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Father Anthony Chung, author of “The Life of a Priest Buried in Time.” The book follows the retired priest’s life from his boyhood in Korea to his ministry in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. (Nicholas Wolfram Smith/Catholic San Francisco)
Feb. 24, 2020
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
“The Life of a Priest Buried in Time,” a two-volume memoir by retired Archdiocese of San Francisco priest Father Anthony Chung, brings out unforgettable moments gathered from a lifetime of ministry and travel.
Through personal anecdotes and thoughtful observations, Father Chung, a priest since 1971 and a former associate pastor of St. Pius Parish in Redwood City, now living at Serra Clergy House in San Mateo, describes his life in sparkling prose and brings out themes of gratitude, repayment and trust in God.
Father Chung’s memoirs were approved by the Archdiocese of Seoul and published in Korean in 2013. The English edition was first printed in October 2019.
Father Chung was born in 1937 to a well-to-do-family in Korea, a nation that was on the cusp of far-reaching changes. The Japanese annexation of Korea, which had been a source of national humiliation for about three decades, ended in 1945. The division of the country along the 38thParallel followed, creating a communist North Korea and a democratic South Korea.
Growing up amid these national changes, the most influential event in Father Chung’s childhood was his father’s death when he was 11 years old. For the first time in his life, he had to face death. As he stayed awake at night grieving his father, he realized “everyone has to die someday.”
Only two years after his father’s death, Father Chung’s family was again thrown into chaos as they fled from the advance of North Korean troops during the Korean War.
One day on the road south, he saw a column of American tanks and soldiers heading northward. “I had never seen a tank before and didn’t know who they were,” he said. When a fellow refugee explained the troops were from the United States and had arrived to help, he said he felt a deep sense of gratitude.
“Without their help, Korea would have been completely overwhelmed. So how can I repay such a debt? I’ve kept that thanksgiving throughout my whole life.”
Years later, he found repayment would take the form of ministry in the United States, in Sacramento and then in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Shortly before his mandatory military service, Father Chung was baptized as a Catholic. He found his family’s Buddhism spiritually unsatisfying and unable to answer his questions about the meaning of life and death. The first Mass he experienced captivated him: In one of the many lyrical moments in the memoir, he describes walking into Mass that first time as “a sweet rain which dampened the earth after a long drought.”
After being discharged from the military, Father Chung said he “agonized” over whether he should choose marriage, priesthood or emigrate from Korea.
Although he hoped he would be a priest, the decision tore at him. “I couldn’t (choose) -- I prayed every day in front of the tabernacle but God didn’t give me, ‘Anthony you do this one.’”
One day after Mass, he approached a priest who counseled him to weigh his possible vocations and “choose the one that has more weight than the other two. So I gave up everything and entered the seminary,” he said.
After his ordination in the Archdiocese of Daegu in 1971, his priestly ministry took him from Korea, where he turned around struggling parishes, to Rome for theological studies and then to Canada and the U.S. to help strengthen Korean Catholic communities.
Immigrant parishes like those he ministered to, he said, have unique challenges that can make parish life contentious.
While immigrants come to the U.S. to lead a better life, “after arriving to another country, their life is not easy. They work very hard, there is a language barrier, culture is different, so they have a lot of stress and they bring the stress to the community and fight each other.”
For Father Chung, writing has always been closely connected to his ministry as a priest. At his first parish assignment, he wrote a catechism to help instruct parishioners about their faith. When he was a prison chaplain, the story of an infamous murderer’s conversion and his serenity at his execution, gained national attention in Korea, and he serialized the story in a newspaper in weekly installments for two years.
His newspaper experience helped him realize “I have some ability to write -- before that I didn’t know that and it gave me self-confidence,” he said.
Father Chung went on to write books on spirituality and his travels, along with poetry and then his two-volume memoir. While he had published some books before his retirement, his pace has quickened in his later years, and he has authored a total of 15 books.
As a practical matter, he said, writing gives a direction to his retirement. “Without doing such a thing what would I do?” he asked. But more than that, he continued, “Without doing such a thing, I cannot survive.”
Father Chung said he has always been averse to wasting time, focusing instead on how to serve God.
“I think that’s the best way to keep a good relationship with God, always thinking about him, how I can glorify him through my talent and writing.”
Talent is a gift from God, the priest continued. “Before I die, I will repay the talent he gave. So I can give everything before I die.”
Father Chung's books are available for sale at McCoy Church Goods and Serra Clergy House in San Mateo and at Vallombrosa Center in Menlo Park.