Tai Shui Hang, Lantau Island, Our Lady of Joy Abbey (Cistercians of the Strict Observance)
Kidnapped Baby Jesus (A Christmas
Memory)
Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
December 19, 2018
When my family and I were living in
Hong Kong for the first time, in 1987, we had a challenge in making our holiday
traditions fit into our new and very strange surroundings for our children,
aged at the time 5, 8, 10, and 12. Every
year, we had done a careful series of Advent activities, and we studiously kept
the figure of the Baby Jesus stored away, to be placed in his manger in the
crèche on the coffee table only on the morning of Christmas Eve.
This year, we could not repeat many
of our annual traditions, because they were local and not available in
China. Here one of our holiday meals was
to be dim sum luncheon at a giant restaurant with dozens of steaming, mobile
carts moving between the chattering, jasmine-tea fragrant tables: we had to be
imaginative.
The morning of Christmas Eve, the
children all crowded around the small box that usually held the Baby
Jesus. They opened it, and found it
empty, In the place of Jesus, a note, of
letters cut from a magazine and pasted onto white bond, read “Jesus has been
KIDNAPPED. If you want him safe, follow
all instructions, find the notes with next instructions, and get ready for a
great treasure hunt. First instruction,
go and bathe, brush teeth, and dress for a busy day. When done, find next
instruction in the refrigerator door.”
The next instruction was to eat
breakfast, the next (found in the front hallway) to clean bedrooms, finish
Christmas presents. Finally, they were
told to pack an overnight bag with one change of socks and underwear,
toothbrushes and a jacket. They were
told to walk down the hill to Bowen Road, and find the next instruction taped
under the first park bench there: catch a cab and go to the outlying islands
ferry, where they’d be given the next instruction.
When they realized they were leaving
the apartment for overnight, on CHRISTMAS EVE, the children got a little
worried. Would Santa visit them where
they were mysteriously going? Did he
visit empty apartments? How in the world
were we going to have a proper Christmas Eve and Christmas day with an
unexpected journey to GOD KNOWS WHERE thrown in?
As they walked with Elena along
Bowen Road, and took the cab, I went to the apartment and finished Santa
things. I hurried and got to the ferry
pier before them. The instructions were
to take the tickets I gave them and go with Elena and me to Lantau Island, to a
small harbor called Tai Shui Hang, there they would find the Baby Jesus.
We had to change ferries on Peng
Chau, the small island we went to in the hot weather to go to the beach and eat
at waterside seafood restaurants. When
we finally arrived at Tai Shui Hang, the children realized our destination: the Trappist Monastery. I finally told them that we had reservations
to spend Christmas Eve night there.
After a simple cabbage soup and bread dinner, we took a nap so we would
be ready for Midnight Mass.
Trappist monks fleeing Mainland China, 1948.
The Mass itself was luminous. Half in Latin, with the rest split up between
English, Cantonese, Mandarin, French, Spanish, and German, most of it was sung. Lit with hundreds of
candles, and scented with clouds of sweet frankincense, the divine was clearly
present. Most of these old monks had
fled monasteries in Mainland China after the Communist takeover and the start
of systematized murder of all class enemies, including priests, nuns, and
monks. Most had lost brother monks in
the red terror and fled to the British colony in desperation. It was there they had founded their new home,
the Trappist Haven Monastery dedicated to Our Lady of China. A few young novices were in their midst,
but most of the monks were obviously so very old that the children wondered if
maybe in their youths they had been with the shepherds with Jesus in the
stable.
After a final singing of Silent
Night in German, we retired to our beds, bunks all together in a common room
with thick quilted ticking to keep us warm in the chilly small hours. In the morning, we had coffee and milk with
bread and cheese, and then prepared to catch the ferry back. We arrived back at our apartment on Hong Kong
Island at 11:00 a.m. Santa had been
there, all right, and the children were very relieved.
We never again went to a monastery
for Midnight Mass together. But the
memories of that special day stayed with us.
The children reminisce about it to this day.
Christmas is a celebration of the
Incarnation: God taking on flesh, becoming truly human. It is not a mere commemoration of a one-time-and-one-time
alone event that took place in Palestine 2,000 years ago. It rejoices at the cosmic Christ embracing
this material world, his own creation, and thus revealing God in and behind all
the material world. It sees the hand of
God at work in the world about us, and in our own lives, despite the suffering
and brokenness we also see about us and in us. In Christmas, we express our faith and trust
in God present in all flesh, and all life, and see God at work even in things
we may want to turn aside. Those monks’ faith in that Midnight
Mass was all the stronger, their joy all the more fervent, because of the
sufferings they had borne. Never did we have a Christmas eve dinner quite
so satisfying at that cabbage soup and plain freshly-baked bread.
Grace and peace, and a joyful Christmas to all,
Fr. Tony+
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