Oceania covers the tropical Pacific Ocean, west to Australia, east to Easter Island, north to Hawaii, and south to New Zealand! These eight to ten thousand islands are home to over thirty-eight million people who live in twenty-five countries and dependent territories. The area is an anthropologist’s paradise, home to many cultures, religions, and languages.
Life must have been simple for these people until the sixteenth century, when the first Europeans began to find the islands. More exploration followed, leading to exploitation, colonization, and missionary activities. Development required labour, so people from South Asia moved to some of the islands to work on plantations.
Jesuits honour St. Diego Luis de San Vitores, who evangelized the Marianas Islands in the seventeenth century. St. Francis Xavier had reached Japan a century earlier and established the Church which first grew rapidly until opposition produced many martyrs and forced Christians into hiding where they maintained their faith. Diego was born into a noble family at Madrid in 1627, and entered the Jesuit noviciate at the age of thirteen, bent on becoming a missionary. Father General Goswin Nickel missioned him to the Philippines in 1660. Diego first sailed to Mexico where he waited two years for passage across the Pacific. Finally a party of sixteen Jesuits made the crossing. Diego was quick to learn languages and was soon hard at work serving the people of the island of Mindoro.
Diego still dreamed of moving north to the Marianas Islands, and took the trouble to learn the Chamorro language, and to write a Chamorro grammar. He received the permissions of his Jesuit superior and the Archbishop, but had to return to Mexico to raise funds for the expedition. Finally in 1668 his party of five priests, a student, a few Filipinos, and three Spanish soldiers anchored at the island of Guam. The local leaders welcomed the missionaries, and over the next two years the mission grew. There was opposition, however, and accusations that baptismal water killed babies. The first missionary to die was Fr. Medina, struck by a spear on the island of Saipan in January 1670. Others followed, including Diego, killed in April 1672, the Friday of Passion Week. The mission continued, however, and now the Christian Church on the islands continues to thrive, thanks to the intercession of St. Diego, Patron of the Marianas Islands, and of all the peoples of Oceania.
The many tribal peoples of Oceania, like all tribal societies, have a great sense of community. They easily work together, sharing their resources for the good of the whole community. Nature provides for the people’s needs, and will continue to do so, as long as the people themselves care for nature! Christianity has shown them the source of these natural blessings, God’s creative love and continuous forgiveness through Christ’s Resurrection. Let’s look at the people of Oceania as missionaries to the world, missionaries who show us the way to care for our world and especially for one another through cooperation, not just necessary for survival, but truly the best way to live a happy life.
Japanese Christians correctly congratulate one another on Easter because they realized that we all are truly on the way to heaven, a heaven beginning on earth. We enjoy that heaven-on-earth because we recognize God’s goodness, not only in nature, but especially in the Risen Christ whom we recognize in one another. May we who possessively worry so much about what is ours, let go, and follow the example of the Christian people of the South Pacific by joyfully sharing God’s gift of good news with one another through giving and receiving forgiveness!