The Korean Jesuit Province celebrated the Mass for the Final Vows of Fr Chung Man-young Kolbe SJ on August 25 at the Chapel of Jesus in the Jesuit Apostolic Center in Seoul. It was also an occasion of thanksgiving for the closure of the Province’s universal apostolic discernment process.

Fr Chung studied Bachelor of Theology at the Presbyterian College and Theological Seminary in Seoul. He joined the Jesuits in February 1993 and worked at the Jesuit Benefactors’ Association of the Korean Province from 1997 to 1998 during his regency. Afterwards, he pursued his Bachelor of Sacred Theology in Paris, France from 1999 to 2004. In June that year, he was ordained priest at the Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul Archdiocese.

His first assignment as a priest was as parochial vicar in the Incheon diocese. He also worked at St Aloysius House of Studies as a minister for three years. During his tertianship, he was sent to train at Canisius Centre of Ignatian Spirituality in Sydney, Australia. Upon his return, he worked as spiritual director of the House of the Word Retreat Center in Suwon from 2010 to 2013 and served as campus minster at Sogang University in Seoul from 2013 until 2016, when was sent to be a pastor of St Andrew Kim Korean Catholic Church of Atlanta in Georgia, USA.

“I was invited to pronounce Final Vows, and while I was on retreat, I remembered the 30-day retreat I had during my tertianship,” shared Fr Chung. “In contemplating on the love of God, on Jesus, who is doing the task of comforting, in the Spiritual Exercises, I felt I was invited to live as a ‘consoler’ like Him,” he said. But through the course of his apostolic life, Fr Chung later realised that he is not “exempted from the wound” but also “a wounded one.” St Teresa of Avila’s prayer, which was made into a Korean song, has sustained him in spite of the wounds.

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

Fr Chung said that he relates to the image of “Mary on the way” painted by Sr Maria van Galen FMM. “I do not know how terrible things might have been on her way to Elisabeth, but I think that the image of Mary, who held a light rucksack and entrusted her body to the wind is like me now.”