During his sabbatical in Oxford, Fr Jojo Fung SJ found himself with something he rarely had in the midst of academic and pastoral work: time.
Between August 2020 and August 2021, while serving as an academic visitor at the University of Oxford and a visiting scholar at Campion Hall, Oxford, Fr Fung turned his attention to a growing desire to share the “gems of Asia,” referring to the rich spiritual and cultural treasures of this side of the world.
That period of reflection and research eventually gave rise to two books: A Sacred Sojourn with the Spirit of Wisdom and Sacred Sustainability, Polyhedral Christianity and Cosmic Challenges.
In these works, the Malaysian Jesuit explores the wisdom embedded in Asia’s living religious and cultural traditions and considers how they might enrich Christian reflection, particularly in the face of ecological and social crises.
A Sacred Sojourn with the Spirit of Wisdom looks at what Fr Fung calls the “living and flourishing civilisational wellsprings of wisdom in Asia”. The book draws from a range of traditions, including Indigenous spirituality or primal religion, the Maoshan school of Taoism, and the Kejawen tradition of Indonesia.
Fr Fung presents them not simply as traditions belonging to the past but as living sources of wisdom that can continue to speak to the challenges of the present.
His other book, Sacred Sustainability, Polyhedral Christianity and Cosmic Challenges, takes this exploration further by bringing Asian perspectives into conversation with Christianity, ecology, and the sciences.
At its heart is an Asian understanding of Christianity as “polyhedral”—an image developed from Pope Francis’ reflections on the polyhedron in Evangelii Gaudium, Querida Amazonia and Fratelli Tutti. Fr Fung sees the polyhedron as an image capable of holding together different perspectives and experiences while preserving their distinctiveness. This opens space for Christianity to be enriched by the living religiocultural traditions of primal and world religions, as well as by insights from astronomy, astrophysics, theology, and spirituality.
The result is what Fr Fung describes as an intercultural and interreligious understanding of “sacred sustainability” and integral ecology. This understanding recognises “creation as sustained by the sacred, by the divine Rûah Elohim, and by life-giving ancestral and nature spirits”.
Such an understanding, he suggests, can contribute to a more discerning form of “Enspirited Leadership” in the Church, drawing inspiration from the Amazonian Synod and the Synod on Synodality.
Ultimately, Fr Fung, who considers writing a contemplative and mystical experience, hopes his readers will come away with a simple but important realisation: “Hey, we have treasures too!”
For him, this means recognising, valuing, and drawing wisdom from Asia’s own local wellsprings of primal and world religions. He sees this as particularly important at a time when communities around the world are confronting worsening climate disasters, such as the recent Himalayan glacial collapse, and profound social and geopolitical instability, which Fr Fung points out, is what Pope Francis described as the Third World War fought “piecemeal”. The wisdom contained in Asia’s religious and cultural traditions, he argues, can help people cultivate more sustainable ways of living and greater resilience amid these challenges.
The message is both simple and challenging: Asia has wisdom to offer, and perhaps the first step is learning to recognise the treasures that have been there all along.
A Sacred Sojourn with the Spirit of Wisdom and Sacred Sustainability, Polyhedral Christianity and Cosmic Challenges are available for purchase online. A Sacred Sojourn with the Spirit of Wisdom, along with Fr Fung’s other book, Creation is Spirited and Sacred, is available at the Tanging Yaman Bookstore of Jesuit Communications Philippines located on the ground floor of Sonolux Building near the Loyola School of Theology at Ateneo de Manila University.
