Seeds of hope: the Jubilee in the heart of China

The story of Mei Li, who was contemplating suicide: ‘The thing that attracts me most about God is hope’. The story of the little girl who tells her parents tshe is going to the mall but instead takes part in activities in a church and chooses Joan of Arc as her baptismal name. The desire for unity with the whole world. In the Holy Year of the Chinese Catholic communities, the hope that offers a way out from the social, political and existential void that generates only infinite pressures.

How are the Catholic communities in the People's Republic of China experiencing the Jubilee? And how much does the theme of hope speak to the life of young Chinese people today? An AsiaNews in China shares the testimony below.

Seen from this corner of the world, the Jubilee of Hope has a special flavour. Here too, it's the talk of the town: groups are organising trips, videos are explaining its meaning, wherever possible the symbol is present, and of course Luce, the official mascot, is also visible on the facades of some churches.

A Church that celebrates Xi Nian (the Holy Year) in an unfavourable context, often associated with despair, but which sometimes, unexpectedly, becomes a resource and a creative moment. Silent, but powerful, the Chinese Church is a field ploughed with seeds of hope.

The political situation does not stand up to comparison with the vitality that inhabits it more deeply.

Seeds of conversion, first and foremost. These conversions are increasingly frequent, and are characterised by great seriousness and care for the catechumenate. In fact, there are training courses for those who train the catechumens, which involve months of intense study, prayer and service. These courses are mostly attended by women and men who downsize their working life - defying massive social and professional pressure - to be able to dedicate themselves with greater freedom to their spiritual growth and the training of other Christians.

Conversions like that of Mei Li, married with a daughter of about twenty years old, a university graduate with a good job, but who says that she felt sad and dissatisfied for a long time, ‘I often thought of committing suicide, I didn't understand what all the effort of my life had been for’. The ‘effort’ mentioned is the social and family pressure that characterises the daily life of the Chinese. This pressure starts when they are children and stays with them all their lives: being the best student, the best daughter, the best wife, the best mother, having the best job, earning as much money as possible, being beautiful, perfectly fitting the imposed stereotype... This is the immense pressure that permeates the life of the Chinese (and also affects men).

Every action is under pressure and judgement, and the unit of measurement to understand whether or not life is successful is the money one manages to earn and therefore flaunt. Mei Li had overcome these pressures with reasonable success, yet she was thinking of suicide. ‘You realise that believing in money leads nowhere and you feel that you are just an empty box. A life of pressure that leads to feeling empty is proof that this system doesn't work’. In fact, the problem of suicide as a way of escaping pressure is a real one in China; more and more young people are choosing to take their own lives because they feel powerless in the face of the imposed standards.

Then, meeting a newly baptised Christian friend led Mei Li to a community that welcomed her, listened to her, understood her and finally accompanied her to baptism. ‘It's not true that we Chinese don't believe in anything, but until now we were busy trying to escape hunger and we knew that only by working hard would we succeed; now the time has finally come to think about our spirit, and my heart yearns for every Chinese person to become a Christian, every time I walk down the street and I come across someone's face I am certain that the time will come for them too’, because “what attracts me most about God is hope”.

But there are also more ‘carefree’ conversions like that of the light-hearted Joan of Arc, a 17-year-old girl from the great international metropolis, young, beautiful, daring, who decides to be baptised in secret from her family (choosing Joan of Arc as her baptismal name!). She tells her parents that she spends her afternoons at the shopping centre or in some club, but instead she participates in catechesis or community activities. Her first contact with Christians had been through some Protestant churches; but then, with a ‘razor of Ockham’ attitude and a mix of Chinese pragmatism and age-related conciseness, she declared: ‘the Protestant churches were nice but there were too many of them, the Catholic church is one and it's the same all over the world, so that's good’.

The desire for unity with the world is another great seed of hope. During a dinner with some families and many children, a parent confided that he was very happy that his seven-year-old son could see that there are Christians who come from far away to share and be together in friendship. He himself remembered when, as a child, a French member of some order came to visit his village for a while: ‘at that moment I understood that my faith was important: if someone came to visit us from so far away, it meant that we were part of something big, something beautiful’.

The hope that comes from this land is tangible if you look carefully. There is a reserve of vitality and desire for the world, which is a reflection of the deprivation of freedom and openness. These are the seeds of those who know that this is the night, but that the night does not last forever and it is still a good time to go out. Like Mary Magdalene, who ‘went out when it was still dark’, this Church also goes out into the night and prepares the way for the coming day. Of course there is no lack of worries, confusion and difficulties, but you can feel that for these people faith is a real opportunity for hope for the whole of China, the hope that allows them to escape from the social, political and existential void that only generates endless pressures. ‘China is just waiting for someone to talk to it about God’, many young Christians agree on this, and it's a refrain in many conversations.

The Jubilee thus becomes a space of freedom, because it reminds us that there are sister churches that think of each other, it makes us feel a sense of communion and forget our isolation. Above all it reminds us that there is a centre, which by the mere fact of existing gives us hope.

Thus the Chinese Church is nourished by the hope that comes from belonging to the universality of the world and at the same time it itself becomes a reserve of hope for universality, because it captures life where there seems to be only death. And this is the most beautiful mission.

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