Why choose these two words "struggle" and "harmony" to speak about religious life in Asia? Asia is a huge reality and, for we westerners, proves intriguing and exotic. This area of our planet explodes with abundant human life and there precious cultural and religious heredity bursts forth more abundantly from millenary roots. Asia, rich in humanity, is heiress of ancestral traditions. If harmony comes from Asia’s past, struggle describes its uncertain future…a present and future struggle.

The demographic explosion as the permanent miracle in Asia, gives rise to new names, to unique people with unforgettable faces, who are possible harbingers of a new future. This explosion of human life, however, is not supported by a capable infrastructure to protect and develop it. To be a child or a young person in Asia means to be to grow in a high percentage of poor, oppressed people exposed to every type of adversity. Asia was a place where other countries on the same latitude resolved their conflicts of war, the place to experiment with deadly bombs. In Asia the people are plundered of all natural resources of flora and fauna, plants - they are left to their own fortune, their destiny of death.

In Asia the Church is a poor community; in many places it is a minority community. It is like David in the midst of his own people. They represent themselves and are called on to meet with the Goliath that oppresses them to make their lives impossible.

"Struggle" is a word that is used together with the harmonies of the Old and New Testaments when speaking about defending life and the patrimony received. "Struggle" is the word that manifests the apocalyptic situation lived by the many. Empires have passed and continue to pass through and above them; they are used to receiving strokes of death. Young David finds himself, in solidarity with his people, in the battle field.

To speak of Asia evokes the word "harmony". The depth of its religious traditions certifies it. In the Asiatic soul there the vocation to harmony exists; it centers on creation of the admirable and fascinating poetic unity between the person and the cosmos. The mystery of the "center" balances the inevitably unbalanced human situation. One finds evidence of the miracle of harmony. The Church has experienced its charm and desires to express itself in the same secular experience, not attempting to be planted but to germinate, to arise Asian. Her greatest missionary concern is not to convert to the faith, but to be incarnate, part of the culture, a part of its context. She believes to do what Jesus would do, first and foremost.

The Church is Asian and therefore understands historical patience, knowing that what is sown slowly, will, after the passing of many centuries, undoubtedly multiply in geometric proportion. To evangelize in a millenary culture can happen only through a humble sowing of seed and great patience. Therefore the Church in Asia has need of more faith, more hope. It must remain humble and speak of Jesus without pronouncing His holy Name, being a parable of Him.

The religious arrive from outside Asia but are germinated inside the country in great number. They attempt to be the Church, to accompany the gospel of God and to live in the tension of strife and harmony. Asia in particularly sensitive to a pending liberation. Paul said it this way in these words:

"We know that the earth suffers and travails as a woman who gives birth. And not only creation, but we too who have the first fruits of the Spirit, suffer in ourselves because we expect that God, totally freeing us, will manifest that we are his children". (Romans 8, 22-23)

We religious of the West should turn our gaze towards the East where the dawn arrives with brilliant light. We listen to the voice of our sisters and brothers! Their message has novelty and some correction. It is the prophecy which come from the East.