01-09-2013 - Traces, n. 8
TianyUe wu

“The reasons of my faith"
A young Chinese philosopher related the importance of reason in religious life, showing us a new way of looking at our Western culture and our secular society: “a great occasion for believers.”

This is a stupendous place. There is the vital power of faith here. I would like to bring this experience to China.” The genuine wonder of Tianyue Wu at the Rimini Meeting is the same as that which struck Tobias Hoffmann a year ago, when they met. Hoffman, a Professor of Medieval Philosophy in Washington, DC, was incredulous when he received an invitation to Peking University–“Someone in China is interested in Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas!” The organizer of the conference was Wu, a Professor of Medieval Philosophy. “I was struck by  the freedom with which he said he was Catholic,” recounts Hoffman. “Not just this: in China there is a surprising interest in the origins of Western culture.” Wu won over the Meeting for this reason: he gave us back a lost way of looking at that to which we belong. Wu was born in 1979, the year when his country allowed churches to open their doors again. At the Meeting, he spoke about what it means to be Catholic in China or, better, what it means to lead a religious life in a secular culture. “You and I live in an era in which everything we have is this life here on earth, nothing more.” For him, this is where the emergency for our times lurks. “People can no longer find their human dignity,” caught between the long tradition of secularization, and the blind economic growth that imposes carpe diem. And yet, spiritual need does not die. “It is not possible to live in a void. The absence of the religious life has increased the need for something strong to support existence.” Christians are called to enter into the fray. “Believers cannot detach themselves from secularized society–their testimony will remain invisible. Above all, the difficult conditions are a great opportunity. In me, they forged the growth of my faith.”
As a child, he was skeptical about the Catholic tradition of his family. “The circumstances of secularism forced me to understand the reasons of faith.” At school, they taught him the Communist anthem, “The International,” and a view of religion that contrasted with what he heard at home. One day, he asked his parents, “Show me where God is,” and they brought him to a certain Fr. Jacob, who offered him some books that did not persuade him. The encounter with faith happened when, at age14, his grandfather died. Wu spent three days in church, keeping vigil over him. In that small building, he listened to the songs and prayers of the children adopted by Fr. Jacob. “All the obscure expressions became comprehensible to me. I was deeply moved in those days, and this made faith something that was mine.” Everything that he had felt was far away came close to him. “My faith required understanding. And I set out to study all the books of the Christian tradition that I could find,” leading to his choice of a career in philosophy. He talks about his discouragement at the small number of students in his first courses, and how he came to realize that a purely theoretical focus was not the way to approach faith and life. Today, he speaks about his students with love and recounts how much time he shares with them. “They are among the most brilliant students in the country and would never accept a cheaply gained faith. I hope to witness to them through my words that a religious man is rational. If they accept faith after having explored its rationality, their faith will be stable all their lives. To help them I can only work well and wait. God is patient. We should be, too.” With patience and passion, in his country he sows the seed of a reason that is decisive in the journey of faith. This explains his enthusiasm for Benedict XVI and for Fr. Giussani’s charism, which he has just learned about, because of what it gives life to: “The vibrant power that I am seeing here at the Meeting.

Alessandra Stoppa