austraLasia #2693 The Genius and Ingenuity of Fr. Schwarz
MANILA: 16 August 2010 -- Fr. George Schwarz, a German who was
among the early Salesians to work in the Philippines, died on 10 August
2010 in Manila. As soon as the cause of death was ascertained, his
obituary letter was ready for print with the high-speed and high-tech
machines of Don Bosco Press. But by then all the employees of the press
would be out for a two-day team-building workshop. In life, Fr. George
believed that "God gives us an ability to create what we need from
something that is already here. God will create from what he has given
at hand." Thus, even in death Fr. George taught his confreres to "do
what we can, with what we have, where we are." Outsourcing the colored
pictorial pages and photocopying the text by risograph, his obituary
letter was distributed and read during his funeral mass and burial on
14 August.
Fr. George is known in the Philippines as the
Salesian scientist who pioneered in the country the use of indigenous
materials to create instruments to demonstrate the laws of physics and
other applied sciences. But behind such reputation was a passion for
empowering the people he came in contact with. He taught teachers and
students alike, especially those from public schools, that they were
not helpless no matter how limited the available resources were.
They say that a good way to judge a man is by what
he says. A better way is by what he does. But the best way is by what
he gives. An ancient proverb says: "Good people, like clouds, receive
only to give away." Fr. George, for as long as he could, did not stop
making his God-given gifts his own contribution for the cause of
science and technology education in the country.
It is also said that "when a man is wrapped up in
himself, he makes a pretty small package." Fr. George was able to
accomplish great things because he didn't care who got the credit. He
was willing to sow without trying to reap the benefits for himself.
Since his arrival in the Philippines until he stopped giving seminars,
he had directly trained close to 40,000 teachers. But he never wanted
to "make a big fuss of it." One of the choices he made for his entire
life, which was his teacher-training advocacy, was to do something for
these people who did not have the resources to return the favor.
Fr. George was born at the beginning of World War I
in 1914, entered the Salesian aspirantate at the age of 16 in Austria,
professed in 1932 in Germany, went to Hong Kong as a missionary in
1935, and was ordained a priest at the age of 26 in Shanghai, where he
earned his doctorate degree in physics. He went to the Philippines in
1954 after the expulsion of the Salesians from mainland China.
Fr. George will be remembered by his confreres as
one who was able to draw to the maximum any apostolic advantage out of
every season and from any situation. He did not allow fund raising
activities, construction enterprises, and organizational restructuring
to take precedence over meeting the youth and forming educators. He
taught his confreres how to link austerity of life with the joy of
building communities. Most of all, he modeled for us how we could slip
into the chapel even during moments of intense work and spend a mystic
moment before Christ and his Mother Mary. The genius of Fr. George,
however, lay in his ability to see growing possibilities everywhere,
and respond with fertile imagination and mounting enthusiasm. _________________ AustraLasia is an
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service
for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions
as an
agency for ANS based in
Rome.
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