Calloused hands transform strands of bamboo and rattan into a work of art disguised as an ordinary basket. Photo: Fr Vincent Busch SSC
In April 2025, Columban Fr Brian Gore died on the Island of Negros in the Philippines. For more than fifty years, Brian had worked with families of subsistence farmers. At his wake, I watched the calloused hands of those farmers gently reach out to touch his coffin.
Some farming families have members with hearing disabilities. Through the “Welcome Home Foundation” started by Columban Fr Joe Coyle, they have learned sign language. They prayed at Fr Brian’s coffin with their hands.
Also attending Fr Brian’s funeral were Columban Fathers and Sisters who have worked for decades in the mountains of Mindanao alongside the Subanen people. The hands of Subanen parents are calloused from cultivating root crops in hardened hillside soil. Those same calloused hands are equally adept at threading bamboo and rattan into beautiful works of art disguised as ordinary baskets.
For 25 years, I have had the privilege of working with Subanens whom the Columban Sisters have served for more than forty years in a ministry that honours their language and culture and values their sacred bond with their ancestral land. In line with the work and vision of the Columban Sisters, I have been working with a group of Subanen crafters to create a livelihood ministry that honours their culture, supports their families, and celebrates their deep connection with their habitat.
As part of our craft ministry, we make Christmas cards whose images connect the Nativity story to the lives of Subanen families. This year’s cards feature a star shining on the hands of Mary and Joseph as they do the ordinary things that Subanen parents do to care for each other and their children. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, who came into the world to make God’s love visible. He did so by touching the lives of ordinary people in ways that helped them see themselves and others as works of art, woven and loved by God.
Columban Fr Vincent Busch with Subanen crafter. Photo; Fr Vincent Busch SSC
In the same spirit, we cut, colour, and fold ordinary paper into Christmas cards that become works of art. They spotlight the calloused hands of Joseph and Mary as they perform the everyday activities that make love visible in our lives.
For nearly a century, Columbans throughout the Philippines have served people with calloused hands and, together with them, have built communities that care for one another and their land.
The Holy Spirit continues to call and guide all followers of Jesus to nurture communities that love one another and care for all of God’s creation, as Jesus loved the people he met each day and cherished the earth he walked on.
Columbans throughout the Philippines have been blessed to serve in such Spirit-filled communities that embrace one another with calloused hands.
Columban Fr Vincent Busch lives and works in the Philippines.
Listen to "Mission among calloused hands"
Related links
- Read more from The Far East - September/October 2026
