CNY

Parish altar

 It's a week into the Chinese New Year. The rather hot weather we had last week has dropped to 8 degrees again. It even drizzled all night. It does give a feeling of the New Year. 

It's of course not celebrated here in our country but the few asian religious persistently asked me to organise a Mass. It was all last minute. I managed to get the patriarch to preside and sent invitations to as many asian religious as possible in the diocese.

The Franciscan sisters offered to prepare the hymns in Chinese, Burmese, Vietnamese and Indonesian. Another sister decorated the sanctuary. The seminarians organised themselves to serve the liturgy. All this lightened my load as I focussed on briefing the patriarch what to do during the Mass. 

Distributing blessed oranges

In the end I think it went well. Everyone was happy ad satisfied. And I was exhausted. I managed to have a good rest that night. That's important because I was recovering from the flu when it suddenly worsened for 48 hours. Fever, nausea and diarrhoea. Today is better. I met many people during the Mass who are also suffering from this flu. same symptoms. And this flu goes on for a month or more. Very difficult to recover from it. I hope mine is in the last stage. It's exhausting me.