Marco Carvalho
Father Michael Zhang (Cheung) was appointed Parish Priest of Our Lady of Fatima Parish in the beginning of the current month. In Macau for just over a year and with family roots in Hong Kong, the young priest is also, for the time being, the only representative of the Institute of the Incarnate Word in the Macau Special Administrative Region. A devotee of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and formerly an architect, the priest says that the mission entrusted to him by the Bishop of Macau, D. Stephen Lee Bun-sang, is a sign that God placed him under the direct protection of Our Lady. The new parish priest of Our Lady of Fatima spoke to O Clarim.
You have been serving in Macau for over one year, but your roots are in Hong Kong. How did Macau come into the equation? How did you come to exercise your ministry in Our Lady of Fatima?
There was an invitation by Bishop Stephen Lee to come to Macau with our order, to serve here. Under this pandemic it is not easy to get new priests. It is very difficult for foreign priests to come in. It happens that I am from Hong Kong and we had no problem entering Macau. There was that advantage. I was serving in Taiwan, where I worked for four years. They decided that, as nobody else could come in, I should come and leave Taiwan. I was serving in the parish of Saint Joseph, in Taichung Diocese, and I was told to come to Fatima, in Macau. It was as simple as that.
You used to pray to Mary even before you became a priest, before entering the order. This is one of the few Marian parishes here in Macau. How do you see such a coincidence?
God, once again. He was the one that prepared everything. Under his divine providence, he takes care of me and he leads me to where I should go. Before entering the religious life, I was still a young adult and I remember I was reading a passage in the MTR, in Hong Kong, about the way Abraham was called away from his home, to go where God called him to go, so that he could be a blessing to other people. I remember that quite clearly. Ever since then, I was always very convinced that God has a plan for me and he will lead me to where I need to go. The fact that he brought me to Macau and to this Marian parish has a great significance. I have a devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Argentina there is also Our Lady of Luján – Nuestra Señora de Luján – and, of course, our Lady of China, too. All of this has a great significance in my vocation and allows me to offer myself to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady of Fatima, she is the Immaculate Heart. In fact, it was Saint Michael that delivered the message to give the Holy Communion to the Three Little shepherds. For me, it was a very significant sign. It was God’s will that I was put under Mary’s protection. It is not me coming here to do what I want. She is leading me into her protection, to start my ministry in Macau.
Do you take it as a challenge? Or as a responsibility? This is a very diversified parish. Several communities co-exist here in Our Lady of Fatima. What challenges do you expect to come your way?
The existing parish is a very active parish. On Sunday, this place is packed with different communities and activities. One of the major challenges is how to integrate, how to mix the communities. There is the challenge of the language barrier and cultural differences. They come to the Church at different times. When they come, the other communities are already gone. Father Angel already started something with this in mind. We met once together, to celebrate in a multilingual Mass and we held a multilingual celebration after the Mass. This allowed everybody to share their joy and their testimony. This is something that we are trying to encourage. It is difficult, because we have different languages here. The announcements and everything, we have to make sure that we have good translations, so that everyone can receive the same message. The message cannot be directed to only one of the communities, to the Chinese community. It needs to be spread also in English, in Vietnamese, so that they can also know what is going on in the parish. There is an extra difficulty because most of the foreign workers that come here speak multiple languages: Tagalog, Vietnamese and Indonesian. Because of their work, they cannot participate too deeply in other activities. But in their own time they will come. For example, they do support the Eucharistic adoration. We have Eucharistic adoration everyday, but once a month we have an overnight Eucharistic adoration. It lasts for the entire night. These foreign workers, they will take turns among themselves: the Chinese, the Vietnamese and then the Filipino community. They sacrifice their sleep and they come. That is the sort of thing that gives them confidence. When they come to pray with Jesus, all their troubles are being taken care of. This is the way we work. We don’t force them. I don’t want to force them to work with each other. At least spiritually, they need that. They come here, so that they can have spiritual growth and comfort. That will be our main goal: to slowly encourage them to work together.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of people in the neighbourhood lost their jobs and were caught in a difficult situation. The parish has been helping some of these people, mainly with the distribution of food and meals. Is this still a visible problem?
