Nella festa di S. Francesco Saverio pubblico quest’interessante
contribuito – in inglese – sul rito del tè ed il Cristianesimo. Il medesimo
articolo, in traduzione italiana, è stato rilanciato proprio oggi sul blog Messa in latino
ed attinge dalla Historia Japonensis del gesuita e missionario P. João Rodrigues.
Tea and
Christianity
Francis Xavier’s feast day is December 3. For those of
us who love our afternoon tea, it is a feast we should well note. For the world’s
most civilized habit owes a huge debt of gratitude to Xavier and his Jesuit
missionaries who traveled to Japan in 1549.
Now,
to properly appreciate this story, you must know that among the Japanese, tea
is practically a sacrament. They don’t just drink it, they have an entire
ritual and a philosophy dedicated to its consumption and appreciation: The Way
of Tea. Perhaps better than anyone, the Japanese understand its paradox: Unlike
other drinks and meals we share, tea is humble, yet so extremely gratifying!
One
of the most beautiful descriptions of tea and the culture that produced it is
from the Historia,
written by Jesuit priest and missionary, João Rodrigues, who loved tea and
wrote quite a bit about it. He and his Jesuit companions soon recognized that
it was a deeply beautiful part of their culture that Japanese converts could
wholeheartedly enjoy because it promoted rather than compromised their beliefs.
Rodrigues
waxed eloquent on its social, spiritual, and health benefits, noting that it
improved digestion and opened one’s mind to the higher things. It encouraged
quiet meditation, rustic simplicity, aesthetic judgement, appreciation of nature,
and the significance of the present moment. It also necessitated “courtesy,
good breeding, moderation in actions,” and purity of spirit.
One
late autumn afternoon a few years ago, I was watching an educational
documentary on the Daimyo—the “dual way” of Japan’s feudal warrior-poets. There
is a section in the film where you watch, in almost complete silence, a man performing
the tea ceremony.
The
man symbolically washes his hands in a small basin. Kneeling, he holds the tea
vessel up above his head in a prayer of thanksgiving. He bows down. His
companion bows lower, leans toward him. He straightens up and drinks the tea in
one act. When he is finished, he carefully wipes the rim clean. From across the
room, I watched this in absolute amazement. My God, I thought, this looks just
like the Mass!
It
was too specific for there to be any doubt. If you have ever seen a Mass
celebrated in the Extraordinary Form, (old Latin rite), the similarities are
even more uncanny. Every tea ceremony I have seen since then confirms this with
even more details.
How
could it be so similar?
If
you look deeper into the history of the Tea Ceremony, and especially of Sen no
Rikyu, the man whose philosophy shaped the tea ceremony in the sixteenth
century, you start to discover a few things: Three (some say five) of Rikyu’s
seven disciples were devout Catholic converts. His wife was as well, and with
her he attended a historic Mass celebrated in Kyoto, an experience that
affected him deeply.
His
philosophy of Zen simplicity would easily be recognized by students of western
mysticism as “Christian detachment.”
The
tea ceremony was shockingly egalitarian: It was to be offered by and to all
classes of men and women, and one had to exercise humility in order to celebrate
it properly. Tea houses had a low door that one could only enter by kneeling,
and by first removing his sword if he carried one. Rikyu’s poetic vision of
purposeful submission to higher things is amazingly in tune with Christian
theology. In fact, he subsequently incurred the wrath of Toyotomi Hideyoshi,
his temperamental Daimyo overlord, because he maintained his independence from
Hideyoshi’s influence. Ultimately, Hideyoshi ordered Rikyu to commit ritual
suicide in 1591. Six years later, he ordered the martyrdom of the 26 Nagasaki
Catholics.
And
the mystery further unfolds: If an observer wandering through a 17th century
Japanese garden came upon a tea ceremony being offered in a simple tea house he
would see the event in silhouette through the rice paper walls. Because the
actions are so similar, he would not be able to distinguish it from the
consecration at a Mass. And, as you might guess, during the Christian
persecutions in Japan that followed, Masses were secretly offered in tea
houses. Partly because of this, the Catholic faith in Japan survived underground
for the next two hundred years.
And
those quintessentially Japanese stone lanterns that are a focal point in many
tea gardens? Some of them have the figure of the Virgin Mary and the Greek
monogram IHS carved into the base part that is not visible, because it is buried.
Many of those were grave markers for hidden Christians, in Japanese, “Kakure
Kirishitan.”
To
this day, around 4 o’clock every afternoon, tea preserves the sanity of
beleaguered human beings all over the world who eagerly await its quiet
civility. But its far greater achievement was to preserve Catholicism in Japan
during two hundred years of persecution.
So
if you love tea, raise a cup on December third to honor St. Francis Xavier and
his brave Jesuits who gave the Mass to Asia, and the Tea to the rest of the
world.
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