As a seminarian, Fr Junjun Amaya spent his first summer in Australia fruit picking and fruit packing and, in subsequent semester breaks, assisted with maintenance at St John of God Hospital.
As a teenager in Cebu, Fr Junjun worked menial jobs, earning less than the minimum wage to support his family; so, he was not immune to hard work and already appreciated its value. As a seminarian coming to Australia, however, he was not expecting to toil in physically demanding tasks, but his Bishop had other plans.
The late Bishop Joe Grech was determined to ensure that his three new seminarians from the Philippines grasped the everyday reality of the people they would one day serve. “I want you to work on a farm to experience rural Australia,” Fr Junjun recalls him saying, admitting to being a tad surprised.
“We worked at an orchard in Tatura, but it was so hot that we only lasted a month,” recounts Fr Junjun. “I told Bishop Joe – ‘I quit.’"
But Bishop Joe wasn’t taking any quitting and remained firm that his seminarians should get a taste of their future parishioners’ lives. So, the three seminarians worked at a tomato packing shed in Murchison for the rest of the summer, immersed in a culturally diverse and gritty workforce.
During other semester breaks, Fr Junjun assisted with gardening and maintenance at St John of God Hospital in Bendigo. “I loved being in the background helping out. Keeping a hospital running is not down to the efforts of medical staff alone, but also the people behind the scenes, the fixers, the cleaners,” says Fr Junjun. “I saw firsthand how all of these little things keep the big machine going and I appreciate the value of people who work quietly behind the scenes, doing things that need to be done. As Bishop Joe used to say, we should never take for granted the ‘nameless little people’ who maintain our lives.”
Of course, we can draw on the wisdom of the saints for examples of humility and doing ‘little things’ with devotion and love – St Thérèse of Lisieux; St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa); St Therese of Avila, for example. For Fr Junjun, as a priest, his experience in such work has extended beyond personal devotion and moulded him into a priest committed to synodality.
“I see Bishop Joe’s wisdom working in my priesthood. Every day I draw from the experiences of working over those summers. It has kept me grounded and helped me to appreciate the reality of many people in the congregation – agricultural workers; meat processing workers; and hospital shift workers … They might not be members of the Parish Pastoral Council or Parish Finance Council, but every Sunday there they are, silently, faithfully living out their faith. They keep the parish alive by coming to Mass. Without them, our parishes cannot be sustained."
Fr Junjun believes it is important for the views of this quiet majority to be considered by the Parish Pastoral Council. “We must be journeying together,” he says. “As a parish, we need to acknowledge the gifts we all bring and grow in that together. I like the idea of ‘GIFT’ as an acronym, ‘Growing in Faith Together’. Hopefully, I inculcate this in everything I do.
