Postcard from Hong Kong (Part 3)

Br Karl Emerick is living in Hong Kong as part of a year-long novitiate with the Order. The Queensland man sheds some light on what the first six months of his experience has entailed in Queensland’s Catholic Leader. This is part three of three.

While living with family I have experienced the logistical nightmare it is to arrange to take four children, under 10, out for the day, food, change of clothes, nappies and on and on, also the experience of a small child only wanting you to comfort them when upset, the trust they have that you will always be there for them and be able to solve their problems.

So I believe that these experiences have helped me understand what I am giving up to enter into religious life, it has also assisted me in understanding why as a Catholic priest it would be very difficult to be married.

As a husband and father, I would want to dedicate as much time as I could to my family, to be with them and watch them grow and experience life, and this would conflict with what I would be called to do as a priest.

I know everyone has a job and at times must decide between work and family, however as Presbyterorum Ordinis states, “since every priest in his own way assumes the person of Christ he is endowed with a special grace. By this grace the priest, through his service of the people committed to his care and all the People of God, is able the better to pursue the perfection of Christ”

January 1, 2008 was the six-month mark of the novitiate.

In early June, my fellow novices and I will have to make a decision about whether or not we wish to apply to be accepted into simple vows with the order, then the community here will vote on how suitable they think we are to join the order.

All going well we should make our profession in late June or early July, and Br Thomas and I will then come back to Australia to continue our studies in Melbourne, continue our formation in the Dominican Order and attend World Youth Day in Sydney.

Australian Dominican in Hong Kong (Part 2)

Br Karl Emerick is living in Hong Kong as part of a year-long novitiate with the Order. The Queensland man sheds some light on what the first six months of his experience has entailed in Queensland’s Catholic Leader. This is part two of three.

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Most of us have will have had the experience of wanting something when we were young, a bicycle, or a stereo, and being told that we would have to earn it, as something you paid for yourself would have greater value for you.

In Australia we don’t have to work for our faith, for most of us it is given to us by our parents, and there is no hardship in saying we are Catholic.

For myself, I wonder if I could still profess my faith under the conditions that many Catholics throughout the world are professing their faith under.

At this point in our formation as Dominicans we are learning about the Order, the laws, history and spirituality, learning Latin and Hebrew (which for me is very difficult), fortunately the novice master is an Old Testament scholar who obtained his Licentiate at L’Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem and we are getting a thorough grounding in the Pentateuch (the first books of the Old Testament), and looking at Church documents on religious life and the priesthood.

As I was saying my rosary this morning (we say it together as a community before Divine Office and Mass, but I like to say it with more deliberation and meditation – my family will tell you that I like to say it slowly) I was contemplating my vocation and my life, so far.

I am 37, in comparison to the others here a late vocation, and have spent a number of years working and coming from a large family, to date 12 nieces and nephews and I have been fortunate to have had a wide range of experiences.

Dominican brother sheds light on Hong Kong experience

Br Karl Emerick (right) is living in Hong Kong as part of a year-long novitiate with the Order. The Queensland man sheds some light on what the first six months of his experience has entailed in Queensland’s Catholic Leader. This is part one of three.

It was zero degrees the morning in late July last year when I left Brisbane to come to Hong Kong.

Since February I had been living in the priory at Our Lady of Graces, Carina, undertaking a pre-novitiate with the Order of Friar Preachers (Dominicans) and had been clothed in the habit of the Order at the beginning of July.

I along with a fellow novice, Br Thomas Azzi, was heading to Hong Kong to enter into a joint novitiate program with the novices of the missionary Province of Our Lady of the Rosary.

We got off the plane about 9pm Hong Kong time, it was around 30 degrees and high humidity. We had left Queensland in the middle of winter, and arrived in the middle of a steamy Hong Kong summer.

Thankfully, I had lived and worked in Darwin, so I had some preparation for the level of heat and humidity in Hong Kong.

The novice master is from Spain from the Province of Our Lady of the Rosary.

There are 10 other novices besides, Br Thomas and myself. They all come from Burma (Myanmar).

Apart from all our novitiate activities and duties, they have spent a major part of the last six months scanning news items for information coming out of Burma about what is happening, to their homes, to the church and especially to family and friends.

We have visiting priests from all over the world. They often give us lectures about what is happening in the Church and the Order around the world especially in the growth in some areas and the persecution in others.

It is at times like these that I find myself comparing this information with what I know of the Church in Australia.

In Australia we are fortunate that we have the freedom to practice our faith, and while there may be some ‘hardships’, getting out of bed on a cold winters morning to go to Mass, or fasting prior to mass, we are not being called upon to offer our safety, our lives, to profess what we say is our faith.

We are not persecuted, excluded from jobs, or even imprisoned for saying ‘I believe’.

In some ways I wonder if not having to suffer or give things up for what we believe, we lose what it really means to us.