If you like kung fu movies, continue reading.
Sifu in or shīfu in Mandarin is a title for a “skilled person” or “master” on some kind of occupation in everyday language. In martial arts, a “master-apprentice” or a “teacher-student” relationship occurs when a student is initiated first through a discipleship ceremony. The rapport then between master-disciple becomes a direct “parent-child” or "father-disciple" relationship. The sifu, therefore, is not only a “teacher” but a “father” as well.
Training the kung fu disciple is long and arduous. Minus the physical combat used in training the kung fu “warrior”, we see similarities in our own formation, while running on four wheels, the rigors we went through: as “runners in the stadium”, exercising daily like an “athlete”, not “running aimlessly” nor fighting as if “shadowboxing” but disciplining the body in order not to be disqualified along the way. What makes it more rigorous, though, for a kung fu student is when his master is more of a tyrant rather than a father.
Paulines have only one Master in Jesus Christ, Way-Truth-Life. Although we did not experience exactly as we have wanted it during our time, we saw in our “Father Masters” or “Sister Mistresses” the sense and value of Jesus Master. We saw in Jesus-Way how he formed and transformed his own disciples by “loving them to the end”, not sparing his life for his “little flock” because there is no “greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. The kung fu master could also die for the disciple and the disciple for the master. However, there is an eternity of difference between Jesus Master and the kung fu master. Because it is also possible of a kung fu master killing his own disciple and the disciple killing his own master. This happens when a disciple, driven by ambition to replace the master, would challenge his master for supremacy. The outcome is tragic if the challenge were decided by mortal combat between two “masters”. The only way to win is to kill or disable the other. Only Jesus is life-giving because He is the Life!
Shunning every type of ambition, Jesus teaches his disciples to be childlike in attitude, unlike “the pagans who want to rule over others”. He is the Master who serves, “in a form of a slave”. During the last supper, stooping very low, he washed the feet of his disciples. Preaching to the lost, the least and the distant ones he showed them his compassion by feeding them. He taught by words and examples, by offering his own life. He is Truth in action!
With the life of the Risen Master in us, Paulines are called to be “masters” as well, as our Blessed Founder says: «Formation will be complete when the image and the elements constituting Jesus Christ are reproduced so that one can say, “the Pauline is a second master”» (UPS II, 190; cfr. Mt 10,24-25. ). Our specific Pauline mission is magisterial: to live and to give the integral Gospel to people of our times and of all climes with all the means of today. As apostle-communicators, all must be conformed to the heart of the unique Master because «the integral formation of the person mind-will-heart transpires through the only Master who is the Way, the Truth and the Life» (Cfr. Alle Pastorelle 6, 5, 1960.). In a special way, for all formators of the Pauline Family, this thought of Primo Maestro is still valid: «Jesus has put in more time preparing the twelve apostles other than doing other things. He did not only give examples and words but he gave all, even sacrificing himself. You also have to spend all of your physical and moral strength up to immolation…» (BP 7, 240, 1955). Jesus Christ is the Master like no other, because only He has the heart of the Good Shepherd, Lord and Giver of Life!
