For better or for worse

Egerton Chang, Guest Columnist

When a couple gets married, they do it 'for better or for worse'. That's what the marriage vows say. A priest once told me that the true test of whether or not you truly love someone is to accept the fact that your son or daughter may turn out E X A C T L Y like him/her. To make it really work, not one iota of change is allowed when considering this test.

I attended St George's College, and the priest in question was teaching a religious-knowledge class. I have found this advice really helpful. If you have ever wondered whether your partner is truly the one for you, mentally TAKE THE TEST. Imagine a smaller version of your partner, with exactly the same features and characteristics with the same good and bad habits ... exactly. Could you accept him/her as your child?

Now we know that the son or daughter will never turn out exactly like the father/mother. But how would you like your children to turn out? Better or (slightly) worse than you? That's a question whose answer is not quite so obvious.

Let's assume both parents are very beautiful (and vain?). Do they really want their son/daughter to turn out more handsome/beautiful than them? Or suppose both parents are excellent lawyers, do they truly want their child to turn out more brilliant ... to be better than them? Or what about sports couples?

I contend that some parents (deep down) may not want their children to grow up better than them. If only for the parents' vanity (or is it narcissism?), a few might be jealous or envious of their children. There is a perverse yet real quality in this feeling. We all want our children to turn out good. Very good. But better than us?

Either way, they are our children, and we vowed for better or for worse.

The Sign of the Cross

I have often wondered why, on TV/cable, we see so many sports persons making the sign of the cross before a game/match, or when a goal is scored, or when winning a boxing or tennis match. This has been seen more from sportsmen from Mexico, the Philippines, Spain, Italy and the South American countries. Similarly, I have wondered why this practice is not as prevalent or widespread in Jamaica.

The sign of the cross (Latin: Signum Crucis), or crossing oneself, is a ritual hand motion made by members of many branches of Christianity, often accompanied by spoken or mental recitation of a trinitarian formula, e.g. 'in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit'.

The motion is the tracing of the shape of a cross in the air or on one's own body, echoing the traditional shape of the cross of the Christian crucifixion narrative. There are two principal forms: the older - three fingers, right to left - is exclusively used in the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church; the newer - left to right, other than three fingers - is the one used in the Latin-Rite Catholic Church, Anglicanism, Lutheranism and Oriental Orthodoxy. The ritual is rare within other Christian traditions. (Wikipedia).

The 2001 Jamaican census states that Anglicans constitute four per cent of all Jamaicans, while Catholics stood at two per cent, with all other religions believing in the sign of the cross making up another one per cent. That means just seven per cent of Jamaicans believe in the ritual of crossing oneself. (I honestly thought the percentage was much higher). One can readily see why making the sign of the cross is not as prevalent in Jamaica. The proportion of these religions is not quite as high as in those countries mentioned previously. Still, one is left to wonder why the public display isn't higher in Jamaica.

Visited every church

My mother, Miss Alice (God bless her soul), was a devout, almost zealous, Catholic by any standard. Up to when I was around 19, it was a very rare occasion that I missed a Sunday service. In fact, when my brother, Glen, died when I was just turning 10 years old, I attended Mass every day for one year. My mother would arrange for us (my eldest brother, Anthony, the younger siblings and Momma) to do the circuit of virtually all the Catholic churches in Kingston.

We would attend these Masses, which were said in Latin in just 25 minutes, at around 6 o'clock in the morning and get back in time to go to school. Although I never asked her if this was a special arrangement made by her, somehow, wherever there was a Mass, we would attend - every day for one year straight. From Holy Cross to Holy Rosary and Holy Trinity, from Our Lady of the Angels to St Anne's, from St Jude's to St Peter Claver and Sts Peter and Paul, from St Richard's to St Theresa's and St Thomas Aquinas, we did the rounds. Maybe that was our penance for ensuring a place in heaven for Glen. If so, it was worth it.

Anyway, I have always considered it almost sacrilegious to pray for anything. I know there are those who believe in that, but I don't. I have always believed that giving thanks through prayer was the best that one could do. Even so, I had not even been accustomed to doing so until much later in life. The change has been gradual to the point of my privately and silently crossing myself a couple of times each day. I am still, however, conscious of performing this ritual in public and am reluctant in doing so.

Perhaps, after all, I should understand why more of us Catholics and Anglicans do not publicly make the sign of the cross.

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