Until now, many parishioners here still remember the vivid images in each mass. Those are the rounds of applause welcoming the celebrant priest, especially when there is a guest priest. Warm handshakes accompanied by friendly smiles, greetings of peace.
Mass is always joyful with rounds of applause, friendly and warm handshakes of peace.
On Sunday masses, the whole community reads the Word of God together on pre-printed papers. As for the mass for children, hundreds of children simultaneously open the New Testament in their hands after a child leads the reading of the Scriptures or the priest reads the Gospel, then all solemnly raise their voices, pause, stop at the right place, and bow to kiss the Holy Book solemnly.
Not to mention the fact that the whole community actively and proactively participates in the mass, but I think that just teaching children how to open the Bible correctly and quickly like that is a precious thing, helping them form a love for and know how to read the Word of God from a young age.
This practice lasted for nearly 20 years, through several generations of bishops, many priests from various places also had the opportunity to witness, no one had any opinion other than praise.
Yet, everything was erased! The new priest who took over the parish ordered to stop applying it, requiring the community to practice "liturgical discipline, worship of the Church!".
To convince, the new parish priest also invited a priest who specialized in teaching at the major seminary to give several "classes" with a lot of regulations, laws brought out from these documents, that document that probably no parishioner would know in their entire life.
Then more than ten years ago, on Holy Thursday, the parish priest "broke the rules" by choosing all women (mothers or grandmothers) as apostles to perform the foot washing ritual. This was also strongly opposed, even some old men who were “irritated” and left the ceremony, and even a few days later they still gossiped that women who were apostles were just dirty eyes, that women were not worthy, that in the old days they were strictly forbidden to step foot in the sanctuary, forbidden to touch the altar… People used conventions and traditions, but few people knew the law to cite to criticize and oppose.
Later I also learned that there was a “law” about apostles and remembered the incident of being suddenly dragged up to wash feet on a Holy Thursday, at a church near my workplace. That day, there were more than a dozen people in the church, both men and women, young and old, and there were some very old and weak people that the parish priest invited to come up, but they all shook their heads and refused. It was my turn to refuse, with the very real reason that I had not yet confessed my Lenten sins. The parish priest still insisted on coming up.
The entire “apostolic group” that day had men, women, young and old, barefoot, with shoes, some receiving communion, some not! That was also the most memorable time in my life, even though I had nearly ten years of continuous dressing up, bathing and sitting on a chair for the priest to wash my feet!
Just a few years ago, Pope Francis celebrated Holy Thursday Mass, performing the foot washing ceremony in a prison, with female prisoners, Muslims, many of whom were dressed in dirty rags. The following year, many places followed suit by choosing a few more women to wash their feet. Everyone was radiant, smelling of luxurious perfume, and visibly happy to have been chosen.
I wonder if it is true, a saying of God recorded in the Bible: "The law was made for man, not man for the law."
PHUNG NGHI