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Fr. Vincent Lebbe (center) with the Little Brothers of St. John the Baptist |
Father Vincent Lebbe
The cradle
of one of the Catholic Church’s most austere religious communities stood in
Northern China. Its founder Father Vincent Lebbe (1877–1940), a Vincentian
missionary from Belgium with a deep love for China and the Chinese, envisioned
a monastic foundation that was “truly Chinese”. This vision gave birth to
the Little Brothers of St. John the Baptist, whose charism reflects both his
ideal of a native Chinese Church and of a monastic order that followed the
spirit of the Beatitudes.
As a great advocate of a native Chinese hierarchy at the beginning of the 20th century, Fr. Lebbe championed the consecration of the first six Chinese bishops in almost 300 years. He also had a deep appreciation for Benedictine monasticism, which developed through visits and letters to the famous abbey of Maredsous, where his brother Adrien had entered religion as Dom Bède. In one of his letters from 1906, Fr. Vincent outlined that any Benedictines coming to China should be “monastic apostles” who worked above all in education and were at the same time deeply embedded in Chinese society. In the early 1920s, he encouraged Fr. Jehan Joliet, O.S.B. of St. Andrew’s Abbey in Bruges to found an inculturated Benedictine monastery dedicated to study in Xishan.
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| Fr. Lebbe with Bishops Melchior Sun Dezhen 孫德楨 and Zhao Huaiyi 趙懷義. |
The final impetus
for making a foundation of his own came when Fr. Lebbe visited the
Apostolic Prefecture of Lixian in southeastern China along with Bishop Melchior
Sun Dezhen, C.M. at the end of 1927. Local priests told him about the
difficulties of finding “educated and virtuous” teachers while at the same time
not overburdening the mission financially. Fr. Lebbe suggested the foundation
of a religious community which would fulfill for free the services hitherto
provided by salaried auxiliary personnel. Bishop Sun approved of this idea, and
so the Monastery of the Beatitudes was born. Lebbe wrote: “The society to be
founded by Bishop Sun would appeal to every adult celibate who desires to
render service to the church under the protection of holy vows and community
life. (…) Every skill can be used; everyone would be admitted. (…) One
essential point: they would form a lay congregation, and all would be
absolutely equal. They would have only one community house for the entire
prefecture and would return to it whenever their work would not summon them
outside”. The community did not remain a lay foundation for long as clerics
asked to be admitted as well, but radical equality was maintained nonetheless.
No priest was to be served by lay brothers and the hierarchy within the
monastic family was based strictly on seniority, not on belonging to the
clerical or lay state.
An
austere foundation
Soon, six
aspiring monks presented themselves to Fr. Lebbe, under the condition that
their rule of life be austere. Most of them had desired to enter the Trappist
Order at Our Lady of Consolation Abbey, so their idea of the religious life
matched the new foundation well. On 16 December 1928 Bishop Sun blessed the Monastery
of the Beatitudes in Anguo, situated in his Apostolic Vicariate in northern
China. The habit worn by the novices consisted of a grey robe of coarse
material, a leather belt and the traditional black Benedictine scapular on
which a small cross was embroidered. The furnishing of the religious house
breathed the spirit of evangelical poverty and matched the order’s later rule
which stipulated that all superfluous adornments be avoided. The monastery
buildings resembled “the houses of the farmers around them; the roofs are flat
and the walls made of bricks (…) Even during the harshest winter cold there is
no heating, for economy’s sake.” The monks diet consisted strictly of cereals,
vegetables and fruits, excluding all animal products, and thus their table was
arguably even more austere than that of the rural communities surrounding them,
whose farmers rarely ever ate meat. This life of abnegation is reflected in the
order’s motto “the violent take it by force”, referencing Christ’s words in the
Gospel of Matthew regarding St. John the Baptist and all those who are striving for the kingdom of Heaven. The monks were to sustain themselves by
agricultural work, crafts and lending a helping hand to their neighbors.
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| A Little Brother carrying vegetables |
Just as they
followed their patron saint in his mortifications, the Little Brothers of St.
John the Baptist also imitated him by announcing Christ to the people
through their catechetical work. The monks were to be “Carthusians in the
house, apostles outside”, sanctifying themselves at their monastery so they
could fruitfully announce the Gospel, as teachers in schools, as catechists, in
the ministry among prisoners or in the services of Catholic Action.
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| Little Brothers pronouncing their vows |
The
Divine Office in Chinese
Following
his Benedictine influence, Fr. Lebbe wanted the opus Dei to be
“above all else”. To make the Liturgy of the Hours more accessible to his
Chinese religious, he started by translating the little Office of Our Lady and
the Office of the Dead into Chinese (recordings can be found here). Parts of the texts were taken from the Chinese
Missal authorized by Paul V in the 17th century, but which had never
been used in practice. His death in 1940 prevented him from sinicizing the
entire Divine Office, yet Lebbe had still put together a choir book of seven hundred
pages containing the Offices for the principal feasts of the year. It was
masterfully bound and decorated with Chinese-style miniatures, a product of the
monastery’s print shop.
The
Little Brothers in the crucible of war and persecution
By 1933 the
community numbered 110 members and the first daughter houses were founded in
other vicariates. That same year Fr. Lebbe left the Vincentians with the approval
of his superiors and officially became a professed member of the Little
Brothers. Rome had been watching the developments in China and encouraged Fr.
Lebbe and his disciples in their efforts.
When Japan
invaded Northern China in 1937, Fr. Lebbe appealed to the patriotic spirit of
his religious to help their people as medics at the front. The brothers soon
became very popular with wounded soldiers and maintained their monastic life
even in the turmoil of the battlefields, observing all rules, praying the
Divine Office and keeping the silence as strictly as any Trappist would. Twelve
little brothers were killed by Communists in early 1940, while another monk was
beheaded by the Japanese at the monastery in Anguo. Fr. Vincent himself was
captured by Communists in 1940 and subjected to weeks of torture. He was
released on 13 April and died on 24 June of the same year, the Feast of St.
John the Baptist.
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| Fr. Lebbe on his death bed with Bishop Paul Yu Bin leading the prayers |
When World
War II transitioned into the Chinese Civil War, the brothers had to leave their
motherhouse in Anguo and move to the Monastery of the Beatitudes in Peking. The
Chinese priest Alexander Cao became “Brother Servant”, the superior of the
Little Brothers. The motherhouse was moved south to Hong Kong, where 13
brothers ministered to the many refugees fleeing the mainland. According to
Alexander Cao, there were still over 50 religious behind “the bamboo curtain” in
1956, persecuted and in several instances killed by the Communists. These
Little Brothers followed in the footsteps of the Chinese martyrs, the secondary
patrons of their order. Like many other Catholic orders, the Little Brothers
moved to Taiwan, establishing their motherhouse in Taichung in 1954. The Little
Brothers are currently present in Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and
America.
If you would like to take a deeper dive into the history of this fascinating order, I warmly recommend Christian Monks on Chinese Soil by Matteo Nicolini-Zani. It was my main source for this article and contains a draft of the original rule as well as a chapter on the Little Sisters of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, the female counterpart of the Little Brothers, also founded by Fr. Lebbe.
(All pictures from Whitworth University)
