A Pilgrimage to the North East
It was the annual diocesan pilgrimage and the crowd of more than 5,000 pilgrims were in festive mood. The Mass on the 8th of September was the high point of the three days of celebration. The setting was perfect, a tree-lined valley where, even without the addition of a well designed Lourdes Grotto, the veil between earth and heaven seems particularly thin. The bishop’s sermon was perhaps a little pious, but the delivery was firm and the tone commanding, hinting at the steel in his velvet words. The congregation were actively attentive and the ushers had almost to beat the faithful back as they tried to touch his robes at the end of the celebration. Within an hour, the crowds had thinned to a few hundred hard core devotees in front of the grotto, some praying, others singing songs and the rest eating packed lunches. In a while even they would be gone, bus bound for remote villages, shriven, nourished and ready to face the challenges of living the Christian life. It was a very successful annual pilgrimage.
The pilgrimage could have taken place almost anywhere in the Catholic world, the dynamic is instantly recognisable. I could have been in the West of Ireland not the North East of China. I find it somehow reassuring that the Catholicism of two such different places could have such similarities. Commentators, who tend to be more educated than the communities they are observing, usually highlight contrast, and take on a slightly superior view when introducing local customs of far away places. On a mild September morning, I saw only the familiar, and strangely comforting, folk Catholicism that was struggling but still vibrant in my 60’s west of Ireland childhood. I don’t think the feeling was simply nostalgia, but rather an emotional expression of an opinion I have long had about the importance of popular religion. In a glade in North East China, I might be educationally and culturally miles apart from the peasant women who predominated in the crowd, but when we knelt to recite the Hail Mary, those differences were stripped away and we were sisters and brothers praising the Mother of the Son we all worship.
The fact of this pilgrimage, a very public event, might seem surprising to a Western reader, used to a diet of negative commentary on religious freedom issues in China. In fact, within undeniable constraints, there is a surprising degree of real freedom here. The pilgrimage I participated in took place with the active support of the police. Their presence ensured some measure of coordination in a situation where the crowd was just barely held under control by the familiar rhythms of the liturgy. Also, with the constraints, the Diocese in Jilin is thriving. Through this pilgrimage and other similar events, it is actively bonding the faithful together in a new way. It has to. Religious Freedom, in my opinion, is not the most pressing issue, China is changing very rapidly and so are the needs of the Catholic faithful. The farming women and men were content to come away from a pilgrimage having prayed to Mary and touched the robes of their saintly bishop, but their urbanised sons and daughters will want more. The question remains, can the Church here move quickly enough to provide it?
I came away from this pilgrimage, like my sisters and brothers, both shriven and nourished, but also confident that Our Lady is helping the Diocese of Jilin to find its answers to its challenges. I hope she will, in equal measure, help me find the answers to my own.
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