‘In 1595, when an upstart player named William Shakespeare was writing a fantastical comedy in English verse called “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for the London stage, on the opposite side of the globe, in the southern Chinese city of Nanchang, an equally remarkable man named Matteo Ricci was composing an essay on friendship in the formal diction of classical Chinese. Ricci called his essay simply “You lun” (Essay on Friends), a title that would later be changed under the influence of one of Ricci’s many Chinese friends to the more resonant Jiaoyou lun (Essay on Friendship), the name by which it is known and loved by Chinese intellectuals even today.’

So begins the new translated work by Timothy Billings. On Friendship; One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince (Columbia University Press, 2009) is a fresh opportunity to discover the richness of the early Jesuit encounter with the wonders of the Middle Kingdom.

Fr. General Adolfo Nicolás, SJ gave a talk about Fr. Ricci while in Northern Italy this past January. Matteo Ricci: Friendship as a Missionary Style focused in on how this remarkable man fully engaged his vocation to discover and engage all that was good and holy in the life and customs of the Chinese people. “Friendship is then the style, the way one looks at and lives in the world, it shapes, changes, and renews the same world. Matteo Ricco understands that he has to make reference to the most ancient themes of Confucianism if he wants to succeed in communicating the Gospel in a context so different in style and space as that of the Middle Kingdom. First of all becoming a friend, he himself changes, grows, and becomes a more conscious servant of that Christ who is the Friend of everyone; the Friend who incarnated himself in the life of all people. Matteo Ricci himself has been shaped by the encounter with the Chinese people.”

So why all the interest in Matteo Ricco?

Well besides the obvious, Benedict XVI made reference to Ricci in his recent speech to the Jesuits, reaffirming our work and our mission:

‘In its history the Society of Jesus has lived extraordinary experiences of proclamation and encounter between the Gospel and the cultures of the world – suffice it to think of Matteo Ricci in China, Roberto de Nobili in India, or the ‘Reductions’ in Latin America – of which you are justly proud. Today I feel I have the duty to exhort you to follow in the footsteps of your predecessors with the same courage and intelligence, but also with as profound a motivation of faith and passion to serve the Lord and his Church’ (Feb. 2008).