Category: Church

The Catholic Church in Cambodia.

Confirmation

Yesterday was a special day for the English Catholic Community. First, it was Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of the season of Advent which has traditionally been celebrated joyfully because of the approaching birth of Jesus the Messiah. Because of the theme of joy, the priest uses rose or pink colored vestments. Secondly, Bishop Olivier was with us. His presence serves to unite our community with the church of Phnom Penh and with our Cambodian Catholic brothers and sisters. And thirdly, Bishop Olivier came to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation to 16 of our parishioners, an important step in the life of Catholic Christians as they receive the Holy Spirit as their guide and strength through the struggles of daily life as a follower of Jesus.

After the scripture readings, Bishop Olivier introduced the actual confirmation ceremony. At one point he extends his hands over those to be confirmed, a symbolic laying of of hands as described in the Christian scriptures.

Then the bishop went down the line of those to be confirmed, anointing them with chrism (holy oil). He also gave them a small medal blessed by Pope Francis as a memento of this day.

This is an unusual photo. As Bishop Olivier and I and all the congregation were singing the final hymn before we processed out, the photographer went up behind the altar and took an ultra wide angle shot of the whole community.

Confirmation

Tonight the English Catholic community had a confirmation ceremony to give that sacrament to thirteen youth and three adults. It was an especially pleasant and really enjoyable religious experience.

Christmas Event

When I first came to Cambodia, there were very few Christmas events and most of them were small private gatherings at churches or Christian schools. Now Cambodian society has learned there is money to be made recognizing Christmas and there are Christmas trees and Santa Clauses everywhere. And many of them have already been set up for this coming Christmas season.

Tonight the Phnom Penh Choral Ensemble perfromed Christmas songs in a charity concert at the Oakwood Premier Hotel. Almost all of the ensemble are members of our Catholic community so they invited me and I gladly attended.
The opening Silent Night song was accompanied by a ballet dancer who had wings sparkling with fairy lights.
At the intermission, refreshments were served at an outdoor courtyard in the building complex which is quite new and modern.
At the closing, Hannah Lyn Bandalan, the conductor of the Phnom Penh Choral Ensemble, gave a very well written thank-you and tribute to the people made this even possible.

An interesting Saturday…

Yesterday turned out to be a very interesting Saturday. President Biden flew in on Air Force One in the morning for the ASEAN summit meeting held in Phnom Penh this weekend. He is Catholic and I had read that he tries to go to mass on Sundays wherever he is, so I was not too surprised when the US Embassy here asked me to have mass with him yesterday. The time for the mass changed three times during the week but finally we had a morning mass at the Raffles Hotel where the United States delegation was staying.

President Biden is a very warm and personable person, a good human being guided by gospel values. We had a group of ten people for mass, staff from the White House and the Phnom Penh U.S. Embassy. At the end of mass, noting that it was lunch time, President Biden invited me to eat with them!
This is The Beast, the vehicle used to transport President Biden on the ground. It rated its own separate enclosure on the grounds of the Raffles Hotel. I was hoping they would offer me a ride home in The Beast but I had to settle for the usual tuk-tuk.
The U.S. delegation took over the entire Raffles Hotel and made many adjustments. Here the main lobby and reception desk is blocked off by partitions erected to move people like me through security. Secret Service personnel were everywhere!

Quite an interesting day!

Mission Sunday

This year Bishop Olivier invited the lay missioners working in Phnom Penh to attend mass with him on Mission Sunday. There are not nearly the numbers of lay missioners we had before.

After mass Bishop Olivier blessed the ashes of two veteran lay missioners who died here in the past year.
Then the lay missioners met for more than an hour with Bishop Olivier as he discussed his thought and plans for the diocese and for the missioners.
Before we left we had a group photo.

60 Years after Vatican II

This week was the 60th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church. It’s good to remember what the Council accomplished. And the best summation comes from the late John W. O’Malley, SJ, in “What Happened at Vatican II.” In short, the church moved from “commands to invitations, from laws to ideals, from definition to mystery, from threats to persuasion, from coercion to conscience, from monologue to dialogue, from ruling to serving, from withdrawn to integrated, from vertical to horizontal, from exclusion to inclusion, from hostility to friendship, from rivalry to partnership, from suspicion to trust, from static to ongoing, from passive acceptances to active engagement, from fault-finding to appreciation, from prescriptive to principles, from behavior modification to inner appropriation.”

[From Fr. James Martin’s Twitter]

Musica Felice Concert

Today Ms. Miwako Fujiwara produced another charity concert at the Sofitel Hotel ballroom. Her productions are always wonderful musically and this time she added some rather extravagant traditional Khmer dances.

The Musica Felice singers and musicians with Miwako conducting.
Traditonal Khmer dancers accompanied some of the musical selections.
At the intermission, Miwako joined the group from the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme for a photo.

USA Trip 2022

Sunday, 25 September 2022

St. James baptismal font


In the morning John and Moya and I went to St. James Church for mass. One of the priests on the altar recognized me and welcomed me at the announcement time at the end. The two people who heard my name came up after mass and introduced themselves. One of them I took to Mammoth Cave with our St. Lawrence youth group back in the 70s and the other had two sisters I taught at Angela Merici High School.


After lunch my sister Mary tooks us to Parklands, a 4,000 acre park complex where she worked before retirement. It is a 100-year concept: in 100 years Louisville will have grown out to the park now beyond the suburbs and it will be a park within the city. It is beautiful with a silo lookout tower, miles and miles of heavily wooded trails, a stream for kayaking, and many places for people to be immersed in nature.

In the evening cousins who had met the night before at a center were invited to gather at the house of Julie and Eric for another family event. Their house just that day had been part of a ten-house tour of significant houses. Eric is an architect and designed their home. It is a wonderful place to live.