catholic in a Muslim country...

I am Catholic. More so, I am catholic.
One thing I love about being catholic is that even though this is the sixth country and fourth language in which I’ve celebrated Holy Week, I celebrated and participated in the same process as every Catholic around the world! So what’s it like to celebrate Holy Week and Easter in a predominantly Muslim country? It’s rockin’!
I’ve found that I can truly examine and search for who I am and what’s important to me when I compare it to another way of doing things. It’s kind of like you never knew how good momma’s cooking was until you left home. Once you’re out and you see other people doing similar activities but in a different way, you must question which is the best way of doing it? Or, why do I do it this way? Or, how can we maybe do it together, better?
In Senegal, Muslims and Christians live side by side no quarrels or qualms. Quite the contrary actually, everyone benefits from each holiday. For example, all schools-- private, public, Koranic, Christian-- were given a two week Easter holiday. All children dress up for Mardi Gras, or Fat Tues. On Holy Friday all of the Christian families make ngalax (a very sweet but wonderful mix of peanut butter like paste, millet baobab fruit juice and lots of sugar) for their Muslim neighbors. During the Islamic holiday, tabaski (last yr during the month of Dec.) all of the Muslim families share the slaughtered goat with the Christian families.
So, on Good Friday at 3:30pm, Lucie and I joined about 1000 other Catholics at our local church for the Stations of the Cross. It was very reverent and it was beautiful to hear the story in French. (Just think, it was Saint Pierre that betrayed Jesus three times, not St. Peter!)
Later that evening we returned for Adoration and Veneration of the Cross. With the amount of people present at the services the collapsible walls of St. Pierre de Baobab allowed the beauty of the service to be shared with the surrounding neighborhood. That means that the meditative singing during the Adoration was joined by the daily 8pm Mosque chant. Whereas one might think it would be a dissonant relationship, it was quite harmonious—everyone was praying at the same time!
Lucie and I decided to brave the Saturday Vigil. At 10pm the masses came out in their best suits and boubous. It was done in true Senegal fashion of “why rush?” – four hours later, at 2am, we were still rocking the Alleluias! Alleluia with a full African choir is a real ALLELUIA!
It was all a beautiful sharing of faith and Sunday morning I woke up a greeting of Alleluias from my Muslim host family!