statue of our lady of the jubilee

the statue of ‘our lady of the jubilee’ created by the penang diocese, catholic church, now at church of our lady of sorrows, macalister road, penang.

ok this is a ‘religious’ post… not that i am going to proselytise heaven help me, no… i see ISA looming before me if i do. 🙂 well, i’m just going to talk about an event that is happening in our catholic church. if you are not religiously inclined, you can skip this post.
(be warned: this is a long post!)

actually i’m going to talk about the statue of the blessed virgin mary (pic above) which was designed so as to dress in malaysia’s traditional costume, which had got a number of people (our own fellow catholics) jumping up and down. however before that, a prologue.

the catholic church in the country are divided into ‘diocese’ and ‘archdiocese’. the ‘penang diocese’ consists of the northern states i.e. penang, kedah, perlis, kelantan and perak. come next year 2006, penang diocese will be celebrating its golden jubilee. the celebration started from august this year to august next year. there will be activities/events held by all the 28 churches in the diocese throughout the year, and it will end with a one day grand event, where all in the diocese will come together, to be held at the penang international sports arena (PISA) on end of august next year.

on 28 aug. was the launching of the golden jubilee celebration, held at the cathedral of the holy spirit, penang. peter tan of the digital awakening had blog on the launching. you may also read about the launching from the star online:
local flavour for statue of mary
unveiling mary’s statue

part of the highlight of the golden jubilee celebration is the creation of a brand new statue of the blessed virgin mary, which we refer to as ‘our lady of the jubilee’ (you can see a picture of the statue above). this will become the ‘pilgrim statue’ where it will go round all the 28 churches in the diocese. on 14th oct., the statue was at our parish (city parish) and we had a welcoming prayer service on 15th oct. henceforth, daily, different groups will take charge of the prayer service until 17th oct. when the statue will be handed to another church.

to continue reading, please click on ‘jog over for more’.

this is the same picture of the statue as you see right in the beginning but a close up view, so that you can see the ‘dressing’ of our lady and the child jesus.

now this is what i want to highlight in my post – regarding the design of the statue. as you notice, mary, our lady is dressed in kebaya and the child jesus too is dressed in baju melayu. this is because since we are malaysians, we want to ‘malaysianised’ our lady, and of course to do that, we have to dress her in malaysia’s traditional costume and of course that have to be the malay’s (being the dominant race) costume. in fact, during the launching of the golden jubilee celebration, a priest had explained to the thousands of people gathered there that “the statue, designed by fr. michael cheah, was clad in traditional attire to allow the local church to identify itself as malaysian.”

now i wonder why then there are people (our own fellow catholics!) who made so much noise that it is not right to dress our lady in the our country’s traditional attire, and some of them even go so far as to say it is a sacrilege. can you believe that? when i told them we have to malaysianised out lady, some of them so stupidly answer “if want to malaysianised, why not dress her in sam foo (chinese traditional costume) or sari (indian traditional costume)? why does it has to be malay?” grrr! don’t they understand when we mention ‘malaysia’s traditional costume’ it has to be the malay’s costume? why, i remember a few years back when a friend of mine was representing malaysia to have an audience with the pope, though he is a chinese, he was dressed in baju melayu (complete with songkok!) to greet the pope.

ok that was something trivial actually but what irked me more was why they were against the idea of our lady dressed in malaysia’s traditional costume? even if our lady was dressed in sam foo or sari, they will still make noises. or even if she was dressed in any other country’s traditional costume, they would make noises too.

how do they know for sure how’s our lady supposed to dress like? and isn’t the physical appearance (her dressing) not important? the statue is just a symbol anyway, whatever she is dressed in, she will still be our lady… the same lady we honoured and love. i guess most of them get the idea of how our lady should be dressed according to the vision the 3 children had in medjugorge. actually i feel, how our lady look like and how she was dressed nobody knows. the pictures we see are only artists’ impression. this is one of the many pictures of our lady as she is normally seen:

a long dress from neck to toes, with a long shawl drapped over her shoulder, and a veil covering past her shoulder.

does this kind of dressing makes you love mary more? when mary is in malaysia and she is dressed like a malaysian, does it makes you love her less? should she be always seen only in one kind of standard dressing? and anyway this is just a statue, a symbol to represent the mary we had not seen before, so why worry about the dressing?
(note: i’m going to write about this to our catholic paper, the herald)
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AN EXPLANATION ON THE STATUE

INTRODUCTION
Our Lady and the child Jesus are seen dressed in traditional Malaysian costumes; the former in baju kebaya and the latter in baju melayu. The dressing depicts the culture of the land whereby the local Church can identify itself being ‘Malaysian’.

THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
The Blessed Virgin Mary is shown to be presenting her son, the child Jesus, as her gift to us for salvation. This ‘open arms’ gesture of Our Lady is accompanied with a reminder of the words in the Gospel of John, “…do whatever He tells you”, (John 2:5). This is especially significant in the Diocese of Penang as we are celebrating our Golden Jubilee as a Church. The arms of Our Lady are seen as guiding the child Jesus and implies that we are also under her maternal guidance in our pilgrim way to our heavenly home.

Our Lady is dressed in blue, her official colour and her kebaya is imprinted with ten hibiscus flowers, the national flowers of Malaysia. The number 10 of flowers reminds us of our call to live the Ten Commandments. (New Catechism of the Catholic Church) now summarised and enshrined in the ‘one commandment of Love’, that of “loving God and our neighbour”. This commandment of Love is thus expressed in the very gesture of offering her Son to us.

The three kerongsang(s) on Our Lady’s kebaya depict our Trinitarian God, reminding us that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are always with us. Our truine God will keep us, His faithful children united in His care and love.

Her white shawl or selandang represents purity, a virtue which we are to emulate.

THE CHILD JESUS
The child Jesus carries a globe in his hands, indicating that the whole world is given into his care and authority. He is also the one who is t bring salvation, that is, through His suffering and death, as represented in presence of the cross above the globe.

The sampin of the child Jesus is coloured brown, indicating His faithfulness to God the Father. Jesus has set us an example of being faithful in fulfilling the Father’s will.

The baju melayu of the child is white, representing purity and holiness.

(The Our Lady of the Jubilee statue was designed by Fr. Michael Cheah)