It has been a long day today. I had to wake up early in the morning to attend the ordination of deacon ceremony of Br. Anthony Ho at the Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown. I have to pick up Pat and her friends as well. It was so rush that I don’t even have time for having a breakfast. Luckily we arrived on time, but church is already very full. We had to squeeze in between nice people who are willing to pack closer with each other. Ordination of deacon is the final step before becoming a Catholic priest. In layman’s term, it is equivalent to the engagement as the priesthood is equivalent to marriage. Today is a big day for the archdiocese of Vancouver since it the first time in 20 years having 5 brothers being ordinate at the same time. According to the history of the Vancouver archdiocese, it had only two occasion with 5 brothers graduated in the same year. In both years, one of the 5 brothers end up being an archbishop later in their career. I wonder who will be the the future archbishop among these five brothers? Could he be Br. Anthony? He definitely meet one of the requirements of being an archbishop, his preaching is quite boring. The ceremony is a mass hosted by the Archbishop and there were at least 30 fathers co-host today’s mass. I had never seen that many fathers under the same roof in my life, quite a spectacular view. As usual, the homily of Archbishop is extremely boring and I fell asleep most of the time. The actually ritual of ordination is less fancy than I had expected, probably as uninteresting as the ritual of my own confirmation. After the mass, we went over to congratulate Br. Anthony, but it was so crowded that we couldn’t really talk with him other than giving him the gift. So we left him alone and went to have lunch with a group of church friends in Robson street.
Tag Archives: religion
rapture
Tonight’s Simpsons episode is really hilarious by making fun of the concept of rapture commonly believed among evangelist Christians. In the episode, Homer walked into a theater and saw one of those left below (mocking the left behind series) movie. He got scared by the apocalypse and some coincident (yet funny) signs of the end is near. Homer then derived the end time using some weird calculation and convinced everyone in town with yet another coincident. However, the end of world didn’t come as he predicted, so the crowd ditched him. It turned out that he forgot to count Jesus himself in the number of people in the last supper, thus his previous calculation is wrong. This time no one believes in him, and it turn out he is the only one raised to heaven. In heaven, Homer found himself not happy because he missed his family very much. He bring out one of philosophical dilemma of salvation in mild way. How can a person have eternal happiness in heaven if he see his family and friends are suffering in hell? In the end, Homer made God turn back in time and cancel the apocalypse. This episode has many in-jokes of many common mis-concepts in Christianity. The conversation between Homer and God about Jesus never be the same after he came back from Earth has a really nice touch humor. I don’t like the idea of rapture personally, and always think that it is the work of the devil to mislead innocent souls. However, I couldn’t realize the idea rapture is so ridiculous until it is portrayed by the Simpsons. This episode is highly recommended to the evangelist christian as a mind opener.
surrender to God
Today is the first faith session organized by the Archdiocese of Vancouver for everyone going to the World Youth Day. Out of my surprise, everyone form our parish team went to the session, and we were probably the biggest group there. The session start off with ice breaking function, which it’s a good way to know more new friends that you may have to depend on in Koln. During the event, the MC tricked me to think that I have the chance to meet the new Pope representing Vancouver. I was over joyed and jumping up and down, then really let down after knowing it’s just a gag. The event is followed by a sharing from a guy, Paul, who walked from Vancouver to Denver as part of his pilgrimage in 1992 WYD. In his talked, he mentioned about how he learn the lesson of surrender to God and have to react upon surrender.
The 2nd part of the message about reaction to God enlightened me most. Usually the message about surrender to God stopped after the first part, only saying you have to listen to God and be glad on whatever he gave you. I never agree with the idea of predestination. It happened during his trip to Denver, when he and his friend rested in a national park and to prepare their spirituality, it was raining non-stop for the whole week. At first they pray for good weather, later they realize the heavy rain must be God’s will, so they started to accept it. They vowed to take everything God gave them gracefully without a question. After a few days, they finally able to start a fire to get warmth, somehow the wind just suddenly change direction and blow all the smoke to them. They try to accept the smoke at first, but realize they will be choked to death if they don’t move. Here the lesson of surrender to God take a new turn, after surrender and accepted what had happened is not enough, you also have to give a response to God. Suffering itself is only a mean to an end. The key is to find out what God really prepared for you, so you can skip or shorten the suffering part. Blindly take suffering as a gift per se is plain silly.
wash feet
Today is the day before easter friday, according to the Bible, tonight is when the last supper took place. I went to the passover mass at St. Marks college in UBC tonight. On top of the usual rituals, there is a feet washing event in the mass. I had done feet washing a few years ago in the church camp. Washing others feet is not a big deal, as long as you got to clean your hands afterward. However, letting other wash your feet, which could be quite smelly after stuff in the shoe for a whole day, is quite embrassing. Moreover I think people shouldn’t show their toes in public, let alone show them in church, it’s really disrespect to Jesus. We should propse other more elagent ways to serve other, such as shoulder massage, instead of washing feet. We cannot follow the Bible literally in today’s world, feet washing needs a modern context. Worst of all, the father didn’t clean his hand after washing the feet before handling the eucharist, that poses a hygiene problem. I begin to think, church serving eucharist is like resturant serving food, the same hygiene standard should be applied.