Fr. Casper J. Miller, S.J.
Advocate of the Poor
Fr. Casper J. Miller, S.J.
One evening a junior scholastic happened to find him searching for something in his room. The scholastic asked him, “Hello, Father, you seem to be busy searching for something, could I help you?” He looked up and said, ” Oh yes, could you help me to find my Nepali cap which I lost under one these files?” A mischievous smile spread on the scholastic’s face, “Yes, Father, I see it is in the right place.” He looked at the young man doubtfully. “Right place? Where?” The scholastic replied, “Come on, Father, it is on your head.” “Oh, thanks, you found it at last.” They both had a big laugh. And the juniors had something to talk about at dinner that night. Well, the truth is that he not only loses his cap, bag, cycle, and glasses, but very often we find film completely lost himself while he is with the poor people in Nepal.
That is Fr. Casper J. Miller, popularly known as “Fr. Kiyaap Milan.” Some of his close friends call him “Cappy” and among Jesuits he is known as “Fr. Cap.” The variety of names attributed to him explicitly tells us about the range of friends he has – that from the illiterate poor ones to the highly esteemed diplomats. Anyone whom he meets on the road, whether it is a prince or a pauper, is a friend to him.
He was born on December 13, 1933, in Cleveland, Ohio, as the eldest in the family. He has three sisters and a brother. His brother, who is 21 years younger to him, was born when he was in the juniorate. As a high school boy, he used to help his family in the travel business. He entered St. Ignatius High school in 1947, and his contact with Jesuit scholastics there inspired him to give his life to God as a Jesuit.
He joined the novitiate at the age of 17, and his girl friend Helen, too, found her vocation as a missionary nun in Latin America. Helen is the sister of the Detroit Provincial, Fr. John Libens, S.J. He had to undergo a severe vocation crisis only once. When he was in the novitiate for about three weeks, he was walking outside alone and happened to hear the cheering of the local football team outside the gate. He had a strong urge to go back and join with his friends. Then he suddenly remembered that one of his lady friends had challenged him at the time of his farewell dinner that he would be back with them in three weeks’ time. However he was a stubborn person and didn’t want to give her that satisfaction of being right in her prediction. So he stayed on, and the next day all his homesickness was gone.
As a young Jesuit (novice, junior, and philosopher) he developed his love for literature and drama. When he was a scholastic, his superiors didn’t have much hope for him. He was considered to be a sort of very sleepy person and very quiet. He often used to get admonished that he should talk more about what he was thinking and feeling; now he gets the opposite complaint! He had no desire to leave America and go to the missions. He felt he wouldn’t be able to learn the language or adjust to the food there; but still, he wrote a letter to the Provincial expressing his willingness to be sent, since “such willingness” is demanded by all our Constitution.
However, he loved Nepal and felt at home here from the very first day. He arrived at Godavari for regency on the feast of Teej, and seeing the women all in red, singing and dancing along the roads, he decided that such a joyful country is where he belonged. His first months were spent in language training, and he discovered that he really could learn a new language and enjoy it. But his first year of regency was extremely difficult. Physically his health deteriorated and he was assigned to teach Senior Cambridge geography, for which he was in no way prepared.
After theology, he discovered the joys of trekking, walking to Pokhara in 1967 to visit our students there. His post-ordination assisgnment to St. Xavier’s Jawalakhel was at his own request so that he could make contact with Nepalese musicians, dramatists, novelists etc. especially at the newly formed Royal Nepal Academy. But he found himself completely occupied in looking after the junior school day- schoolers and boarders.
Recalling an experience he says, ”One day when the Class I teacher asked me to come to her class to reach the boys how to tie their shoes, I grumbled to myself. Is this why I was ordained? I returned to my room (which was also the boarders’ library and playroom) and asked the Lord for a message. When I opened the New Testament at random and put my finger on the page, the Lord spoke to me through the words of John the Baptist: “I am not worthy to untie His sandals.” What I grace that was! Instead of thinking that such humble service to little boys was beneath my dignity, I realized that I wasn’t even worthy to serve them, that it was a privilege. That message has guided me ever since.”
Fr. Cap with village friends from Tipling.
Throughout the years. Fr. Cap has been in all rounder. He has been a research scholar, the Episcopal Vicar of the Catholic Church of Nepal, the first priest to do pastoral ministry in Sirsia, and the Dean of the Juniorate. In 1983, he started the Suryodaya School in Damak primarily to cater to the needs Of the adivasis working in the tea estates. He is at present the Rector and teacher at St. Xavier’s Jawalakhel.
Fr. Cap did his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Tribhuvan University. His book, “Faith Healers in the Himalayas,” is an outstanding work about the life of the traditional healers called Jhankris and their festivals in Dolakha District of Nepal. His research has led him to have amazingly wide contact with people of different ethnic groups such as Tamang, Jirel, Chetri, Sherpa, Thami, Kami and Newars.
His second book, “Decision Making in Village Nepal,” has helped development workers to understand Nepal better.
