The alarm clock on my smartphone wakes me up. I blink a few times to gather myself and get ready. After changing, I grab some toast and boiled hot water to drink.
It’s Christmas morning in Beijing. My girlfriend is still sleeping. Though we planned to go to mass together, I know that she needs the sleep. Heck, I wanted her to sleep a little more. We hosted a gathering last night that went the distance, plus she had been busy with work as of late. In her half-asleep, half-awake state she tells me that she just needs another hour of sleep and then she’ll be up.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “I’m leaving now, mass is going to start soon. I’ll call you when it’s over.”
And so I head out. I had heard about this Catholic church from a friend of a friend. I double-check the coordinates and make the subway ride over. When I reach my destination, the map makes it abundantly clear which exit it is.
That’s good, I think. It’s like God wanted me to find it super easily. I’m already looking for an early morning Christmas sign. I don’t bother putting on my air pollution mask, since it’s just a short walk away.
This is the second time in two years that I’m going to mass in Beijing. Exactly one year ago, I went to another church for Christmas mass. Like clockwork, I told myself that it was important to do this at least once a year.
Be a good Catholic, James. Remember all the weekly masses you went to in Canada? You owe it to yourself to do this.
I pass through the courtyard filled with revelers, parishioners and beggars, and head inside. I’m thirty minutes early, so I wait patiently for the current mass to finish. I ask one of the ushers about regular Sunday morning mass times, on the off chance that I ever come back on a regular basis.
The current mass concludes and I find a comfortable seat at the front. I feel at ease — comfortable, even. After initial prayers, I concentrate my attention on the beautiful stained glass windows. Going to mass, no matter where, feels like riding a bike. I can stop going for a bit, but it never truly leaves me. I feel right at home again; mental and muscle memory prevails. Everything about it — the opening, the communion, the songs — feels familiar. This is a good thing. It’s giving me the illusion, albeit temporarily, that I’m not in China.
The illusion is quickly broken when I see people milling about at the front, taking photos with their camera phones. My moral elitism and indignation kick in. Isn’t this the house of God? Isn’t it disrespectful to take selfies in the church — or even to play with one’s gadgets in church? For two seconds, my head is filled with the vision of Jesus driving the moneychangers away — the moneychangers who disrespected a place of worship with their iPhones and Canon SLRs. I tell myself that I should mind my own business and that I should focus on what I am getting out of mass. Nonetheless, indignation stews inside me for a few more minutes and my transformation into a crotchety old man is complete.
I am told to find another seat, as I’m in the row reserved for the choir. No problem — I move back a couple of rows. I sit down next to a middle-aged, Fillipino man with uneven hair. There are blotches of baldness that he tries to cover up. Despite his best efforts, the roots of his white hair have grown out ever-so-slightly, betraying his dyed-black hair. He is humming some hymn or song under his breath; too faint to make out what it is.
We exchange some small talk. I feel desperate to get to know someone in this church; it leads nowhere. He shows no passion for being here, no Christmas cheer, despite being a member of the choir. Just your average don’t-give-a-fuck churchgoer. Religious connection ain’t happening here, folks.
He’s phoning it in, I think. Just like me.
Behind me sits a row of British girls, in their mid-twenties. They giggle at something really funny; I wonder what it is.
Finally, the mass starts. I look at the clock on the wall with contempt — we’ve started ten minutes late. My Catholic military training kicks in and I stand up with the rest of the congregation. The priest and his band start filing in. Lyrics for “Joy to the World” are projected on the wall; I sing along softly. The girls behind me sing loudly, and this gives me the courage to sing even louder. They sing much better than I do, but I’ve warmed up my voice by now and there’s no going back.
The first two readings go by, and now it’s time for the priest to give his sermon and say a few choice words about Christmas. He pontificates wildly and speaks unmistakable Chinese-English — full of adjectives like “beautiful” and “smooth,” and two omnipresent words that should be wiped from anyone’s vocabulary: “you know.” From afar, he looks like a rotund Italian complete with grandiose, exaggerated gestures and sweeping motions. The ridiculousness of the moment is not lost on me.
The sermon is boring — I’ve heard better. Like most Chinese priests, he feels the need to mention that the Kingdom of God does not require material possessions, as if that was the reason for the common folk to embrace religion in the first place. He punctuates the sermon by saying something about how we should all have a home-made nativity scene in the house. So that people can see it and ask us about it and we can suck them into Catholicism? Go figure. Soon I’m wishing that I had less sleep and could fall asleep during the sermon, because listening to it is an arduous task. I suspect others are seeing my eye-rolls by now.
Nonetheless, it concludes. Eventually, the mass transitions to the communion. Victorious, I line up with everybody else to claim the Body of Christ. I then go back to my seat, kneel, and say a couple of prayers for my family and my girlfriend’s family. The rest of the mass ends plainly enough, and I exit back into the subway.
As I leave, I start having doubts about why I came in the first place. I’ve become quite jaded with organized religion, especially when there is no community to interact with. I start thinking about everything as an opportunity cost and an investment of my time. It took me some time to get to the mass. The mass was delayed ten minutes. Now I need to commute to work. The priest talked at us, but there was no two-way dialogue. I start thinking of it as going to see a presentation in which the speaker had no control of the room and sucked. We were expected to listen and learn and try to remember the contents of the mass after it ended — but did I?
I start reflecting back on the experiences I had growing up with religion in Canada. We had a youth group, a great community, bible study, retreats, people to talk to. Now I still talk to them online, because we are a family. That’s never going to change, praise the Lord.
I don’t think the mass I went to was in fact, any different from mass that I’d gone to before. Isn’t that the point? If I am the one who changed, then isn’t it the definition of insanity to go to mass for the umpteenth time and expect the mass to change?
I didn’t feel more at peace because I went to Christmas mass. Instead, I was filled with meandering thoughts, criticisms of others, and self-doubt about my plans for ongoing attendance. I went because it was my duty. Now that I performed my duty, did something inside me change?
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