The Year of the Rat Musing

As I write this in Vancouver, I am well aware that back home in Singapore, many of us are busy celebrating the Lunar New Year. A time of merry-making, indulging in our favourite goodies, and for some of us, shopping for new clothes. It is also a time where we welcome in the wealth, good health, and prosperity that we hope to obtain during the course of the year, through the exchange of red packets, the tossing of Yu-Sheng, and for some of us, even through re-arranging the furniture in our houses (in other words, Feng Shui). 

But for us as Christians, what does this celebration entail? After all, many of these Lunar New Year traditions, while fine to indulge in, have nothing to do with our Christian faith. The Christian faith is surely not a superstitious faith, and the first of the 10 commandments most certainly still applies to all of us, even as we celebrate a somewhat Pagan festival. "I am the Lord, your God. You shall have no other Gods but me". It's perfectly clear that being superstitious is against the faith that we have. Indulging in superstition is indeed a sin, let's be clear on that. But does this mean that this festival has nothing to do with us as Christians, and that we should not take part in them?




Personally, I'd like to think that the way that we as Christians celebrate the Lunar New Year, should be no different from the way we celebrate the start of the New Year on the first of January. We set goals for ourselves, resolutions. We meet with people with whom we normally don't meet during the year, due to our busy schedules. We spend time with our families, hopefully with the aim of living out the call for the Catholic Church to be centred upon the family. And we seek God's blessings for the year to come, and look forward to growing in our faith with him walking with us throughout the new year. The same can be done every Lunar New Year, and in fact, it is a part of the Chinese customs. 

Many Catholics even choose to start the year by celebrating the Mass as a family, before they head over to visit their relatives and friends. Apart from paying their respects to their elders (as per the Chinese custom), they choose to start the year by paying homage to the creator of all that is Good, and seek his blessings. 

Most importantly, this could be an excellent opportunity for us to re-centre on our relationship with God. One way in which we could do this would be to examine how we can live out the coming year's zodiac, or even our own zodiac. This year, being the year of the Rat, perhaps the call could be for us to gather as community, and to be different from the ways of the world, just like rats do, be it by gathering around the Eucharistic Table as often as we can, or by being part of our small Christian communities, actively sharing our faith, and supporting those who need our support and our love. We could, and should, also gather to pray together as community, be it the Rosary, or even the Liturgy of the Hours, the official common prayer of the Church. 

St. Ignatius of Loyola teaches us that God can be found in all things. God can certainly be found in the Lunar New Year too. The questions is: will we make room in our hearts for him to enter this year?  

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