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Friar Stories: Journeys to Franciscan Life

Fr. Campion Lally, OFM

A missionary in Japan for 42 years, Fr. Campion Lally, OFM, was born in South Orange, N.J., in 1926 and became a Franciscan in 1947. Ordained a priest in 1953, he was assigned two years later as a missionary to Japan. He ministered as a professor of moral theology in our Tokyo Seminary of St. Anthony from 1963 to 1967. After that, he spent most of the following years serving the Japanese and non-Japanese people at our Tokyo Franciscan Chapel Center.

During my senior year in high school, we were herded into the school auditorium where the principal turned on a radio which broadcast President Roosevelt’s declaration of war on Japan. That dramatically changed my plans.

Up to then, I had thought of going to college, getting a good paying job and marrying one of the beautiful girls from South Orange. When I enlisted in the Army Air Force after graduation, I never dreamed how in God’s mysterious plan for my life the Japanese people, whom I then considered my enemy, would become the focus of my later years.

Without any persuasion from the chaplain, about four of us buddies used to go to the chapel almost every evening where we took turns reading St. Therese’s The Story of a Soul. It was a great way to deepen our faith. Finally, I got up the courage to reveal my secret in the confessional to a Catholic chaplain. “I think I have a vocation to become a monk,” I said. “Are you crazy?” he roughly asked. I was so shocked by his attitude that I don’t remember what I answered. However, his strictness helped to strengthen my will, and I began to write to various monasteries for vocational information.

After my discharge from the military, I joined a vocation club back home and continued to search for where the Lord was calling me to religious life.

One day, I went to St. Francis Church in Manhattan, entered the crypt church of St. Anthony and began to pray, “Lord, help me! What should I do?” A brother approached me, took me upstairs to a parlor and soon I was speaking to the priest in charge of vocations, who talked about the life of a Franciscan. He also mentioned that he had played tenor saxophone and had traveled with a band on board a tour ship. Since I had enjoyed playing in the band in high school, that settled it. I was hooked!

My education then continued at St. Bonaventure College run by the Franciscans, where I was part of a group preparing to enter the seminary. Since
we attended Mass every day, my friends and I were very close to the friars and were impressed with their work and prayer life. Soon my turn came to wear for the first time the brown habit of a friar.

In studying the life of St. Francis and the history of the Franciscan Order, I became familiar with the Poor Clares. During my seminary days in Washington, D.C., I once went to the profession of
two Clares. Meeting cloistered nuns and speaking with them through the grill was a new and exotic experience for me — the beginning of my later years of association with them in Japan.

Bringing the Gospel to the pagan Japanese was the center of our lives as missionaries. We would do anything known to man, and sometimes unknown, in order to get the non-Christians to come to the church — hoping they would then study Christian doctrine. I told them we would be willing to dive into a wet handerchief from a 10-story building in order to attract a crowd.

People will ask missionaries how a person comes to the faith. It is a mystery of grace. Only the Holy Spirit can give the answer. In this regard, one of my fondest memories was teaching Katsuhiko Tanaka, a young man just a few years my junior who had a fish store in the next town. Why he came to ask
for instructions I never found out. He eventually joined the Secular Franciscans and became a dear friend. He made a lasting impression on me as a soul who took Jesus’ hand and never turned back.

My most unforgettable experience took place in the city of Fujioka. There was a parade with floats to represent the great figures of history, and one would be of Christ crucified. On this, a Japanese soldier, almost naked, with a crown of thorns and fake blood, clung to the spikes of a large cross, just like the image on a holy card I had given to one of my catechists. I was stunned, but thought he had to be thanked.

I ran to the float, looked up at the man on the cross, whom I didn’t know, and said, “Thank you.” I used the stronger Japanese phrase “gokuro sama,” which means “you have suffered for me.” I expected him to smile and say, “Don’t mention it.” But he just looked at me solemnly in silence — and then the truck with the float went out the town gate.

I pondered this unusual happening over and over until its meaning finally struck me. I never saw anybody who looked more like Jesus Christ than that Japanese soldier. You know what? He was — in the mystical sense of our identification with Christ, since he told us, “Whatever you did for one of these least of mine, you did for Me.”

Over those years, people often asked me why I had come as a missionary to Japan, and I found it difficult to explain. Then one day it came to me. During my time in the Air Force, I used to attend Mass regularly. At the remembrance of the dead,
I would pray for the American servicemen who had died that day. Upon reflection, I realized this was not what Christ asked.

He told us to pray for our enemies. I began to pray for the Japanese soldiers as well. In Japan, relatives would have a Buddhist service for the deceased serviceman, but I was offering the precious Blood of Jesus Christ for them. In purgatory and heaven, those souls were praying for me, I’m sure of it. That is why I felt so much at home in Japan from the time I arrived.

On the front lawn of our Tokyo Franciscan seminary is a stone statue of St. Anthony holding the book of the Gospels. Next to him is a Japanese stone lantern — not Buddhist, but carved in a style used by the ancient Christians. This is our task: to read and preach the Gospel using the light of Japanese culture, which is basically language.

Until the Gospel is clothed in Japanese language, it remains unknown to Japanese people. But one thing more is essential. Believers who speak the language and live the Gospel in daily life. First, foreign missionaries, and then local Japanese, who put the finishing touches on evangelization by incarnating the faith in their lives.

This essay was written in 1997 when Fr. Campion was assigned to the Tokyo Franciscan Chapel Center. It appeared in the December 1997 issue of The Anthonian magazine.

—This essay was written in 1997 when Fr. Campion was assigned to the Tokyo Franciscan Chapel Center. It appeared in the December 1997 issue of The Anthonian magazine.