Talking about his activities, he had a year and a half research and medical ministry in Tipling which put him into close contact with the Tamang people. He has drawn a lot of inspiration from them. He Would often visit and pray with the poor Tamang people working in the carpet factories in Kathmandu. And a few years back he took the challenge of instructing them to receive baptism when they asked for it. The challenge was that these people who are illiterate needed a method of faith formation that suited them. So he had to tussle with some who thought that Fr. Cap had taught these people only a few hymns, to convince them that these people had deep faith, and the hymns they knew contained the whole Gospel mysteries.
Another area of Fr. Cap’s ministry is his continued visitation to prisons, which he sees very much as a Jesuit ministry. He knows a few prisoners there and goes to visit them weekly and spends some time with them listening to their difficulties and pains. He believes that going to prisons or hospitals and merely giving the people pious words is not enough. He wants to do something practical, such as give them clothes, help them in their material needs. If they need money, he approaches friends in Kathmandu for donations. He doubts the modern attitude that we should not give such people anything. He finds that rich people are often generous, but they do not know whom to help. So we can be mediators who can bring the poor in touch with the generous rich.
He was so much concerned about helping the poor that he had to even suffer a beating from a group of people in Borang who were against his exposure of the injustice done to the poor people of that area during village elections.
When he was asked to share with the scholastics about his expectations about the future generation of Nepal Jesuit Society, his answer was surprising, “Expectations are very dangerous. If we fill our lives with too many of expectations of others and ourselves, we will not be really happy.”
He thinks, rather than expectations, we should cake certain things for granted, namely, that everybody is doing his best, may not be perfect, and need not be perfect. The critical attitude that can develop very quickly towards oneself and towards others is very destructive, he thinks. So maybe “expectations” is not the right word, but “hopes,” one can hope a lot. This is a difficult Christian virtue, which Jesus gave to us through the Gospels, that we have hope. I think the Gospel message is that we can trust God. Often we don’t really. In our guts we think, “Yes, I can trust God up to a certain point.” So Jesus Is inviting us to completely trust in God in the present, and the future will take care of itself. Expectations are usually of future things. So we tend to live in the future, which robs of us the present moment and much of its value. That is one of our weaknesses, which we should work against.
“So in my hope for you all is that first of all you persevere in your holy vocation as Jesuits, and that you will always value your relationship to Jesus. Everything else can change and let it change, and life can be full of surprises for you. Not always pleasant surprises but stimulating surprises that keep us alive. And you should be open to the opportunities that come to you here in Nepal or wherever you may be. I refer to the picture that Polanco paints of the Society as a complex network.
“Even when we are working alone, e.g., doing our studies, we are part of the network, a team, as enterprising individuals with initiatives, as self-starters. We have many examples of that in Nepal itself. Like, for instance, Fr. Moran himself: he arranged things in such a way so that he could get this invitation to Nepal to start the mission here. Or Fr. Tom Gafney: he would be alive today, if he had remained in his teaching career for which he was gifted very much. Tom willingly chose a ministry, maybe without fully knowing the dangers, but he faced them as they came up. So the point is that we be ready for any opportunity that comes along.
“In your ministries to the people of Nepal look for opportunities, create them if you have some special interests, some great desire. That is our difference from Buddhists; they say, “Desire is the source of all our dukkha. Ignatius says, ‘Be men of desires.’ Every meditation in the Exercises begins ‘This is what I desire,’ the grace, something I want which I don’t have and only God can give. So we should be men of desires. Even for Buddhists, I would say, it is that they should get rid of all unessential desires which can destroy our deepest desires which God has given us.
“It also means that we keep a balance of life and not to become a fanatic of anything. Don’t be a person of one idea. We should enjoy the innocent pleasures of life which God has given to us. We should have a rhythm of life. If you manage your time, then you will have time for other things like recreation, taking long walks, music, reading good literature, all those things which make us human beings. Because if we are not fully human or growing more human, we won’t be very effective in our dealings with people.
“I have always been fascinated in my life by the question of freedom, what our choices mean, and I am convinced that when we choose something we have to leave everything else. All the other choices are to be left without regret. I think Jesus was speaking about this when He said, ‘When you put your hand to the plough, don’t look back. If you look back, you are not worthy of the kingdom.” If you have decided to plough a field, you hold the plough and if you look over your shoulder towards what some other guy is doing, you won’t plough straight, and the harvest is going to suffer the result.
Fr. Cap, teacher and friend of St. Xavier
When he was asked to give a message which he would like to give to the whole world, he quoted Simon Wiel, “The only power God has in this world is the love He inspires in us.” And he added another quote from Thomas Traherne, “Nothing in this world has ever been loved too much, but many things have been loved in a wrong way, and all in too short a measure,” and he said, “I want to share them because they have helped me a lot.”
His message for the Region is, ” Speak the truth in love. Be Nepali,” (Cap obtained his Nepali citizenship in 1971)
One cold winter morning a little boy called out to his mum, “Mummy, there is someone on our street playing a strange pipe. I could hear him playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”
“No, my son,” the mother replied, “That’s Fr. Cap on a cycle going to meet his friends in Balaju.”
(Text and photos from the 50th Anniversary Book of the Nepal Jesuit Society, 2001.)