Rambang Ngawan, OP
Introduction
In
one way or another, Christianity started as a group of people coming
together to ponder the teachings of Jesus Christ and to live faithfully
under the command of the Trinitarian love. As this new religious group
found its clear impression in the lives of many people, it experienced a
significant growth, both in number and in its spiritual dimension. When
Christianity took its most official and systematic form, especially the
Christianity that St. Peter brought to the Roman world and be
influenced by its culture, the following of the Lord shaded another
light. The Christians then had their spiritual leader, the pope, who
could guide them as a shepherd guiding his flock on their spiritual
journey towards the Promised Land. Another light came in the form of
spreading to the whole world the Gospel message of salvation and to make
all the nations Jesus’ disciples. This effort to make known the Gospel
message of salvation to the entire human race was actualized through the
advent of evangelization.
In
relation to the historical view of Christianity above that finally
leads us to the advent of evangelization of the gospels, this paper
tries to analyze how Christianity gained an easy access to a certain
culture or a belief system and then evangelizes this culture to the
point of conversion, that is embracing the Christian faith. One
particular culture that will become the object of this study is the
Dayak Uud Danum’s culture, the indigenous people in Sintang Region, West
Kalimantan Province, Indonesia. This study tries to analyze that one
important element in the Christian life, i.e., liturgy, which becomes
instrumental in the process of the conversion of the Dayaknese people to
Christianity. This study has a firm ground for its intellectual and
analytical construction as the researcher himself belongs to this group
of these Dayaknese people.
Liturgy As A Means of Christ’s Saving Act
As what is written in the Vatican II Document, Sacrosanctum Concilium Article 2, in its Introduction, it states that: For the liturgy, “through which the work of our redemption is accomplished,”
most of all in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, is the
outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and
manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the
true Church…”. The highlight of the theology of the liturgy is its
emphasis on the celebration of Christ’s redemption made present in the
sacred rites of the Church. This core value of liturgy is taken from
Prayer over the Gifts on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. This entails
that the theological understanding of the liturgy or the sacred rites as
means of salvation has long been taking possession in the mind of
Christians especially those who the part in evangelization.
A
priest who is sent as a missionary to a certain territory will
ultimately use liturgy as a means of bringing people to the faith and
leading them who do not know Christ before to conversion. Catechetical
instructions are indeed important and they are actually the basic ways
of doing the evangelization. However, catechesis will only nourish the
people intellectually on how much they understand the Catholic faith.
What is more important is bringing the converts to recognize the value
of the sacred rites as means of salvation especially in the Eucharist.
In
the liturgical celebration of the Holy Eucharist, the priest reenacts
the saving work of Christ on the cross in an unbloody manner. Here, the
newly baptized Christians or the converts are reminded of how the
celebration of the Eucharist made the real presence of Christ felt once
again and Christ’s love for mankind is manifested through the shedding
of His blood. So, through all the sacred rites and most especially
through the liturgy of the Eucharist, Christ’s saving work is
accomplished and celebrated in the lives of the Christians.
Nyahki’ As A Means for Well-Being
Nyahki’ is
Dayak Uud Danum’s rite that assures the well-beings of the people:
wishing for a good health, a safe journey, a good harvest, etc. In nyahki’,
the most instrumental element that is used is the blood of animals. In
this sacred rite, an individual or a certain group of individuals who
wish for their well-being are positioned to sit while an elder of the
people will utter some prayers, beseeching the Almighty, Jahta’ Mohotala’,
to grant their prayers.. While uttering the prayers, the elder is
holding a chicken and swings it back and forth for several times over
the heads of the individuasl. This act symbolizes the sweeping away of
all the misfortunes of the individuals and also asking for the good of
these individuals. After that, the chicken will be slain and its blood
will be used to mark the head (for the person to think always whatever
is good), the chest (for the person to have a kind heart and living
virtuously), the palms of the hands (to act justly and always perform
good conducts) and the feet (so that wherever the person may go he or
she is always protected by the Almighty).
An Hypothetical Analysis
After
studying the meaning of the sacred rites from both belief systems, the
researcher believes that there is a parallelism between the two that
makes the conversion of the Dayak uud Danum people to the Christian
faith possible. It is through the liturgy itself the researcher believes
that evangelization to the Dayaknese people becomes possible because
there is a redemptive element in the Catholic liturgy that can be
grasped by the Dayaknese culture. It is in the profound understanding of
the act of the shedding of blood that the conversion of the Dayaknese
takes place. And also, it is in the interconnecting ideologies of how
blood is conceived as an important element of life which paves the way
of Christianity into the worldview of Dayak Uud Danum.
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