For Vietnamese
Catholics, the Lunar New Year Mass is a very important liturgical event that
not only says about the Vietnamese culture, but also expresses the spiritual
life in relation to their traditional beliefs. Through my observation, there is
the couplet (parallel sentences) hung on both sides of the crucifix with a
synonymous meaning of God and spring season.
This tradition connects to the veneration of ancestors. Usually, the
Vietnamese compose the parallel sentences to hang on both sides of their ancestor’s
altar. This influence originates from Vietnamese traditional beliefs to express
the nobility of the “golden words” from their ancestors. People want to show
the main guiding light of their family as part of their spiritual life
regardless of their religious faith. People used yellow and red colors to
decorate the Altar. Yellow and red are very popular colors in the especial
festivals of Vietnamese culture. They
represent happiness and prosperity. These bright colors can be read as the
spirituality of joyfulness in thanksgiving and praise to God. They also show
desires or wishes that people want to receive for the whole year: happiness,
joyfulness, and prosperity. The readers, acolytes, and ministers of Cup were
addressed in the red and yellow traditional clothing “4- part dress” during the
Mass as well. The Dragon team is ready
to dance to welcome the presider to the Altar. The Dragon dance with drums and
gongs is a set that brought a strong and impressive atmosphere for the Lunar
New Year Festival. The Vietnamese believe that Dragon comes to bring good luck
and blessings to all people. The choir sang the opening song to praise God as
the Eternal Spring. The presider with three burning incense sticks bows his
head three times in front of the Altar to worship God and venerate
ancestors. Before giving offerings,
there is the traditional dance performed by women with national costumes “Áo
dài” and conical hat “Nón lá” and men with 4-part dress “Áo tứ thân” and a
plain piece of cloth wrapped around the head “Khăn đống”. The offerings
included bread, wine, fruits of Tet called “Mâm ngủ qủa”, and traditional cakes
“Bánh chưng, bánh téc”. The traditional cakes “Bánh Chưng, Bánh Téc” are only
made for Lunar New Year. They carry two special meanings: Bánh Chưng represents
the Earth, and Bánh Téc represents the Heaven. Today these traditional cakes
are brought to the altar as the offerings to express the gratitude of the
Vietnamese to the Heaven, the Earth, and their ancestors. “Mâm Ngũ Quả”
or “five-fruit tray” also demonstrates Vietnamese’ aspiration for the
life of abundance and symbolizes their percept of life “when taking fruit, we
should give the gratitude to the grower”. Moreover, using burning incense
sticks in this liturgy is to connect the worship of God with the veneration of
ancestors in a sense that people could ask God and invite their ancestors to
bring blessings to the members of their family for the New Year. The smoke of
the incense is a way to welcome the ancestors back to the family, bringing a
sense of the connection with the divine.
This liturgical
tradition is to emphasize on the value of the Vietnamese spirituality. This
encourages people to express their gratitude and praise to God and ancestors,
spreading the Word of Wisdom and of God to other generations. Understanding the
meaning of this celebration can help people recognize the inner beauty of the Vietnamese
culture and adapt the culture to the liturgy of the Church in order to express
the faith and spirituality as a whole. All traditional costumes, offering
“five-fruit tray” and the traditional cakes, and performing dragon dance are to
raise the spirit of treasuring and preserving the spiritual and cultural values
in the church. This spirituality indicates the relationship of the Vietnamese
Catholics to God, to their culture, and to one another.
The mission of
this event is to integrate the Catholic Liturgy into the Vietnamese culture.
Through this, the Word of God is planted in the culture and becoming the good
news to the Vietnamese Catholics. This
celebration is to teach the Vietnamese to keep their culture and to make the liturgical
diversity in the Church. These characteristics can clarify the identity of the
Vietnamese Catholics including the external beauty and the fullness of inner
traditional values. In addition, the worship of Jesus as their ancestor is
another noble value of the Vietnamese culture. It tells that the Vietnamese through
respect to their ancestors have a deep prayerful life, relating to the cultural
values of the Vietnamese, the lessons of the family values, and the way of life
in the relationship with God, ancestors, parents, and others.
Moreover, this
Lunar New Year Mass does very well the job of combining liturgy, spirituality,
and mission to convey a powerful message: praising the loving God as an eternal
Spring who brings joyfulness, happiness, and peacefulness to every family and
everyone. Its mission is to show the
love of God through serving each other in respect of the relationship between
the cultural and religious tradition, which is interwoven closely to each other
here. Through this relationship, this event brings the values of different
cultures to liturgy, one of significant missions of the Church that all local
churches are encouraged to do nowadays. Besides performing dragon dance and
liturgical dance with the traditional costumes showing the beauty of the culture
and the worship of God through this beauty, the presider’s act of holding the
burning incense sticks and bowing his head three times in front of the Altar expressed
a very beautiful religious deed. In general, this shows the attitude of worship
as the authenticity for the Vietnamese. In a spiritual perspective, this can
help the participants increase their devotion and inspiration to God and
ancestors. In short, it seems that through the role of the presider, the
Vietnamese are led to praise God in using their own cultural ways to express
their faith and spirituality, which is a meaningful mission to young Vietnamese
Catholics nowadays.
