VIEWS FROM THE BELFRY

By: Brod Romeo Delima

           Chapels are like the synagogues in the time of our Lord, and the church is compared as the lone temple of Jerusalem. They always gathered weekly in the synagogue, and only went to the temple once a year. It was their centre of liturgy all year round, and everybody went, including the Lord. “He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.” (Luke 4:16)

The place was perhaps the first place to commune not only with God but also with their fellow Jews. Perhaps it was their source of strength, zeal, and a place to start something worthwhile.

Today, we are a 152 year old Parish with more or less 60 chapels, but most of them came into existence some years after the last World War only.

The early chapels where built for the right reasons of pure piety and devotion. Some, or perhaps most, chapels started as a family devotion to a certain saint before it is brought outside to the community for propagation of faith and sharing of graces. Later chapels were built for different reasons and intentions, though many were the results of piety and devotion also, some for logical reason of excess in population. Some were built as a result of envy, misunderstanding, and competition to the mother chapel of the locality, while some were built for the sake of having reasons to provide entertainments for themselves and their cohorts, fulfilling their need to belong

But everything is Providential, and God has plans for everyone.

We believe that our patron saint in our chapel is miraculous, but we seldom come inside to pray and adore God through his/her intercession. A chapel maybe less sacred than the church but we can implore God of His blessings and mercy even there, as a matter of fact.

Sometimes we go to the extent of going to places with the same saint we have on our own altar just to ask for intercession. We become erudite and enlightened, taking our spirituality everywhere except in the chapel of our own. We now seldom commune with God and our people in the chapel, we prefer prayer meetings in a house or elsewhere. And sadly our chapel is becoming less and less of a centre for spirituality, usually reserved only for fiestas. Some chapels were indeed made a venue for secular events contrary to its intended purpose.

But there are few people who are always there and continue to believe that the chapel is still the centre for spirituality in the locality. They believed that conversion is personal but salvation is communal. They formed and continue to commune in a very simple way. These people are getting old, and they need replacement, if I may be blunt.

Like Jesus, let us come home to our little and simple chapel. It has been there since, where we learned our first formal catechism, where we first learned to commune. Our spirituality then was not profound, but God loves our simplicity. Let us go back inside the chapel and commune with God through our communion with our own literal neighbours.

Let us then make our chapel the heart for our communal spirituality once again. Let us go back home.