Every Tuesday and Thursday in the evening, in collaboration with Bosco Youth Service Network, their volunteers go to the markets and take the leftover vegetables, fishes and bread from the market and they will bring those things here, so that food doesn’t go to waste. They bring some of that here and then they will distribute it to about twenty different families. They are helping twenty families at the moment. Twice a week, they go to the markets to collect that food and then they will bring it here, so that people can take it home. We have been continuing that. It helps a lot and I think that many people appreciate the help. My intention is to have a community fridge, a community refrigerator. That’s something I want to do maybe in the future. This was something I learned from Taiwan. There are fridges spread out in the community and people can just come in. People put food in the fridge, people can just come in and they take what they need. They don’t need to register, there is no need for human resources, maybe someone to manage the fridge, so that people don’t take advantage of it. But even if they take advantage of it, we don’t care, as long as they feel there’s a need to come in. I will try to set up this community refrigerator, maybe in the parking lot. But I still need to plan that out. Nevertheless, in conjunction with that, if they need something else, they can still come. They are not limited to just two days. During the week, if they need, they can still come. If people cannot register with Bosco Network, because they have a quota, they can still get some help.
Fatima is also one of the closest parishes to Mainland China. Sometimes, people from the other side of the border come here to have Mass. Can the parish be a window open to Mainland Catholics?
The whole of Macau is close to China. We are never too far from China in Macau. I realized during this past year, after I arrived here, that pilgrims from Mainland China do come here. They come to the sanctuary to pray and to join the processions. A lot of people, priests and nuns, have been working a lot in the past to help the spiritual needs of the pilgrims from China. The fact that we are so close to the border, like a five minutes walk from the new Qingmao border, we have a major responsibility. Well, maybe we are not the only ones doing that, but we are like the welcomers. We welcome them. Of course, they don’t have to come here only. They can go to the whole of Macau if they want. But we should welcome them. One of my plans is to have some kind of message or something visual or audio-visual thing in Mandarin just outside our door. If they don’t know what this place is, they may not come in. I am talking about non-Catholics or people that are outside our faith. If they feel curious, if they notice that this door is always open, they might ask themselves what this place is. I would like to have something on the fence – a TV or something – to let them see or hear or read: “We welcome you. We welcome you to Macau. We welcome you to Our Lady of Fatima. Please come in, talk to someone or come to pray. Just be silent, you know, in the presence of Mary and Jesus. And may you have peace.” Basically, it would be something like this, so that they can feel that this is a place that welcomes them, instead of a place where they don’t belong. We want them to realize that this is not for club members only. This is a place where everybody can come in. We would like to do that here.
You have been working in the parish for over one year. How were you received in Our Lady of Fatima?
Father Angel and the other priests that were working in Our Lady of Fatima, encouraged my presence in the parish. There was no trouble and everybody was working together. That was very welcoming to me. People were very welcoming, but the priests here were also very welcoming. That gave me a certain sense of belonging. I felt like I was at home immediately. I didn’t have to deal with relational problems or anything of the kind. Everything was smooth. They were very supportive and when we talked about something, everybody would agree. We would make the decisions together. There was a very positive atmosphere among the priests and the community here, even though we come from very different backgrounds. We are not from the same order. I am the only one in Macau representing my order. That was very helpful. I pray that God may allow me to bring in more of our priests, from the Philippines, from Hong Kong or from Taiwan, because I need a community life also, with my order. If that is in God’s will, it will happen and we will have our small community here in Macau. We are from the same family as the blue nuns. You can see them in the Cathedral and they are also serving in Saint Joseph Number 5 school officially. We are in the same family, the Servidoras del Señor y de la Virgen de Matará. It’s the same founder. We work together, we have meetings and I also take care of their spiritual needs. Hopefully, with the blessing of Bishop Lee, this little religious order, which is a very young religious order, can grow. We are probably the youngest religious order – we were founded in 1984. We are still a young religious order, but we do have a lot of vocations, a lot of young priests that are willing to love and serve Christ. We hope that, once that is established, we can serve the Diocese better and even more.
Before you became a priest, you had a completely different life. How can the architect that you were once can help you to follow in Saint Peter’s footsteps and to edify the building of the Church?
