There was only one person in the Church when I went in to say my prayers for the Holy Souls. I knelt a little way forward of my companion and began reminiscing about my recent dead before actually starting my prayers. My companion’s stage whispered prayers were a mild distraction and I was relieved when she noisily left the church a few minutes later. As the door closed behind her the silent church became mine. The pillars were specially clothed in moody black drapes for the occasion, giving the entire building a somber mood and the empty Church seemed to murmur “remember the dead”, in case I needed reminding of my visit’s purpose. I sank into the bitter sweet recollection of those gone before me, hoping my “Our Father’s and “Hail Mary’s” would move them gently nearer the Paradise that I believe awaits them.
Suddenly the sound of loud footfalls again. I almost resented the intrusion into my recollection. It was the “stage whisperer” returned. Why was my erstwhile companion coming back to fill the gentle silence with her muttered pieties? She seemed to take forever, but it cannot have been more than a few minutes till she upped and noisily left again, much to my relief. I had barely returned once again my sentimental meditations when I was amazed to hear the now familiar sound of shoe on wooden floor, proclaiming the return of the whisperer. Irritated now, I could not work out what was driving this women’s revolving door prayer pattern.
Suddenly, drawing on memories of long forgotten primary school religion classes, I realized she was gaining indulgences for the dead by visiting a church and praying the prescribed prayers. With few churches to visit, she was applying the traditional solution, that is to physically leave the building thus ending that “visit”, reentering the church counts as a new visit, and each new visit resulted in a new indulgence.
Listening with new ears to the remissions of sins being gained, I felt a new sense of solidarity with the “stage whisperer”. We had both come to remember our dead and pray them more speedily through the purification of purgatory into the promised land of Paradise. Listening to her mechanical recitations, I could only marvel, both at our common faith in the efficacy of prayers for the dead and the difference in the ways we choose to express it. Her classic form was recognizable to every generation up to my own and had been persevered by the Chinese Catholics, untouched by the revolution in popular spirituality that took place after the Second Vatican Council. My faith also invited me to visit a church that day, to pray for the repose of those gone before, but without much thought of reduction of days or weeks for those being punished outside time. The differences between us seemed inconsequential at that moment and one felt only solidarity in grief and the consolation of praying for the eternal salvation of those gone before us. Sitting in the empty, almost silent church, one could almost feel purgatorial chains snapping, and souls slipping gratefully in to their allotted places in the Heavenly court.
I would have, at that moment, loved to have prayed with her, but she was on a schedule and I doubt she would have welcomed my mystical solidarity. Instead I continued my sedentary litany, as she conducted her mobile one. In time we both finished and I heard her say loudly in Chinese what I was saying quietly in English. “May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God, rest in peace Amen”. I wonder whose prayer reached heaven first.
Tags: Beijing Diaries, bricks
