When I lived in Japan I absolutely loved the New Year’s Celebrations. For three days, Japanese businesses close and a literal and figurative hush falls upon the country.
On New Year’s Eve, most families prefer to be at home. Many are tired, having just finished a major cleaning spree so that they and and their homes are ready to start the New Year afresh.
Late in the the evening, all the temples begin to sound their bronze bells. This tradition is called “joya no kane.” They peal 108 times because the Buddha said that humans have that many earthly desires. Tolling the bell helps people to rid themselves of these desires so that they can start the New Year in a pure state.
Sounds easier that going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, doesn’t it?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Audrey Rolison 01.01.09 at 5:58 am
Yes, it SOUNDS easier than Reconciliation but for us as Christians it can not have the same results. That is their faith and I’m happy for them but to me it is sad that they place their faith and trust in the tones of an inanimate bell while we have a Person, Jesus Christ, to whom we can go, relinquish our good and bad desires , profess our joys and sorrows, know that we receive from him pardon and thus be able to move into that “pure state” of sanctifying grace and start anew at any time of the year. He shed more than 108 drops of his blood. He poured it all out for us! All glory to God.
Paul 01.01.09 at 4:50 pm
Audrey,
Thank you for your comment. I’m sorry if I sounded a little flip – I didn’t mean to be. The Japanese have a remarkable sense of the sacred in their midst and I applaud it. I do not, however, mean to disparage Christianity in any way – it is, after all, what I have staked my life upon. It is a great sadness for me that we have the incredible gift of the Sacrament of Reconciliation and yet so few of us use this font of grace.
Paul