Liturgical

After the fall of the Roman Empire of the West, the Church of Rome not only continued to use Latin but, in a certain way, made herself its custodian and champion in both the theological and liturgical sectors as well as in formation and in the transmission of knowledge.

Easter is the most important day in the Christian liturgical calendar and celebrates the resurrection of Jesus.

India—Bhārat—is still full of mystery to me. I still cannot differentiate Hindi from Punjabi upon overhearing a conversation. Of East Indian languages, my favourites are Pali, Sanskrit, and Tamil. Pali is the liturgical language of Southern Buddhism, whilst Sanskrit is the liturgical language of Northern Buddhism and Hinduism. Tamil is official in Singapore, along with Mandarin, Malay, and English.

India, or Bhārat, is still a mysterious place for me. I have studied a bit of Sanskrit and Pali, Sanskrit being the liturgical language of Hinduism and Northern Buddhism, whilst Pali being the liturgical language of Southern Buddhism. I am a close friend of Jai, who comes from an East Indian family of Hindu orientation. Jai, a software engineer, is married to a German, Erika. They met in Europe and moved to Canada here. Jai and Erika with two daughters, Charlotte and Johanna, lived in a condo near Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, BC. Jai tries to speak German. His kids learn German, French, and English. Jai and I used to have lunches and dinners at Japanese restaurants. Jai viewed Vancouver as too big a city, and he wanted to move to a smaller town.

Egyptian today is largely a dead language. Only as a liturgical language is its youngest form, Coptic, still in use, and it is spoken by some 300 people as a second language in a revived form.

This 21st of May of 2025 is a sunny, yet cloudy, day. I went walking in the morning to Tim Hortons café to enjoy an Iced Coffee with oat milk. The other day, I tried their pink-looking Pineapple Dragon Fruit Frozen Quencher. 'Twas more like icy candy for me! Later in the morning today, I went walking to the Roman Catholic church on St. Albans Road. On the way, I gazed at the big purple-bloom Empress Tree, near Bowcock Road. The blooms are starting to fade. In the big worship hall was a small class of little boys and girls, dressed in uniform, students practicing bowing at the altar and oration at the microphone. They looked like mostly Filipino kids, this time. It reminded of my private school days at La Salle Green Hills in the Philippines. Even then, our liturgical language was also English, as here on Lulu Island. It was despite that our household and street language was Tagalog. In the 1960s, the Church globally changed the liturgical language from Latin to the vernacular language. I remember my Thai Buddhist Temple in Vancouver—Wat Yanviriya. The wonderful liturgical language was Pali. It was the language that made the temple stay magical! We learned meditation, which is what I do in the church on St. Albans Road. I try to go when the big worship hall is mostly empty. At home, I try to learn more Esperanto vocabulary.

Our almost liturgical repetition of the phrase "gay brothers and sisters" too often echoes with a hollow resonance.