That was, in fact, one other message that I received. In one of the Masses that I took part in, at the sermon, the priest was talking about building the Church and I had just finished my architecture exam, the interview to obtain the license in Australia. And I went to the Mass for thanksgiving and God, through the priest, talked to my heart, saying that we have to build our Church, pretty much like Saint Francis. I understood, of course, that just like Saint Francis realized later, that it is not about building a physical church. The aim is to build the Church in the heart of people or the kingdom of God in the hearts of people, so that they are already citizens of Heaven, instead of waiting to be led to Heaven. We should be living as saints already on Earth, so that we are sure of the entrance to eternal salvation. That is what I would use. Not just architectural training, but also the formation I got in the Seminary: all the philosophy, the theology, the Bible, history, spirituality. All these building blocks that we have learned and practice through community life – because religious life is about community life – will probably help to untie or to smoothen out all the contradictions within the communities, within the faith and within the Church, so that we have a more harmonized way to look at God. So that everybody can work together as God wants them to, in harmony and in peace. In that way, that is something that needs to be built. Often when we consider building something, we consider a physical structure, but I think that the most important of the building blocks in our society is how to work together in harmony. Society is getting more and more individualistic: “I am doing my own thing. Don’t bother me. If you are in my way, you are not my friend. If you don’t agree with what I want, if you don’t get me what I want, I will not spend time with you anymore.” There is the need to come out from the selfishness of our personal world, to a place where they are taught how to build networks. For example, volunteers. We need a lot of volunteers in Macau. There are so many needs in this area that we cannot pay everybody so that this work can be done.
Nowadays it is very common to talk about the vocational crisis. There are not many young people becoming priests. When did you feel the need to serve God as a priest? When did you find out that being a minister of God was the thing that you wanted to become?
I first felt God’s call when I was about 21 years old. I had been baptized a couple of years before. My first call was more like… It was supernatural, at first. I was praying and I felt almost like a cry inside me. Actually, tears ran down my face. I was in a chapel and, as we were praying, I felt that there was a call of some sort. I didn’t understand what it was. After that, I went to my spiritual director and I asked him: “Is this some kind of vocation? What does it mean?” He did not answer me directly. He asked me: “What are you doing?” And I told him I was about to enter University and so he said: “Finish your program diligently and if God calls you, he will surely call you again.” And so, that was it. That was my first experience. So, I just continued with my life after that, with my studies. I started to work, I had relationships, I had a girlfriend. But twelve years later, I was already working and God called me a second time. This priest, I went back to him and I told him: “Thank you, Father.” It was Father Yim, from Hong Kong. He is currently the president of Caritas Hong Kong. That second calling was very clear. I was already engaged with a fiancée at that moment. There was a decision that I needed to make, because God called me a second time. I realized I had to make a choice. I knew how difficult this was and I knew that God was calling me to serve Him, to enter priesthood somehow. Someone suggested I should do an Ignatian discernment retreat, that I should submit myself to Saint Ignatius Spiritual Exercises. I did that for four days. I took four days off from work and I just prayed and meditated in a church. A priest was helping me to do the meditation. The meditation allowed me to fully understand God’s intention towards me. He basically asked me: “Do you love me more than anyone else? Or more than anything else?” Back then, I was an architect, I got registered, I had a fiancée. My whole family was in Hong Kong. Everything was very positive and then, suddenly, God called me…
How old were you when you had this second call?
I was 32.
You were mentioning that you were baptized as an adult. You were not raised in a Catholic family then?
No. My family was the first, in my enlarged family, that became Catholic. And it is still the only Catholic family at the moment. But, thanks to God, everyone in my whole immediate family got baptized. My father just got baptized last December. I was baptized with my Mom. We received baptism on the same day, in Australia. We were part of a Chinese community in Australia. I was not raised as a Catholic at all.
You also said that all the members in your closest family became Catholics. How did they accept your decision to become a priest? Did they encourage you to follow your own way?
