The Old and the New

When I was chatting (in real time, not online) with a fellow priest recently, we started talking about the parishioners from a church that we both had served in. When we started talking about the antics the altar boys used to have, we both realised that those altar ‘boys’ were already men. Those whom we had known as ‘boys’ in primary school were grown up. I had even known those who are about the get married!!

Thus, I present this picture of an old tree taken by Petr Kratochvil and posted in the Public Domain Pictures website. As my friend and I were thinking of old times, we realised that we were getting old. Doesn’t that old tree look regal and grand. Unless there is disease involved, most old people look regal. They may get frailer with age but there is this awe I feel when I meet a really grand old person. Of course, I am not at that ‘grand’ state yet. In fact, an older priest may tell me that, being in my mid-forties, I am still young. However, compared to my nephews and niece who are still in their one-digit ages, I am old. I have not grown taller (although I am still advancing horizontally, if not vertically) but hopefully I am growing wiser.

I have been listening to recordings of talks given by Monsignor Charles Pope, a priest in America. He’s a powerful preacher. I don’t think that I will ever be able to preach like he does. Anyway, he shared that he is getting closer to the Lord with age. I hope this is something I can say as I grow older as well. Although he is about my age, he has been a priest for a longer time. In fact, he is very familiar with the Tridentine Mass. I chanced upon a movie of him celebrating the Tridentine Mass. The beginning of the clip says, “the issue is NOT that the Mass is said in Latin or the Vernacular. It is a matter that the new and old Mass are totally different Rites of Mass.” I would rephrase this a little: The issue is NOT the language of the Mass; both rites, old and new, are rites of the same Mass, the one instituted by Christ at the last supper.

The New Order of the Mass that was promulgated in the 1970s can be celebrated in Latin. However, the Tridentine Rite cannot be celebrated in the vernacular. Both rites give us the Eucharistic Sacrament. Priests can celebrate both rites in a proper and solemn way. They can abuse both rites by celebrating it without proper respect. I suppose the difference is that the old rite is so restrictive that a slight deviation of the distance between hands during prayers was considered a mortal sin (i.e. the priest is liable to go to hell if he dies without going for confession). The new rite does not have that severe a restriction but it is still a grave sin for a priest to celebrate Mass without due solemnity and respect. There have been many differing views of the values of the old and new rite. However, all Catholics can have a preference regarding their attendance but not regarding the acceptance of their validity. Catholics are obliged to accept both rites as valid rites. I heard once that a young man, preferring the Tridentine rite, considered ‘puking’ at the new rite. I felt sad. We don’t pick what we should believe and what we shouldn’t. We believe that the Lord is guiding his Church and whatever the Church teaches is what the Lord teaches. Truth is not something imposed or a set of rules. This is what Pope Benedict XVI referred to in his speech to seminarians and young people at St. Joseph’s seminary in the United States (the emphasis is mine):

Have you noticed how often the call for freedom is made without ever referring to the truth of the human person? Some today argue that respect for freedom of the individual makes it wrong to seek truth, including the truth about what is good. In some circles to speak of truth is seen as controversial or divisive, and consequently best kept in the private sphere. And in truth’s place – or better said its absence – an idea has spread which, in giving value to everything indiscriminately, claims to assure freedom and to liberate conscience. This we call relativism. But what purpose has a “freedom” which, in disregarding truth, pursues what is false or wrong? How many young people have been offered a hand which in the name of freedom or experience has led them to addiction, to moral or intellectual confusion, to hurt, to a loss of self-respect, even to despair and so tragically and sadly to the taking of their own life? Dear friends, truth is not an imposition. Nor is it simply a set of rules. It is a discovery of the One who never fails us; the One whom we can always trust. In seeking truth we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ. That is why authentic freedom is not an opting out. It is an opting in; nothing less than letting go of self and allowing oneself to be drawn into Christ’s very being for others.

