How can a person miraculously live 12 years longer than everybody expected?
One of the reasons that the Chinese Communist government released Bishop Kung from China to his nephew Joseph Kung in the United States back in 1988 was that they had expected him to die in a year or two. His eyes and his heart was deteriorating quickly and they didn’t want to have a martyr inside China to cause the world’s attention of their persecution of the loyal Underground Catholic Church of China.
But our Mighty God is fair and His Will be done in a miraculous way. After one year of medical treatment in the U.S., he was well enough to travel to Vatican. While I don’t want to repeat here the rest of the story, which was well known to many of you, I want to share an observation with you. My observation of why Cardinal Kung, after being jailed for 30 years, house arrested 5 years, released on parole and never exonerated from being convicted as a criminal can defy the Chinese Government’s expectation and live 12 more years to the age of 99 years old. (He is now 99 years old by the Chinese way of calculation.)
There is only one reason: Our Lord Jesus Christ’s Peace and a True and Total Forgiveness.
I came to know Cardinal Kung only after he arrived at the United States. I attended the first public Mass that he and the late Archbishop Dominic Tang celebrated together after a couple of months of medical treatment. Since then, I participated in many of Mass celebrated by the Cardinal, public functions, the trip to Vatican for his elevation to Cardinal and other private family gatherings. Never in the last twelve years I heard a word of blame, a sign of anger, a cry for justice, a sigh of frustration or any demands for apologies or exoneration. How come this longest prisoner of conscience in this modern world can be so peaceful to himself. In his celebration Mass in Vatican the next day after he turned from an "In Pretore" Cardinal to a "His Eminence" Cardinal, I remembered so vividly that he said the followings in his short homily:
"I thank God for granting me this opportunity to witness my faith"
The Chinese embassy (at that time, Italy, not Vatican, has already recognized Mainland China) sent people to tape his homily and took lots of picture. They must be very disappointed for not being able to record any words they can quote to justify his sentence of life imprisonment. In all these years, anybody came to know the Cardinal would express his or her sympathy and feel for the unjust being done onto him. In return, the Cardinal only asked them to pray for the Church of China and pray for those who chose to separate from the Universal Church. If not because of his total true forgiveness and love of Jesus Christ, he would not call such a humiliation, persecution and suffering as "an opportunity" granted by God and lived so peacefully for 12 more years.
Another incidence I observed also illustrated his total forgiveness and love of his enemy as Jesus taught us. It was the Christmas day of either 1994 or 1995 when his nephew brought him back from the retired clergy home to his house for a dinner. They served him some foods he liked very much, like pork with reserved cabbage, shrimp and mushroom. Also, they served him a bowl of clear soup with few piece of chopped vegetable. He saw it and said to his niece: "this looks like the "lo-coy" soup". (It translates into "hard-labor reform soup" which was water with few pieces of chopped vegetables that he received in the jail.) I thought this would bring back all the bitter memory and felt very awkward at that moment. But to my surprise, he finished the entire bowl of soup like reminiscing the good old time, and then ate few pieces of the other foods that he liked very much. To him, the "hard-labor reform soup" is like a bowl of sharkfin soup. That did not bring back memory of persecution and sufferings but rather the opportunity to witness his faith that God granted him.
Now that he returned to heaven but he lives forever in our hearts. Every time if you have difficulty to forgive others (as what we recited in the Lord’s prayer), I would suggest that you pray to Cardinal Kung to give you strength to find a true and total forgiveness. Only a true and total forgiveness can bring you peace in your mind. Only with Jesus Christ’s peace of mind, you would be happy and healthy and live a long life like Cardinal Kung.
Mac from the New Jersey Prayer Group,
March 18,2000