First of all, I was very certain of my decision. After the discernment, I knew what God asked me to do. The discernment is very important, because, if it is a guessing game, if there is no certainty, things become very hard. I was very certain that God called me. One hundred per cent. Two hundred per cent, actually. After the discernment, I continued to work for my boss, in his architecture firm, for one more month only and then I left. I went to a religious order. One of the interesting things was that I still didn’t know where to go. God called me, but to go where? Which order? Which place? Or which Diocese? I didn’t know what to do. I had this desire to enter a religious order. That was quite clear to me. After the retreat, I asked the priest: “Father, what is your religious order?.” And then he gave me a flyer of his religious order. In the vision I had twelve years before, in my first calling, I saw a cross that had a sword. I saw a cross hanging from a necklace being worn by a priest. I saw this image. I didn’t see his face, but he was wearing a cross over his clothes and this cross was in the form of a sword or a dagger. It was not a wooden cross. It was sharp at the bottom. It was like a crusader’s cross, but it was not so long. It was like a cross, but sharp, sort of like a dagger. He passed me his flyer and in the flyer there was a symbol of his order. And this was what I saw: I saw the emblem of our order and there is a sword right behind a shield. You can imagine what I felt at that moment. It was like an explosion. This happened twelve years later and back then nobody knew about this. It had been a quite personal experience and I hadn’t told anyone about it. I felt that God had already chosen. This priest had been my spiritual director during the exercises, but I didn’t know anything about his religious order until I asked. At the end of the exercises, I decided and God showed me: “Just go here!” He had already prepared a way for me. I didn’t know anything about this religious order. I just saw this and read a very small introduction. But, afterwards, I went online. I went to their website, downloaded their constitution and started reading. And everything became clear. Even the introduction already spoke to my heart: it’s a Marian order, that’s why there is a rosary. And then there is its motto, the vows, the Marian vows. We have four vows. I had started to pray the rosary a couple of years before my second calling and when I saw the rosary I said, “OK, perfect.” I love Mary, she is leading me, I did the consecration and everything. The emblem of the order is part of my story. This is not just an emblem, as you can tell. This is also part of my vocation, it is part of my calling. It means “Verbum Caro Factum Est,” which means “The Word Was Made Flesh.” The order is called Institute of Incarnate Word – Instituto do Verbo Encarnado – and it has everything to do with Mary. Our feast is on the Annunciation, on March 25th, when Mary conceived Christ in her. This is very significant, very important for my vocation.
You were saying that your father was baptized recently. Does this mean that he not only accepted your choice of becoming a priest, but sees it also as something to be proud about?
Well, in the beginning he didn’t understand why I had to enter religious life. He was not a Catholic and, therefore, it was very difficult to understand my reasons. But he respected the choices of his children and so, I explained as best I could to his understanding, that I was not deserting the family. One of his fears was that he might have done something wrong. He thought that I would leave the family because of something he had done. That’s the Chinese mentality speaking. When someone becomes a monk in China, it’s because he hates life, he hates his family or he hates something that happened. That was not the case with me. I was loving every part of my life. I told him, “No, we are not separating. You will always be my dad. And I will be your son. This relation will never change.” From that moment, he calmed down and he let me enter religious life. My mother was a Catholic already and she was more or less OK with the idea. Many years later, I invited my Dad to come to my Diaconate ordination in Washington DC. He came with my brother. My mother didn’t come because travelling was too much for her. That ordination took place in a big cathedral and, after, there was a celebration with parishioners. Then, he said it himself, he could see that all the community was so joyful and congratulated me sincerely. It was almost like a birthday party and everybody could come in and was so happy and that surprised him. That finally gave him the impression that I was really serious about my vocation, that I was really enjoying it and that I was blessed by so many people. He realized later that this was God’s blessing. I think that from that moment on, he totally accepted my choice. Before that he was like, “Ok, I have to let Michael make his own decisions,” but now his position was different. He started to think that probably, the decision I took was a good decision, that I made the right choice. And for parents – I think especially for my parents – that’s the most important. The most important thing is to be happy with the decision of what we choose to do in life. Even though it might not be having a business, it might not be to work as a professional, like an architect. They invested a lot of money in my education and they were afraid that it might have been wasted. They always worried about those things, but now he saw that I was happy with my choice. My priestly ordination, we decided to have it in Hong Kong. On May 20th, 2017 I had my ordination. Back then, Cardinal Tong officiated my priestly ordination and I invited, of course, not only my immediate family, but everybody else. Many of them were in a church for the first time. Most of them are not Catholic, they didn’t know I was becoming a priest. That was the first moment they realized: “Oh! Little Michael has become a priest?” Everybody was very joyful, very positive. Nobody scowled at me, nobody complained, thank God. It was quite an amazing experience. The whole family congratulated me, even though they were not Catholic. I could never imagine this would happen. Only God can provide this. It was not about what I did. Slowly God helped them to open up. My priestly formation took seven, eight years. I have been away from the family for a very long time. And they were still happy for me. What else could I ask for?
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