The Story of Wong Li
by Fr. F. Sharkey, S.F.M.
Fr. Sharkey wrote the following narrative about the leper Wong Li, which in some ways defined
his priesthood. This tale was printed in a book titled Why I Became a Priest, which was edited
by George L. Kane and published by Westminster press. The story is profoundly moving because
it captures the depth of God’s boundless love and mercy. The disease of leprosy is no longer the
dread disease it once was. However, the leprosy of sin remains very common. The story of
Wong Li is a beautiful reminder that Jesus Christ, the great healer of diseased souls, is always
ready to perform another miracle of healing.
“Why does God choose one man to be a priest rather than another? The question must have an
answer. In the inscrutable designs of Divine Providence everything has its purpose and its
meaning. This is particularly true of a vocation to the priesthood. I suppose that only in eternity
can the question be completely answered. And yet every priest likes to guess at the answer in
time. I am inclined to believe that the reason why God chose me to be a priest may be found in
the story of Wong Li. At least, I am going to relate this striking incident from my missionary
experience as a possible explanation why God called to His priesthood one so unworthy as I.
It lies between the winding river and the hills of Chekiang, this city of my story, and the Chinese
call it Tsingtien - Greenfields. Tsingtien, like most of China’s rural cities, is walled round on every
side as a protection against two old and deadly enemies - one, the river, which, during the rainy
season, swells and inundates the entire valley; the other, the bandits, who periodically swoop
down from the hill country to pillage and destroy.
Now ‘once upon a time’ (for so indeed I should begin this fairy tale which really happened),
there lived a leper. This leper was so terrible disfigured and so eaten away by the most horrible
of all diseases that he was commonly called ‘the most frightful leper in all China.’
He sat at the gate of the Temple of Lanterns on the main street of the city of Tsingtien. Never in
all my life have I seen a sight that filled me with more pity and disgust than did that almost
nightmarish figure, that mass of corruption and decay, that seeming embodiment of all the ills
of mankind, spilled as it were from a worm-crawling grave - the living dead.
The Chinese mother would hurriedly cover the face of her baby as she passed the spot. The
dirtiest beggar on the street would keep a goodly distance from the loathsome figure. There he
would sit, through all the inclemencies of the weather, under the blistering, tropical summer
sun, and in the raw, damp cold of the far-eastern winter. It was his only home, that spot beside
the temple gate. He lived there through the dreary days, the long months and the longer years.
He lived there - if one could call it life - and one day he died there.
Half his face had been eaten away; the fetid lice-ridden rags mercifully covered the cadaver of
his body, while the stump of a hand tried to clutch the dirty rice-bowl that was held out
beseechingly before you.
I had just been appointed to Tsingtien, and it was my custom to take a daily walk down the
main thoroughfare of the city and out into the country beyond. So every day I passed the
Temple of Lanterns and stopped to drop a mite into the rice-bowl of the leper, Wong Li. The
stench about him was unbearable; the very sight of him struck terror and horror into one’s very
soul. But that terrible disgust that I felt at the nearness of him was drowned out in the wave of
pity and sorrow that engulfed me. I was determined that if Wong Li had nothing to live for, I
would give him something to die for.
The leering pagan gods; the musty, somber temples; the ridiculous conglomeration of
Buddhistic and Taoistic superstitions - what had they to offer this loathsome, rotting leper but
despair and darkness and abysmal loneliness? What could the intellectual lights and the great
ones of this world offer? What could anyone offer? Even the mythical Superman, holding the
runaway express with its precious human cargo upon the track; even the redoubtable Tarzan,
hero of boyhood tales, saving the hero from the jaws of the lion and tearing the king of beasts to
pieces with his naked hands - what could even these fantastic creatures do for this epitome of
human hopelessness before me?
In that moment there came to me the full, marvelous, almost paralyzing realization of what it
meant to be a priest, a missionary priest. Where baffled science stopped and human endeavor
turned helplessly away, I stood my ground, sublimely conscious of that tremendous power that
was within me; and out of the fetid mass of corruption and decay and deep despair that
groveled there before me, I could in my priestly hands mold a thing of eternal and unutterable
beauty.
At first, I simply said hello to Wong Li, and gave him my alms with a smile. Gradually, smothering
my disgust and horror, I stayed to talk with the leper. He was for a long time wary and
suspicious of me. Why, he was asking himself, did the foreign gentleman take such a keen
interest in him whom the people called ‘the most horrible leper in all China?’ What did this
white man with the long black dress want of him? What could he possibly want?
I found him taciturn and at times almost unfriendly. One day I would bring him a few cigarettes,
the next day a few rice cakes. Ever so slowly but ever so surely, I dissipated the fears and won
the heart of the leper of Tsingtien. And when I had won his heart, I bent all my energies to the
task of winning his immortal soul.
I began to tell him of God and of Jesus and of Mary and of paradise. It took me back in memory
to the long-lost yesterdays, when in the twilight time I had sat at my sister’s feet and listened in
rapt silence and starry-eyed wonder to those fairy tales that always began ‘once upon a time’
and always ended ‘and they lived happily ever after.’
Day after day, I unfolded to Wong Li the leper a tale that made those fairy tales of childhood
seem shabby in comparison - a tale of real people who rose from rags and poverty and
wretchedness to become princes and princesses in a land whose gates were of amethyst and
jasmine, and whose streets were of gold and silver, land of unutterable wonders, everlasting
happiness and eternal glory, that lay beyond the farthest star.
I can still see that awful face fastened unalterably on mine as I told my story. I can still hear the
expressions of amazement that fell from those lips festered and broken by the cancerous death
that was upon him.
It was so beautiful the tale that I told him, incredibly beautiful. To this caricature of a man,
forgotten, despised, unloved by anyone; to the creature who watched from day to day the slow
decay and putrefaction of his own body, and whose pagan beliefs offered naught but a nether
world of continued suffering, darkness and torture - my words must have sounded like the
ranting of a madman and the heaven I described but a fantastic, impossible mirage of an
unbalanced brain. But, by God’s grace, in time he did believe... (to be continued)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Revelations of Saint Gertrude
Chapter 7
The Divinity is imprinted upon the soul of Gertrude
as a seal upon wax.
The day of the most holy Purification, as I was confined to bed after a severe illness and as I was troubled in my mind about daybreak, fearing that my corporal infirmity would deprive me of the Divine visit with which I had been so often consoled, on the same day the august Mediatrix, the Mother of God the true Mediator, consoled me by these words: "As you never remember to have endured more severe corporal sufferings than those caused by your illness, know also that you have never received from my Son more noble gifts than those which will now be given to you and for which your sufferings have prepared you."
This consoled me exceedingly; and having received the Food which gives life immediately after the Procession, I thought only of God and myself. I beheld my soul, under the similitude of wax softened by the fire, impressed like a seal upon the bosom of the Lord. Immediately I beheld it surrounding and partly drawn into this treasure-house, where the ever-peaceful Trinity abides corporally in the plenitude of the Divinity and resplendent with its glorious impression.
O ardent fire of my God, which contains, produces and imprints those living ardours which attract the humid waters of my soul and dry up the torrents of earthly delights and afterwards soften my hard self-opinionatedness, which time has hardened so exceedingly! O consuming fire, which even amid ardent flames imparts sweetness and peace to the soul! In Thee and in none other, do we receive this grace of being reformed to the image and likeness in which we were created. O burning furnace, in which we enjoy the true vision of peace, which tests and purified the gold of the elect and leads the soul to seek eagerly for its highest good, even Thyself, in Thy eternal truth.
Chapter 8
Of the admirable union of her soul with God. (To be continued)
