austraLasia
#1874
Fr Shirieda's moving story
of conversion
ROME: 12th June 2007 -- Fr John Bosco
Shirieda is reported on www.sdb.org to have died at the age of 75, at the UPS in
Rome, on 10th June. The outline that follows however, is from his own
hand, and signed in Tokyo, 1998. It is a moving story, one which needs to
be abbreviated here for obvious reasons.
"Japan, 15th
August 1945, the end of World War II. I had lost everything: my father, an
infantry commander, had died in the camps in China back in 1937. Our home in
Kagoshima was burned to the ground under the furious final American
bombardments. At one point I dreamed of following my father in a glorious
military career, but this dream was long since dead. I also lost a best friend
at Hiroshima.
The task was to rebuild life modestly, and
that had to start with somewhere to live. There was wood aplenty in Japan
after the war - but no nails! One day I tried taking a handful from a Catholic
church in Miyakonojo, being built with the help of American soldiers. On
the one hand I disliked stealing. On the other it was absolutely necessary
and then again, to steal from these hated foreigners (and more so from
Catholics), who had destroyed my life's dreams seemed almost a good
thing.
So there I was with more nails than I could carry -
all going well, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was a white man, a priest.
I imagined myself, hands and feet bound, shut up in prison. I immediately
thought of my mother who had called me 'Masayuki', the 'just one', and who had
taught me to be honest. My worst thought was what this theft would mean to her,
so I cried out, spontaneously, 'Sir, do what you like with me, but don't tell my
mother'! As a response the man put his hands in the drawer where the nails
were, gave me some and sent me off without a word about Christianity. All he
said was 'If you need more, come back'! I went home flabbergasted. That
night I saw his face in my dreams teaching me to GIVE - in that post war period
when everyone in Japan was taking.
So the day after I
returned to find the priest. I told him I was putting aside thoughts of
being a general in the Imperial Army and instead wanted to learn to be like him.
I would never have said I wanted to be a Christian though! But what I saw
in him was a teacher of life. He was a witness to
it.
I did receive baptism at some point after that,
without understanding much at all of the Christian mysteries but for one thing -
the Christian is one who looks to God alone who is love as Christ was. He offers
his own life for the salvation of others. That missionary's name was Fr
Adino Roncato (from Venice) and I am in debt to that life of
grace.
During a fire in Tokyo (our own technical school)
he rushed into the flames to save a friend of mine, and died amongst those
flames, embracing the young Japanese he had gone to save. Don Adino was reduced
to a handful of ashes. He used say, when he was alive, 'Masayuki, I would
like to become a part of your Japanese soil', and that's what he became,
literally. That was when I saw, for the first time, the example of a life
consumed for God's love.
I decided, then, to become a
second Don Adino, a Salesian and priest like him. That's why I ended up in
Italy, and became his mother's adopted son. Rosa died in my arms 20 years later,
on the same day her son had died."
The story goes on, but
to sum it up, Fr Shirieda points out that his brother became a Salesian, and
priest, his sister an FMA, and his mother became a Catholic and Salesian
Cooperator.
He puts it all down to the fruitfulness of one
who 'did not ask what he could expect from life but what life could expect from
him - and gave it'.
And now Fr Shirieda himself has
followed his beloved Don Adino into the loving arms of the Father. He was in
Rome from 1974/5 until his death. He was undersecretary of the Pontifical
Council for Inter-religious Dialogue for 25 years and a professor at the
UPS.
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