HK - Sunday Mass and Monsters

Today we went to the 12.30pm English Language Mass at St Margaret Mary’s Church in Happy Valley. St Margaret Mary Alacoque was a French nun who lived over 300 years ago and experienced a number of private revelations that led to the devotion to the Sacred Heart – so there is a link to the Sacred Heart Church of Hove in England, my home parish.

It was the second time in my life that I had been to this particular church. The other time was on the afternoon of 29^th October 1988, almost 25 years ago – when Goretti and I got married.

The church is surrounded by high rise housing, it’s located at the top of a small hill and access is via a large number of steep steps. It’s an imposing, basilica-style building with a lovely barrel ceiling and was built around 1923 by Italian missionary priests.

 

Outside, there is a small replica of the Lourdes Grotto and I was delighted to find a Saint Vincent de Paul (SVP) volunteer collecting money. He told us about some of the charity work they do in Hong Kong and that they collect funds one Sunday each month; there are seven  masses each Sunday – five in Cantonese, one in English and one in Japanese - so they can collect quite a lot.

The church was packed, a congregation of about 500, the great majority being local Chinese with a significant minority of Filipinos and a few Westerners. The choir was around 30-strong, with guitars and electric organ. They sang with great zest and fully deserved the applause they were given at the end of mass.    

 

The Mass was very familiar but there were a few small touches that were new to me. The celebrant processed down the aisle proceeded by three altar servers and by the two readers. At the end of Mass, he was preceded by these five plus the Eucharistic Ministers. Normally, back home, it’s just the altar servers. During communion the altar servers held communion plates under the host as it was administered (it’s not usual to see that when communion is given by hand). Also, the hymns were displayed on an electronic board – no shuffling stiff card numbers into a wooden frame!

 

 

 

Finally, by the entrance there was a very tasteful memorial to the recently deceased with photographs of the individuals.

 

In summary, it was a lovely Mass. The church was bright, airy, filled with green, red and blue light from the stained glass windows, it was a comfortable temperature and the ceiling fans revolved briskly, moving the air around. The congregation participated wholeheartedly and the choir sang their hearts out. Everything was tidy and surfaces sparkled, missals were neatly filed away and everyone was appropriately reverent. It was great to see the priest slowly walking down the aisle, greeting people and shaking hands – including the hands of a number of very small children who were obviously delighted by the honour!

Then, into the daylight and after 10 minutes walk…a meeting with monsters.

There were two huge ones, about 20 to 30 feet high on the street outside the Times Square shopping centre. People were stopping to take photographs.

 

Inside the centre, the mystery was solved. These beasts are giant robots, creations of the Gundam franchise of a Japanese animation studio called Sunrise. They are enormously popular with kids throughout Asia (particularly in tv series, novels and manga comics). Apparently, the display was to promote sales of models and kits and there was a shop set up inside the centre doing a roaring trade. There’s always something happening in Hong Kong!