A VISIT TO OUR KUANGCHI TV STUDIO - Our Fr. Jerry Martinson (San Diego) is now the director of this TV studio, which produces many of the TV programs for Taiwan's stations and he himself acts in many of them. I was present when this studio first started in the 1950s with one Jesuit, our Father Phil Bourret (San Francisco) running a radio programming station. Now this studio has a community of seven Jesuits working full time on the TV programs along with about 130 lay persons, also working full time. Most of the programs produced are religious and they are shown in other countries here in the Far East, as well as in Taiwan. Even some of the programs are broadcast to mainland China, mostly those teaching English and this teaching of English is done by Fr. Martinson himself. On the occasion of my visit with the Jesuit Community there I took part in the concelebrated Mass with Fr. Martinson who was the main celebrant and who gave a very beautiful homily. Then we all enjoyed a delicious Chinese dinner. For me it was moving to see the progress from the inauguration of the Kuangchi Studio with Fr. Bourret until today. "Kuangchi" is the name of a very famous Chinese scholar converted to the Catholic Church, 300 years ago.

OUR WEI-YA DINNER - During the two weeks preceding the Chinese New Year, all organizations big and small are invited to a Chinese dinner by their directors. Here at Tien Educational Center we had our Wei-Ya dinner on February 3rd and there were some 60 of our staff, our collaborators, together with some 12 of us Jesuits. It is a good opportunity to come to know each other and to show our appreciation to our workers here. Wei-Ya stands for tail in other words a celebration of the tail-end of the year.

FATHER RICHARD WANG's FUNERAL - Last month, I told you of the sudden death of one of our younger Chinese Jesuits, Fr. Richard Wang. He was 65 years old and was a very popular theologian and preacher. He was constantly in demand to give spiritual talks. His biggest interest was the charismatic movement and most of his talks centered on the place of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He was the archdiocesan director of the charismatic work and he influenced the lives of many Catholics, especially the younger ones. We had his funeral Mass here in Taipei at our Holy Family Church, which is the largest in Taipei. The church was packed and there were about 50 of us priests concelebrating with our provincial, who gave the homily, during which a portion of it was a recording of a talk given by Fr. Wang himself. His voice and talk heard by all of us brought many tears to the eyes of his devoted followers. Many of his Chinese followers flew here from the United States, Hong Kong and Malaysia, for he had often gone to these places to give talks and retreats. The day following this funeral Mass, his body was taken down to Changhua, which is in the middle of Taiwan and where we have our big retreat house, our novitiate and our Jesuit cemetery. Six buses of his friends accompanied his body to Changhua and there they had another Mass for him, followed by his burial. There are about 100 Jesuits buried there and I had known most of them, as I was the first Jesuit to come to Taiwan on a permanent assignment, back in 1951. One day, I will join them there, for they are all my brothers in Christ.

TAIWAN JESUIT MEET - In early February, most of our Jesuits here met for almost one week to discuss the future of our Society here. We now number 150, but we have very few vocations and many of our Jesuits, like myself, are very old. Many die each year. This means that we will have to close many of our works here or else depend on laymen to carry on. Most of the older Jesuits worked on mainland China until we were expelled by the Communists almost 50 years ago. Pray that we find many more vocations.

A very holy Lent to all of you and remember us in your prayers and penances.