A Big Christmas Dung 一篤聖誕牛屎

A Big Christmas Dung

by Deacon Alex Kwok

By the time this edition of Homestead lands on your desk, the Chinese Lunar New Year shall be just around the corner. May I take this opportunity to wish you and your beloved ones a fruitful and safe Lunar Year ahead, not just the New Year.

Biblical scholars who specialized in typology claim that Old Testament figures are “pre-figures” of Jesus Christ and events are “pre-figures” of the age of the Church. For example, Noah’s Ark is a common symbol of the Church. Isaac who carried the wood for the burnt offering to ascend Moriah (Genesis 22:6-8) was a pre-figure of Jesus Christ who carried the cross to ascend Mount Calvary. Joseph who was sold by his brothers into Egypt was also a pre-figure of Jesus Christ who was betrayed by one of His disciples. The burning bush symbolizes the perpetual virginity of the BVM. The crossing of the Red Sea is a pre-figure of the Sacrament of baptism. The life of Jeremiah the prophet was reminiscent of Jesus Christ’s for telling the truth etc. …

We don’t need to be biblical experts to be able to see the symbolism. Here I would like to invite you to discover the highlights of our crib decorations this year. Yes, I’m sure none of you would have missed the “oxen dung” around our different cribs. In our daily life, there’s nothing likeable we are able to find in dung because a lot of unimaginable microorganisms are living inside and outside of it. Its shape and colours are disgusting and its smell nauseating. The worst of all, it attracts flies, thus spreading diseases … etc. I suppose the last thing you want to appear in your nightmares is to find yourself chained inside a dungeon of dung! Perhaps you have not read it. Jeremiah the prophet, who was accused of treason by his enemies, was thrown into a dungeon where “there was no water but mire: so Jeremiah sunk in the mire.” (Jeremiah 38:6) It takes little imagination to reason why there was dirt and mud in the dungeon. The dungeon was nothing but a septic tank to dispose of the human wastes collected in the royal palace! Pardon me for being gross! This was exactly what I felt when Father Law decorated the cribs in our church with pieces of “oxen dung” this year.

His inspiration came from a verse one of our parishioners told him, “Where there are no oxen, the crib is clean; but abundant crops come through the strength of the bull.” (Proverbs 14:4) The book of Proverbs is a collection of aphorisms contrasting the life of the wise against the foolish. In this context, the author of the Proverbs was probably encouraging his readers to work diligently like a bull! But Fr. Law took the cue and combined it with the Christmas message of our Bishop this year: “Emmanuel”, i.e. the Lord be with us! All of us are the “oxen dung”. No matter how lowly and smelly we are, our Lord is happy to accompany us. No matter how bullshit our personalities are, Jesus Christ is willing to die for us. Like all innocent children, had the Blessed Virgin Mary left the Holy Infant crawling around the floor to explore the world, Infant Jesus would have been excited to discover the warmth the manure he was massaging around his crib, remembering prophet Jeremiah whom He had sent to speak the truth.

Brethren! Fr. Law made use of every means to remind us of the plights of the needy: wheelchairs, bags of rice and Christmas muffins. Therefore what the homeless eat, we eat. Where the fragile sit, we sit with them! This is the meaning of Christmas. May I challenge you one step further. Dare you to suffer like Jeremiah in a dungeon of dung for the sake of telling God’s truth in the present milieu of Hong Kong?