by Aidyn Austin
Aidyn Austin
It’s nothing more than a converted, one-bedroom flat in one of Discovery Bay’s humbler blocks. Or maybe the word is not converted but merely repurposed—they’ve left the kitchen exactly as it was, along with the bathroom and parquet flooring. But the Holy Trinity Chapel—bearing the unlikely address of flat 1D, Glamour Court—fulfills the ideal of God in the community. He doesn’t always have to meet you in a basilica.
There are no in-person Masses now because of pandemic restrictions but, when we do gather, the small, onetime living room can hold no more than about 30 worshippers and has the air of an extremely crowded housewarming.
At the English-language Mass on Thursday mornings, the congregation is a mix of people in activewear—taking communion before gym class, perhaps, or coffee in the plaza—and office workers going for a late ferry. There’s a young mom whose gorgeous little toddler lights up the eyes above every mask.
You’ll find me there too, for this is my parish. In warmer weather, I turn up right after my morning swim, clad in a faded t-shirt, flip-flops and trunks still wet from the pool.
A priest takes the bus over from Tung Chung and—with the sun out and birdsong audible through the window—it is one of the loveliest religious experiences you will have anywhere.
Mass Discovery Bay-style is intimate, very local and, if you are in the front row of foldout chairs, you can watch the Eucharist being celebrated no more than two feet in front of you by Father Manoj Mullackal, Father Mietak Drozd, or Father Arjay Venus, all of whom beling to the Society of the Divine Word. Many of those present are Filipino domestic helpers. They are very close to God on account of their well-documented struggles. It is a privilege to worship alongside these women.
Such demographics are what make our congregation different, says Father Manoj. “We have a bigger English-speaking community,” he says, “with many nationalities.” Since 2019, he has been the parish priest of Visitation Parish, which consists of Discovery Bay, the mushrooming high-rises of Tung Chung and, given all the travel restrictions, what must be a very beleaguered airport community.
While the priests come to Discovery Bay midweek, on Sundays the traffic is in the other direction and parishioners travel to Tung Chung for the contrasting experience of Sunday Mass at the Catholic school in Yat Tung—a gloomy public housing estate of 19 tower blocks that has managed to attract more than 35,000 tenants but isn’t much liked by them on account of its distance from the city.
The school is a lively, youthful contrast to the dreary fast-food shops and Housing Authority architecture however, and offers a glimpse at the gradual, tectonic process of parish building.
First you put up a clinic in what was a very rural area, as the diocese did here in the 1970s. Then, when the population grows, health services expand and the clinic becomes superfluous, you make the clinic into a kindergarten for all the babies that urbanisation brings.
The building can double up as a Mass centre and clerical accommodation. Before long, all those babies will need a school, and when that is built you can have Mass in the school hall, which you will need to do to accommodate the surge in numbers as transport improves and more high-rise apartments go up.
That, broadly speaking, has been the trajectory of Visitation Parish so far and it now finds itself on the cusp of its most significant development yet: the construction, finally, of a church.
“We have around 2,000 to 3,000 parishioners now,” says Father Manoj, “because many people are moving into the Tung Chung area. Last year, we saw many new faces and the school is not able to accommodate them all. The diocese has a plan to build a church and is talking to the government about land. We’ve submitted a blueprint.”
The Discovery Bay community sent a small delegation of children to perform a Nativity play at the school’s Christmas fair, my younger daughter among them.
After it ended, I walked around the booths, buying cookies and stollen at one, dropping off some Bible diaries at another and nodding at the people I recognised. I made myself appreciate the scene.
This is all about to change, I thought, like Tung Chung itself is changing. Soon, it won’t feel so familiar, which gives me even more reason to feel grateful for our little chapel in Discovery Bay.
The enforced slowdown of the pandemic has taught many of us to prioritise what is actually important: connection, communion, and self-care. Absolved from the grind of commuting, there is time to walk, to read, to exhale.
I have seen God during morning yoga on the beach and in the faces of my family as we enjoy a sunlit lunch on the terrace, instead of grabbing takeout near school or the office.
“The pandemic has become a time to think about God’s importance in our life,” Father Manoj says, “as well as an instance where we realise God’s mysterious presence amid the chaos.”
You can feel that presence in a little apartment in Glamour Court, as joggers pass by in the street below, trees sway outside the window, and Father Manoj quietly recites the liturgy before a roomful of neighbours.
