Remaking Liturgical Space: Ancestral Veneration and Material Devotion in Malaysian Chinese Catholicism

This paper explores the Malaysian Chinese Catholic re-imagination of the traditional first day of the Chinese New Year ancestor veneration ritual at the parish columbarium of Saint Michael’s Church, the Chinese Catholic parish in Ipoh, Malaysia. It examines how the parish columbarium provides the ritual space to re-imagine the traditional ancestor veneration ritual on the first day of the Chinese New Year in an inculturated Malaysian Chinese Catholic context beyond its official liturgical placement in the authorized Chinese New Year Mass. In doing so, it questions the conventional definition of liturgical space within the architectural confines of a church building, evaluates the interplay between anamnetic memory and ritual experience which remake and remagine liturgical space as the space which is constructed, negotiated, and synthesized through anamnetic ritualization by the ritual participants themselves.