SHC kicks off weeklong fiesta activities with triduum and talks

KOTA KINABALU – Sacred Heart Cathedral Parish here kicked off its week-long fiesta activities with a triduum of Holy Hours and concurrent talks on the Sacred Heart Devotion.

These activities were held from Monday – Wednesday, 4-6 June 2018.

Parish groups / communities / ministries took turns to pray before the exposed Blessed Sacrament at the chapel: Monday (English), Tuesday (Mandarin), and Wednesday (BM), from 6 pm to 10 pm.  The last hour ended with Benediction.

The talks (8 pm – 9:30 pm) were held at the parish centre, also in the different languages: Monday (Mandarin) by Archbishop John Wong, Tuesday (BM) by Father Max Hontor, and Wednesday (English) by Father Paul Lo.

In his talk, Fr Lo touched on the history of the Sacred Heart Devotion from a biblical perspective and how it reached the parish through the Mill Hill Missionaries (1881-1971) as they have a strong devotion to the Sacred Heart and to St Joseph.

The following except from the cathedral’s centenary souvenir book may illustrate this devotion better:

In Fr Henry Heyden’s letter of June 1903, when the community was still stationed at the shop-house in Jesselton, the Mission was already called Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Was it possible that, surrounded by, and experiencing so much human misery and suffering, Fr Heyden thought of God’s compassionate love for His children in Borneo, and remembered that Jesus also suffered and died for them?  Perhaps, not by coincidence, the church in Sibu, also a community of newly arrived emigrant Chinese, and opened at about the same time as Jesselton, was also named Sacred Heart.  Both have become cathedrals since, the Sacred Heart Cathedral of Sibu and the Sacred Heart Cathedral of Kota Kinabalu. (100 Years of Good News, 1903-2003, Sacred Heart Cathedral, Kota Kinabalu 2003).