The Chinese and Irish Provinces have collaborated to make Sacred Space, the world’s leading interactive guided prayer site available in China for the first time.
“Sacred Space is much loved around the world,” said Fr Michael Kelly SJ, Executive Director of UCAN, which facilitated the collaboration between the two provinces. “Tens of thousands access the site in 20 languages and it seemed to me a real waste to have this great aid to deepening our engagement with God not available to the growing number of Christians in the People’s Republic of China.”
After a year of work by the team at Sacred Space, which is produced by Irish Jesuits, and the Chinese Province, Sacred Space in now available in Simplified Characters through the main Sacred Space website as well as directly at a new site: www.shenshengkongjian.org.
“Two problems prevented access: the content was not in the script used in China and China’s Great Fire Wall meant that even the content in Traditional Characters was blocked because it was available only on a site with a URL in Taiwan. The Chinese cyber police blocked it.
“These were easily solved – by having the Traditional Characters changed to Simplified Characters through widely available technology; and by having the content hosted on a URL that won’t upset the Chinese authorities.
“What we now have is the prayer content available in a script used in China and available on a URL that isn’t blocked,” Fr Kelly added.
Sacred Space attracts more than half a million visitors a month, leading them through the Ignatian Examination of Conscience (Examen) with almost 20,000 visitors following the prayerful process on weekdays.
The new Simplified Character site draws on the work done by Irish writers and Chinese translators, most of whom are lay people.
A visitor to the site is led on a journey through five pages. First the visitor is invited to slow down and experience the calm of contemplative stillness. Next the visitor is invited to examine the people and events of a day and see how they have brought him or her to peace and composure or confusion and disturbance.
These “moods” are then viewed in the light of a passage from the Gospel drawn from each day’s Mass. The session ends with a prayerful expression of gratitude for God’s healing.
Developed in 1999 by Irish Jesuit Fr Peter Scally. Sacred Space grew quickly in reach and the number of languages and scripts it offers. Today, the prayer guide is available in 20 languages, including the Simplified and Traditional Chinese scripts and Korean.