The Lincoln Parish Visits

On a day when the Gloom was on its way out, I spent Pentecost with the Vietnamese. Khiết Tâm Mẹ, or Immaculate Heart of Mary, served the Vietnamese Catholics in the north of Lincoln, while St. Andrew Dũng-Lạc took care of those living in the south. I arrived by bicycle and by flailing my way through the suburban maze. It was a foggy morning and everything in the outdoors became coated in a fine veil of mist droplets, myself especially.

Whole families arrived to the church compound by car, the women decked out in yellow áo dàis for the occasion. The readings were Vietnamese, but obviously they were about that time in the Acts of the Apostles when the Jesus folk were gathered in a house, and the Holy Spirit descended upon everyone in tongues of fire, and they began to preach to the befuddled foreigners, who understood them perfectly. And I understood what the priest said perfectly.

But most of all, the children... Since I was late, and the church was already overflowing, I took a chair and settled at the rear, outside the prayer hall and where kids with no chair to sit down on were allowed to run around and annoy people and make as ghastly a din as they liked. And they bawled in a tongue that I understood perfectly. They assured me that the church is alive, and has a future. And they left hope in my basket of sorrows.

Also, no one seemed to have realised, or seemed to mind, that I wasn't Vietnamese, nor spoke a word of the language.

A week after the Gloom was on its way out, I spent Trinity Day with the Hispanics at Cristo Rey, or Christ the King. This time I was early, and sat at the front. One or two people might have thrown me suspicious looks: it is strange, after all, to see an Asian guy at Spanish mass, but I speak Spanish now and Chinese Latin Americans exist and people just have to be used to it.

I blended right in. It seemed much easier to do so here than in any other Catholic Church in town. I don't know if it's the warm sunshine that shone on us from the window, or the mariachi guitarist choir, or the warm glow seeping out from people around me. The annoying kids are around again, and would not keep still. The mother of three who found a place to sit beside me struck the very image of indomitablility; with her left hand she held one wild goat of a son, by her left hand the other, and  with her right foot she rocked her infant daughter's cradle on the aisle. And the baby drifted to sleep ever so unhurriedly.

After scrawling the blessed red crayon all over the hallowed pages of the colouring book, the son turned to his sainted mother and beamed: ¡Mom, look at what I coloured! And of course the sainted mother let out a sigh of resignation and told him to please put that away for now. And Our Lady of Guadelupe watched over each parishoner from up above.

I had planned to go home and prepare my own lunch after mass. The church offered me to join a food fair instead, so naturally I agreed, and bought some tickets to exchange for some unhealthy Mexican cuisine. I met the vicar, Padre Craig, a young pastor with an indestructible accent, and envied him for his time serving among this jolly bunch. I thought again of the people at Tagaytay whom I went to stay with on this very day last year.

After I went home, I played the Mariachi Kyrie on the guitar from memory, and my parents loved it.