Saturday, August 15, 2009

Sing Hail Mary in traditional Chinese




With this singing of Hail Mary in traditional Chinese I found on the Youtube, I am starting my 3rd blog. This is all personal, all about of, by, and for myself. It is Me, all Me, nothing but Me!

This version of the singing of Hail Mary in traditional Chinese serves as the gateway for me to get in touch with my own past. By the way, I say traditional Chinese, that does not mean the written characters. The Catholicism has been in China for more than 400 years since Ming Dynasty. The many Catholic prayers in Chinese must have been in use for hundreds of years. For reasons I can never understand, in the late 1980's the Catholic church authority in Taiwan decided to "modernize" the prayers by changing them all to newer versions. For instance the Hail Mary is traditionally as:

萬福瑪利亞,滿被聖寵者,主與爾偕焉。
女中爾爲讚美,爾胎子耶穌, 並爲讚美。
天主聖母瑪利亞,為我等罪人,
今祈天主,及我等死候。
亞孟

Now becomes:

萬褔瑪利亞,你充滿聖寵 ! 主與你同在。
你在婦女中受讚頌,你的親子耶穌同受讚頌。
天主聖母瑪利亞,求你現在和我們臨終時,
為我們罪人祈求天主。
阿們

I don't see any valid reason to justify the change this new version whatsoever. I still think it's silly, if not wrong, to do this. For one thing the Catholics were unified for two thousand years, now they drive the older and younger Catholics into separate camps. Totally senseless. (I notice the Catholics in U.S. also tried to do some modernization, such as change "the Lord is with thee" to "the Lord is with you" which most people just ignored them.)

Now back to Me, an important element of my past was being a member of Sodality of Our Lady
聖母會,under the spiritual direction of Father Michael Chu during the few years before my coming to U.S. to start a new life. Our Sodality met weekly on Friday evenings as I remember. Every time after the meeting we all stand up and sing together the Hail Mary before dispersal. I never thought about it for many, many years until about 10 years ago when I had an opportunity to watch the video of Father Chu's funeral mass recording. The recording including the burial at the Jesuit Cemetery at Ching Mountain in central Taiwan. Everything went smoothly, then at the end they all standing around Father Chu's new grave and sing this Hail Mary. I have not heard or sung that for all those years, but suddenly that beautiful and familiar melody brought back of all the memories of those bygone years and instantly drove me into uncontrollable tears. I was alone then and I realized that song of Hail Mary is more than just a thing of my past, it is part of my life. I am happy now the Youtube brought the song to my fingertip. It is not a very good rendition, similar but much better than what we did at those Sodality meetings. I guess in there it meant for the audience to join in the singing but they did not seem to have. Anyway I am happy to have found this song and use it to start this personal blog of Me All Me. Yes, it is personal, therefore may be boring to others already, please feel free to leave.

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