We might feel that the Tridentine Mass allows us a better atmosphere for prayer but that is not any reason to reject the new rite. There are others who might pray better in the vernacular than in Latin and so prefer the new rite in the vernacular. For those, like me, who have known only the new rite, it would be wicked to ridicule those who prefer the old rite by labelling their preference as faddish. The Lord allows different rites to exist. The Eastern Rite Churches have different rites for celebrating Mass; yet we do not reject them. So why should we start to reject what the Church has taught to be valid?

Enough ranting! Let me not forget the movie I mentioned. Here it is below. Enjoy.

Family and Relations

I received news that my aunt had died on Monday morning. In Teochew, she was my Tua Kim (or 大妗), the wife of my mother’s eldest brother (in modern Chinese, she would be called jiù mǔ (or 舅母). She looked very well when the family visited her at Chinese New Year. Oh well, the fragilty of life.

In Singapore, we usually meet old friends and distant relatives, those we have not met for years, at funeral wakes or wedding banquets. Strange, isn't it? We meet don’t meet many people outside the occasion when a couple is starting a new life or when a person’s life reaches its end. Two different poles. The beginning versus the end, a happy occasion versus a sorrowful one.

I never remember the importance of family relations until I come to one of these occasions. Usually, it would be my mother (and my late father when he was alive) who would tell me who a particular stranger was. Sometimes I can make out the face and know that it is someone familiar but I cannot remember who it is. Yesterday, my mother pointed out several members of my extended family whom I had met many many years ago as a teenager. I was talking to my cousin’s daughter who commented that it was easier in English because we only had to call a man uncle and a woman aunt. Relations are so complicated in English. Our experience of small families now have done away with the need to identify specific relatives. Yet at my middle age, I find myself wondering if the present generation has missed something precious. With families where there are usually two children, we don’t have too many to remember. If there were only two brothers, children from both siblings would have only one uncle on their father’s side. There would be no need to remember different terms to differentiate between uncles because there was only one uncle on the father&rquo;s side. He would either be 伯 (bó) or 叔 (shū). If the siblings were two sisters, then their children would only need to remember 姨 (yí) for aunts on their mother’s side. If the siblings were brother and sister, the uncle would be 舅 (jiù) and aunt would be 姑 (gū). Of course children have father and mother and there would be uncles and aunts on the other parent’s side as well. Relations become simpler but does life become a little impoverished?

As Christians, no matter which generation we belong to, we have only one Father. The relationship between Christians is that of brother and sister. There are no aunts or uncles to speak of. Perhaps, that is why the Western and European traditions did not really go into specifics with terminology describing family relationships beyond brother, sister, son, daughter, uncle, aunt, and cousin. East and South Asian languages usually have rank, paternal and maternal elements of the relationship specified within the terms used in identifying relations. I don’t think that God would want us Asians to lose that element of our tradition and culture. I believe that understanding human familial relationships would help us appreciate the relationship we have with our heavenly Father even more.

A Father's Love

Someone sent me a link to this video. I think it is a touching video. I am quoting the words from the email that was sent to me.

A son asked his father, 'Dad, will you take part in a marathon with me?'

The father who, despite having a heart condition, says 'Yes'. They went on to complete the marathon together.

Father and son went on to join other marathons, the father always saying 'Yes' to his son's request of going through the race together.

One day, the son asked his father, 'Dad, let's join the Ironman together.' To which, his father said 'Yes' to.

For those who didn't know, Ironman is the toughest triathlon ever. The race encompasses three endurance events of a 2.4 mile (3.86 kilometer) ocean swim, followed by a 112 mile (180.2 kilometer) bike ride, and ending with a 26.2 mile (42.195 kilometer) marathon along the coast of the Big Island.

Father and son went on to complete the race together.

Here’s the video

A Simple Reflection?

