ASIA/CHINA – Grief not removed and hope cherished. Letters and gestures of communion in the Chinese Catholic community at the beginning of the “Year of the Rabbit” – Agenzia Fides

Harbin (Agenzia Fides) – The Chinese New Year celebrations continue. But loved ones begin to say goodbye, and slowly people begin to return to their ordinary occupations. For many, in recent weeks, moments of joy and forgetfulness have mingled with worried thoughts about what happened during the last pandemic outbreak, and the painful memory of the many elderly people swept away by Covid-19. In many cities, the best-selling flowers on holidays were chrysanthemums, the flowers for the dead.
In the Chinese Catholic communities scattered throughout the country, the simplest gestures of faith have kept the consciousness of so many awake and alive before reality, preserving them from the social mechanisms of artificial removal of grief. The dead were commemorated in the Masses, and the faith of the communities did not hide but embraced the physical and spiritual sufferings experienced by the Chinese people over the past three years.
An eloquent and public sign of how the faith of the Apostles can illuminate the path of Chinese Catholics in these times of fatigue is the pastoral letter issued at the beginning of the new year by Father Joseph Zhao Hongchun, Apostolic Administrator of Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province in the northeast of mainland China. A text shared to suggest to all that faith in Christ can comfort hearts and illuminate the path, even at a time when so many people are experiencing suffering and difficulties due to the consequences of the pandemic.
Father Zhao had already written a pastoral letter two years ago to give indications on Christian discernment in the face of the pandemic epidemic. In the new message, Father Zhao emphasizes from the title that taking care of one’s health and taking care to preserve it from the onslaught of illness does not express an attitude of selfish calculation, because for every Christian, “good health is a gift to be put at the service of others, for the love of God”.

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ASIA/CHINA – Grief not removed and hope cherished. Letters and gestures of communion in the Chinese Catholic community at the beginning of the “Year of the Rabbit” – Agenzia Fides