While Father Gil de Federich in the company of his Provincial
was making the visits to the various convents and missions of Manila and the
Philippines, the Province of the Holy Rosary was sending two of its religious
to reinforce the valiant company who were already laboring in Tonkin. They were
Fathers Luis Espinosa and Nicholas Milla. Extraordinary news had been received
to the effect that the long continued persecutions had at length come to an
end. This favor was attributed to Our Lady of the Rosary whose statue stolen
from the Christians by the pagans had been brought into the palace of the Chua,
Lord or Viceroy of Tonkin. The discovery at that particular time of a
conspiracy plotted by a eunuch who was a bitter enemy of the Christians and an
instigator of the persecution led with reason to the belief that the Most
Blessed Virgin had employed this means to remove the cause of the persecution.
Alas! The peace so eagerly desired continued for but a very
brief interval. When Fathers Espinosa and Milla reached Macao they learned that
the persecution had broken out with renewed fury in Tonkin. After waiting
several months and finding no means of entering there they returned to Manila where
Father Milla was stricken with a serious illness. It became, therefore, the
duty of the province to find someone to replace him, for the project of sending
two missionaries to Tonkin had not been abandoned, and it was decided to have
them seek another point of entrance.
Then it was that Father Gil, his office as secretary placing him
in a position to know what was going on, earnestly entreated the Provincial and
his counsel to accept him as a substitute for Father Milla, at the same time
handing in his resignation as secretary. The Father Provincial and his counsellors
who had learned to appreciate the eminent qualities of Father Gil, at first
gave him a peremptory refusal. But we are told that he brought forward so many
proofs and evident signs that God was calling him to Tonkin that they were
finally forced almost in spite of themselves to give their consent.
He set out with Father Espinosa in March, 1739, by way of
Batavia. We have no details of this journey, but the missionaries must have had
many difficulties to encounter both at sea and in their efforts to gain an entrance
to the field of their mission since they succeeded in reaching it only on the 28th
of the following August.
Father Gil was assigned to the house which the Order has at Tru-Linh
in the province of Nam-Dinh where he remained several months in order to learn
the Annamite language and to become familiar with the customs of the country.
The superior gave him the name Te which means sacrifice. It was a prophetic
name for on the soil of Tonkin, the newcomer was to offer up not only the
Sacrifice of the Altar, that of his labors and sufferings, but even that of his
own life. Gil de Federich had been predestined to be the first Dominican martyr
of Tonkin.
Words fail to express the joy which filled his soul when he
found himself installed in his little cell in the house at Tru-Linh, with its
thatched roof carefully hidden in the most remote part of a village surrounded
by tall bamboos. He was thirty-three years old, and the burning desire of his
soul, inspired by God, doubtless from the moment of his religious profession
was at last realized.
Cha Te or Father Te, as he was henceforth to be called in
Tonkin, began to study so diligently the language of the country that in four
months he was able to fulfil the duties of his holy ministry. But he was far
from stopping here. Not only did he study the greater part of the day and of
the night but he went so far as to mingle with the children of the house of
God, listening while they spoke and making them repeat the words until he felt
that he had caught them well. Sometimes he was laughed at for this, but that made
no difference with him. Indeed, he continued for a long time the study of that difficult
language until he succeeded in speaking it almost as perfectly as the natives
themselves. He began his ministry in January, 1736, in the districts of
Giao-Thuy, of Cau-Dinh and Vu-Tien.
During the two short years of his evangelical labors in these
villages before falling into the hands of the infidels, the chronicles of the
time picture him to us as a missionary who was very kind to his confreres,
always ready to render them a service, very faithful to the rules of his Order
and consumed with zeal for the salvation of souls. The witnesses in the cause
of his beatification have preserved for us some characteristic examples of his
charity. Once he was called to attend a sick person who lived at a great
distance. He was himself ill with the fever and the weather and the roads were
very bad. His catechists and his servants advised him not to go, offering to
bring the sick person to him. But he would not consent to this arrangement,
fearing that the patient might not be in a condition to be removed and that the
consequent delay might expose him to the danger of dying without the
sacraments. He set out, therefore, and, after an incredibly fatiguing journey,
reached the sick man with whom he spent the whole night administering to him
the sacraments, consoling him and caring for him after the manner of a good
mother.
On another occasion a poor woman sought him in behalf of a sick
person who lived in the midst of a pagan village. The journey being very
perilous several Christians agreed to accompany him. At nightfall they embarked
in a sampan, the men rowing and the good woman steering the boat. But the night
was so dark that they were unable to locate Ke-Kinh, the village where they
wished to go. It was only after they had gone back and forth times without number
that they finally reached the village towards midnight. The woman jumped ashore
to go and make known to the sick man that the Father was at the river nearby;
but she returned in much distress, saying that the patient could not come alone
and, having no means to pay porters, no one was willing to bring him. The
Father disembarked at once and in the rain proceeded by roads filled with mud
to the abode of the sick man where he arrived all covered with mud. Having
heard his confession and anointed him, he celebrated Mass and gave him Holy
Communion. Before daybreak he was once more in his boat, wet to the skin and
shivering with cold but happy in the consciousness of having fulfilled his
duty.
On the vigil of a festival he was engaged in hearing the confessions
of the faithful in the village of Quat-Lam when he was informed that soldiers sent
by the mandarin to seize him were quite near and that he must flee at once.
Thereupon he was seen to raise his eyes heavenward and to murmur a prayer,
after which he remained quietly seated and directed his Christians to continue
their confessions assuring them that they had nothing to fear. As a matter of
fact the soldiers after having searched everywhere except where the Father was,
went their way. The witnesses of this event are of the opinion that God wrought
a true miracle on this occasion to prevent His servant from falling into the
hands of his persecutors.
Father Gil is said to have shown a patience truly angelic in the
exercise of his ministry. He was never restrained by the fear of being captured
by the persecuting pagans. At night as well as during the day he was ever at
the disposal of his poor Christians now in private houses, again in the sampans
of fishermen, sometimes waiting several days in succession in these
incommodious boats in order to instruct them in the catechism and to ad minister
to them the sacraments. Two months before he was taken by his enemies, under
date of May 11, 1737, the Intermediate Congregation of the Province of the Philippines,
well acquainted with all that was taking place at Tonkin, inscribed in its acts
the following record: “The more the
infidels of Tonkin seek to torment the Christians and to pursue the missionaries,
the greener seems to grow the pastures of the Lord and those fields of our
heavenly Father. Our brethren resident there are laboring incessantly to gather
in the harvest now so ripe and abundant.”
Among these was Father Gil de Federich, one of the most
indefatigable of the laborers in this field of the Lord. He was, however, soon
to fall into the hands of the persecutors of the Church who, after years of suffering,
were to procure for him the glorious crown of martyrdom.
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