The brothers have gone for their retreat and the seminary is quiet. In many respects, it has become a retreat environment for the formators as well. In one of the quiet moments of prayer, several things popped into my mind for a visit. These became elements of a simple reflection. Unfortunately, the expression of what resulted from that reflection was not simple.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a useful volume with the teachings of the Church found therein. Yet, there are many things that are not found in there, for example, the classification of angels. Jewish angelology developed rapidly during the Persian and Greek periods. In the apocryphal book of Enoch, seven classes of angels were identified. (see Ludwig Blau and Kaufmann Kohler, “Angelology”, JewishEncyclopedia.com. Link: JewishEncyclopedia.com). It was in the Middle Ages that Christian theologians began to develop the idea of the hierarchy of the celestial powers. Pseudo-Dionysius spoke of nine choirs. (see Dionysius the Areopagite, “The Celestial Hierarchy”, Esoterica II (2000), pp. 148-202. Link: Esoterica Website) St. Thomas Aquinas also speaks at length about the hierarchy (see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q.108. Link: Sacred-texts.com)

Yet, these classes are not described in the Catechism. What Catholics need to know is that angels exist and that they are spiritual beings created by God. Scriptures tell us that there are archangels. Seraphim and cherubim are mentioned in the scriptures, as are principalities and Dominations. However, the Scriptures do not place them in this level or that level in the celestial hierarchy. Thus, what Dionysius and Aquinas were doing were giving us their theological opinions. Whilst they may not be heretical, these opinions are not obligatory teachings of the Church.

Let me quote the First Vatican Council:

This one true God, by his goodness and almighty power, not with the intention of increasing his happiness, nor indeed of obtaining happiness, but in order to manifest his perfection by the good things which he bestows on what he creates, by an absolutely free plan, together from the beginning of time brought into being from nothing the twofold created order, that is the spiritual and the bodily, the angelic and the earthly, and thereafter the human which is, in a way, common to both since it is composed of spirit and body.
(Vatican Council I, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius on the Catholic Faith, 24 April 1840, Chapter I. Emphasis mine. Link: Intratext)

The Council quoted the Fourth Lateran Council. Catholics are required to believe in angels as spiritual beings created by God. Those who know the opinions of Thomas Aquinas are more knowledgeable but are not necessarily better Catholics than those who do not.

Why this lengthy rant? A young man recently asked me about angels. A friend from a different parish had told him about the nine choirs of angels and proceeded to tell him the details. It ended with a comparison between the faith levels of the two parishes. I know that trivia like the celestial hierarchy is extremely interesting to certain young people. However, I feel that that should not become the standard to judge faith levels. Does it mean that one who knows the learned opinions of a Saint is a more sophisticated Catholic?

I am awfully afraid of priests who are not able to let go of comparisons. Sometimes, I make comparisons. I make comparisons to encourage rather than to condemn. Hopefully, those who hears me making comparisons do not end up judging others. Comparison of parishes based on the liturgy or the priest's preaching style may end up being more divisive than unifying. Saying that one parish is different from another is not the same thing as saying one is better than the other. The first acknowledges differences without actually setting one parish apart from another. Saying that one is better than the other usually implies that we have set one parish apart from the other.

We are one church. We are all parishes in one diocese. We may be different but we belong together. Preference should not lead us to rejection. Perhaps we like the ambience provided by one Church because we feel more prayerful there. However, we should not reject praying in another Church, which has an ambience we don't like. Perhaps we like the kind of hymns that Parish A uses but not that of Parish B. Except for the case of grave liturgical abuse, we should not reject Parish B.

Priests in the same diocese should all be in communion. Yet, because we are sinners, our communion is far from perfect. There are priests who work on the basis of efficiency so much so that communion suffers. There are those who emphasize authority and power to the detriment of communion. Some priests think only of co-operation and that is not communion. What is communion then, if not co-operation, nor enforced by power and authority, nor effected by efficiency? Communion is that union Jesus had with his father. It is effected by love and obedience. It is a mystery and grace given by God. It can only be established and maintained by submission to God and not through the efforts of human beings.