Celebrant

The last few Sundays, Jennifer and I have attended Mass in Tonga, an especially religious kingdom. The Tongan Constitution states that the Sabbath shall be kept sacred, therefore, Sunday is a day of rest. It is illegal to conduct business, as well as to fish or to swim on the Sabbath. This law posed a special challenge for the Seventh day Adventists here, since for them, Saturday is their Sabbath. (We have not yet spotted any synagogues in Tonga.)

Creatively, the Adventists used Tonga's unique position alongside the International Date Line as the basis for a solution. By claiming that Sunday was really Saturday, Tongan Adventists now celebrate their holy day on Sunday and thus align themselves with the rest of Tonga in resting on Sunday.

On our way back from church recently, Jennifer and I took a long walk around the island of Lifuka, and encountered a woman we had seen in church, walking home well after the service had completed. We got to talking, she shared a bit of her story with us, and it led me to write this:

Celebrant

Thank you, Tongan celebrant, for your Rosaries after Mass today;

Thank you for your prayers for the world beyond

This curved island of sand and rock and coral and ash.

Your eleven brothers and sisters, your six children,

The husband who maintains the island generator,

We thank them too for your prayers after Mass,

For postponing their Sunday feast of breadfruit, chicken, taro,

Slow-cooked in the umu. They knew you would be late,

Reciting one Hail Mary after another, each for a supplicant

Unaware and unknown, in far away huts and homes,

Hovering in the hazy Sunday light of this Tongan church,

Illuminated by the prayers of this Tongan celebrant who told me:

"We stay behind to say our prayers for the world."

O Tongan celebrant, in your fraying vala tied snugly over your damp white kofu,

Walking home alone, at noon on a Sunday, down a dusty road:

Who is worthy of such a gift?

Jon, September 2010