By Sunita Gomes
Chinese New Year officially begins on February 1, 2022, with the Year of the Tiger. At the beginning of each New Year, there is a great sense of joy and hope for what the New Year will bring.
A Chinese New Year celebration is never complete without the traditional giving of hóngbāo or “lucky red envelopes”. I have received one myself! Just as parents give their children hóngbāo in the New Year, pastors at Chinese Catholic Churches often given parishioners a hóngbāo (with a token dollar inside) as a sign that we are but one family in Christ.
In the Bible, we hear mention of lions and leopards, but no tigers. This is because tigers are not native to the Middle East. We can assume that none of the Hebrew speaking, Aramaic speaking, or Greek speaking authors ever saw or heard of a tiger. The closest to the tiger in the Bible would be the lion; whether a tiger or a lion, the imagery in itself reflects Christ as majestic, fierce in love and worthy to be called a king. Interestingly, there is an autobiography called “Christ the Tiger” by Thomas Howard published in 1967 that was written even before Howard became Catholic. It is not an exposition about Christ but about the thoughts of a young man who is seized by the love of Christ and, at first, sees dogmas and institutions as obscuring the truth of God’s love in Christ. But even at this early period, Howard realizes that without those institutions there would be no way of encountering Christ the Tiger.
Howard was greatly influenced by the famous writer, C.S. Lewis, who was in turn influenced by another great writer, G.K. Chesterton. Lewis compared Christ to a lion, while Chesterton and Howard compared Him to a tiger. Chesterton throws down the gauntlet when he says to us, “If you speak of God as a fact, as a thing like a tiger, as a reason for changing one’s conduct, then the modern world will stop you somehow if it can”. We are counseled to go forward anyway, acting in faith. God promises us that when we turn to Him for guidance, when we follow Christ the King, we will succeed. (Joshua 1:9) “Have I not told you: Be strong and stand firm? Be fearless and undaunted, for go where you may, Yahweh your God is with you.”
T.S. Eliot, a poet, also used the image of Christ as a tiger in his poem, “Gerontion”.
“The word within a word, unable to speak a word,| Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger”. –T.S. Eliot
The word refers to the infant Christ referred to in the Gospel of St John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word”. To paraphrase Eliot, the word, or the message of God was to be found in Christ, but as Christ was an infant, He was unable to speak it. When we wish our friends a “blessed or peaceful Chinese New Year” in this, the Year of the Tiger, we need to pray for all and seek God’s help to live in a manner worthy of our calling as Christians.
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