by Alberto Caccaro

Fr Alberto Caccaro, a PIME missionary who has lived in Cambodia for the past ten years, wrote the following letter after a brief holiday in Italy. In it, he describes daily life at his mission, focusing on a woman trying to get a daughter into school, a Christian woman coping with a small child, a blind girl who wants to “feel” close and pray for missionaries.

Prey Veng (AsiaNews) – We are publishing in its entirety a letter Father Alberto sent to his friends in Italy:

“If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it;

blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches[.”1

“Are we here, perhaps, for saying: house,

bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit-tree, window –

at most: column, tower . . . .”2

Two days ago, a widowed mother came. She wanted to register her teenage daughter in our school. I saw her arrive on a battered motorbike, skidding, motor sputtering along, but moving nonetheless. They were three on the bike. The woman had a niece, in addition to her daughter, also coming for registration. They were from a not-so distant village, but hard to get to because of a very rough road.

She wore a pair of sunglasses as old as the motorcycle, but useful to hide an eye impairment. I only figured it out after talking to her. Slowly, she told me that to get to the school she had to borrow the bike from a neighbour. And since it had no registration plate, she had to borrow that too from a second neighbour, one with the right sized holes so that it could be properly attached and not give her away to the highway police. Since she had no helmet, which is increasingly becoming a must even in the countryside, she borrowed one from a third neighbour . . . . In order to hide how poor she was, instead of borrowing all three from one person, she borrowed each piece from a different neighbour.

All set and ready to go on her borrowed bike, plate and helmet, she brought the two girls to the school.  As she spoke to me, I could not but notice, almost like a background stage to what she was saying, two teeth on her upper dental arch, and one on the lower arch. Nothing more. Yet, she was shooting away, speaking with such passion about her daughter, her niece and their desire to study that I saw in what she lacked what made her a full person, and gave her a sense of being complete.

What Rainer Maria Rilke said is true. We must be able to evoke the richness of what would otherwise appear plain and remain so. I realise that I am not in Prey Veng to achieve big things. I only have to observe and evoke, name the richness that is hiding in the heart of so many poor and limping mothers, . . . on the go, always. “Are we here, perhaps, for saying: house, bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit-tree, window – at most: column, tower”. Bike, plate, helmet . . . Say the name till one evokes,3 and thus rescue from oblivion. Mothers save the world . . . .

Hang had her first child two months ago. Married about a year ago, she became the mother of a beautiful baby boy. Since she had the child, she has not been to Mass. I finally met up with her a few days ago. She told me about her husband, who is not Catholic, and who is often away from home, working far away. He will not be able to be at the baby’s baptism, on the Feast Day of the Assumption. She spoke about her child crying at the night, how no one can sleep, her faraway husband who comes back on rare and short visits, perhaps just one night, before going away. Even on the day the child was born, they called him several times to go back work. Then the birth came, and the sleepless nights . . . .

She did notice one thing though. When the father is back and sleeps at home, the child is all quite and sleeps. One night, another one of those without dad, powerless to do anything about the child’s cries, she took one of her husband’s shirts and wrapped the babe in it. A few moments later, he stopped crying. “Perhaps,” the young mother said, “my baby recognised his dad’s smell and is soothed by it, as if the father was there.” She tried it again and it worked.

I was moved by the thought that a two-month child could recognise whether his dad was home or not, and express what he felt, crying. I told the woman to explain to her husband that, whilst work is necessary, it could not be used as an excuse to stay away from his son. I don’t know how things will work out in the end, but the little prince cries when his daddy goes away, leaving an empty home of abandoned walls.

Thinking about these two mothers, the words of a contemporary poet came back to me. “Women shall save the world. Of course, fathers shape it, children turn it into an adventure, building it anew. But it is mothers who save it. We see it when times are hard, when conflicts break out, and we do not know what to do. It is then that mothers, some mothers, save it. Their patient sowing and their secret strength guard it and revive it.”4

When I was in Italy, I met a little princess. I was visiting the Giorgio Macchi Elementary School in Somma. I had been invited to speak to 250 children, all at once. When I came into the gym, they called me “friend” several times in so many different languages, and sang a cute refrain, “With my hand in your hand, with my heart in your heart”. Eventually, I spoke, for about an hour, everyone listening carefully. At the end, a girl accompanied by her teacher came towards me. She asked me, “Father Alberto can I take your hands?” I realise then that her head was slightly tilted, the way blind people do. The teacher  confirmed it. Stephanie, that is her name, listened to me for an hour, but that was not enough. She wanted to feel if what she heard was true. She grasped my hands. I sat down and she, with unexpected confidence, bent resting on my knee. I thought, “Stephanie, you who can see what I cannot yet see, always say a little prayer for us missionaries.” There and then, I felt the gift of a deep communion. This little princess brought me to a deeper and truer level, one where Church, Family, School and Society are but one, single body, “With my hand in your hand, with my heart in your heart”. I asked the children to sing the song again.

During the months of my stay in Italy, I met so many beautiful people. I will not repeat their names for fear of leaving someone out. I just thank them all; those in the schools, monasteries, parishes that I visited; the priests, nuns, relatives, friends; those who organised parties and those who made sure I saw the sea; the Alpini, the young people of Akuna Matata; the seniors in rest homes and those at Il Girasole centre; those who sang for me and for Cambodia; those who were ill and all those I only met for a brief moment. My thoughts go especially to my elementary school teacher, Ms Franca, whom I had not seen in 30 years.  I promise I shall remember everyone when I celebrate the Eucharist every day, in particular those who asked me for special prayers.

The Pope recently said that the “no one who prays is ever alone”. For me, this is true when I celebrate the Eucharist. I experience the importance of the daily celebration as faithfulness in Christ and appeal to be in communion with Him, for this way, in the soul, another life is possible, one that can “understand, know, and love—or better” realise that this is “in her—in the Trinity, together with it, as does the Trinity itself!”5 I celebrate the Eucharist so as not to be alone. With Jesus present, our small church is an enchanting place that re-introduces me to the Mystery.

Often words are not enough for me to say all about what is visible and invisible around me. I feel a deep gratitude and an urgent need to evoke the presence of the Mystery and the Power of the Eternal. “He is here. He is here as on the first day. . . . He is here among us all the days of his eternity.6

For this reason, the mission I am living is dear to me, so is the house in which I live, the church where I pray, the school where we are trying to discover and identify that excess of meaning that every dictatorship, whatever their stripe, fears and stifles. We, instead, are made so that we can say, He is here.

See you soon,

Father Alberto

Prey Veng, 6 August 2010

Transfiguration of the Lord

 

[1] Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a young poet (Online edition retrieved on 12 August 2010 at http://www.carrothers.com/rilke1.htm).

[2] Rainer Maria Rilke, Ninth Duino Elegy.

[3] According to my old Italian dictionary, the famous Devoto-Oli, to evoke means “calling something forth from the world of mystery to that of sensory experience”.

[4] Text by Davide Rondoni.

[5] Saint John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle.

[6] Charles Péguy

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