forces. In due course, Burma’s military dictatorship imposed a restriction on foreign missionaries to the effect that, if they left the country, they wouldn’t be allowed back in. Like his brother Tony, Kieran refused to leave his flock, and so stayed until the Columbans were eventually forced to close the Burma mission altogether in 1978. (Kieran died in Ireland in 1998.)
Many might regard the sacrifices of Tony and Kieron to have been ridiculous, unnecessary. However…..maybe God sees things differently !
(As an interesting footnote, Tony and Kieran never met as priests. Tony was under internment in Korea at the time of his brother’s ordination, and when Kieran managed to get back on leave to Ireland, Tony was already dead.)
Ray was on mission in the Philippines from 1967 until 1978. He was based in the island of Mindanao, a territory plagued by unrest between Christian and Muslim communities. After ill health forced his withdrawal from the Philippines he came to Britain, where he chose to work in the inner-city areas, first, of London and then, of Birmingham. He lived out his vocation by reaching out to immigrant communities and helping foster understanding between groups from different cultural and religious backgrounds.
In fact, he is still at it…..happy and active in his 80’s and always stressing how much he’s been inspired by the example of his uncles.
As a boy, he remembers them as being devout, warm-hearted and ‘down to earth’. “Two things that influenced me were my uncles’ dedication to daily prayer and Eucharist, and their joyful commitment to their people.”
“We all grew very fond of Tony when he was home on holiday in ’49-’50. I loved the humanity of the man. For the family, he was always known as ‘Tony’, not ‘Fr. Tony’. The same was true of Kieran. Tony was a quality Gaelic football player. He represented Louth many times.” (Although, Ray adds, “he had a problem of ‘self-starting’. He needed a good thump before he would begin to play seriously !”)
Did Tony’s martyrdom influence Ray’s faith and vocation?
“Initially, not much. But, as time went by, it planted a seed, an ideal, a desire within me to honour his memory”. More and more Ray felt drawn to being a Columban priest who’d serve God by crossing boundaries of culture, nationality and faith. His father encouraged Ray but also helped him keep his feet firmly on the ground. “Dad said, ‘be your own man, don’t try to BE Tony’ “.
Given that 2025 marks the 75th. anniversary of the Columban Korean martyrs (plus the 80th. anniversary of the Columban ‘Malate’ martyrs, who died during the Battle of Manila in 1945) and that in this Jubilee Year we are called by Pope Francis to be ‘Pilgrims of Hope’, how might the stories of people like Tony and Kieran be relevant today ?
Ray feels that, since his uncles’ time, the world and the Church have changed. “Back when I was ordained, we ‘went out there’ to spread the Gospel. Over time I began to see things in a different way. Now, people from ‘there’ are coming here – refugees, migrants, asylum-seekers – and they are running into rejection.”
He goes on to explain that “this reality came home to me very strongly when I worked in the parish of Beckton, East London; on any given Sunday, people of anything between 40 and 50 different cultures and nationalities attended Mass. Today, our mission is just as much here, in our own countries, and it’s to accept the stranger. We have to show everyone that ‘difference’ is a blessing, not a threat. This is a new understanding of mission. The challenge of mission is now here, in Europe.”
Sounds crazy ? Not to Ray, because it is the RIGHT SORT of craziness. It is the craziness of Pope Francis. It is the craziness of Christ.
Were uncles Tony and Kieran looking after Ray?
In 2010 Ray was returning from a visit to the United States when he suffered a massive heart attack and collapsed unconscious at London’s Heathrow Airport. By remarkable good fortune, a Japanese nurse (who was on a scholarship and living in London) just happened to be on the scene. She found that Ray had stopped breathing. She rendered emergency assistance and kept Ray alive until a defibrillator could be brought, thus saving his life. Later, she visited Ray in hospital. She told him that a companion had asked her to accompany her to the airport that day. The nurse had decided not to go, but seemed to hear a voice saying, “go to the airport”. She’d hesitated, but the voice had kept repeating, “go to the airport”. So, finally, she gave in and went.
Who knows…. maybe Tony and Kieran were looking after Ray ?
