St. Pao Lu

Sunday, the Nantou St. Paul's Catholic Church celebrated its patron saint. Still nothing about the Pope's letter discussed, by the way, or at least not in my presence.

The celebration Mass was held in the afternoon. Had it not been raining I would have been tempted not to go. This time of year a rainy day is bearable, under 30 degrees C. However, the potential for a 35 degree sunny day did not seem to bother the choir, wearing their brand new robes. Hao piao liang!

One maspect of note was the Sign of Peace. I've mentioned before that just like so many places in the world, the priest and choir start right into the Agnus Dei to try to keep the Sign of Peace under control. As anywhere, this part of the Mass can get out of hand. For this celebration Mass, though, the choir sang a "ping an" song that had clapping and the priests came out and greeted nearly everyone.
Following the Mass, which was concelebrated with two other Shenzhen priests (one from the under-construction Bao'an parish and one from St. Anthony), we processd out to the Statue of St. Paul for some special closing prayers and a hymn. Unlike Sheng Ti Sheng Xue (Corpus Christi) earlier this month, it wasn't pouring so hard that this was cancelled.

Can you see the illuminated halo behind St. Paul's head? There was a party afterwards, which unfortunately we couldn't attend. By the end of Mass, Randy had more than his fill of incense (and we were sitting outside).