American Dreams

A few months ago, during the Easter season, our parish in Beijing was visited by our former pastor. He was visiting China after a year and half serving an American parish with a significant Mandarin-speaking population. It was an interesting reversal of the expected: a priest sent from China to minister in a Western Country.

This was not lost on his new parishioners. As he noted memorably in his homily in April

在美国的时候，有的教友看到我的时候说：“神父，我们为了实现美国梦而来，你为了什么而来到美国呢？”
我说：“我没有美国梦，因为我只是为了完成主交给我的使命而来到的这里”。

Translation:

In the United States, some church members said when they saw me: "Father, we come to realize the American dream. Why did you come to the United States?"
I said, "I don't have an American dream, because I came here just to fulfill the mission that the Lord has given me."

All these months later I still think about this homily. No doubt in Father's Chinese-American congregation he encounters mostly ambitious people who chose the US over China or Taiwan to achieve their dreams, possibly of wealth and freedom, but at the very least of financial security that they could not have in their places of origin. It must be a surprise even to them that something other than liberty or socio-economic ambition would draw one of their fellow countrymen to America's shores. I think often of Father's words, his acceptance of something that would be a major life-changing relocation as just God's will.

We're in the US for a while this summer again. There are still frequent questions like "Why China?" and "How much longer?" I think even more about Father's answer, his acceptance of his move as God's Will. While I couldn't honestly answer "to fulfill the mission that the Lord has given me," I feel us somewhere between The American Dream and God's Will.