MONG SON, Vietnam (UCAN) -- Children danced and offered flowers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus throughout June, maintaining a tradition that has helped anchor faith in this rural parish for decades, through difficult times.

Children dance and offer flowers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus at Mong Son parish.

"Before daily prayers or Mass at the church, a group of 12 children in white shirts and blue trousers conducts a traditional dance and offers flowers, candles and incense to a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus," Marie Do Thi Na told UCA News.

Na said her Mong Son parish, in Yen Bai province's Yen Binh district, 220 kilometers northwest of Ha Noi, has nine of these groups, with 108 children aged 7-12. She is one of 18 local people who teach children how to perform the traditional offering. Local Catholics dedicate June to the Sacred Heart.

Each day one of the groups presents a 30-minute performance in front of the Sacred Heart statue, which is placed on an altar covered by a piece of red cloth with the words Hay De Tre Nho Den Voi Ta (Let the children come to me). Meanwhile, 10 catechists sing hymns with traditional arrangements. The altar is set up outside the parish's small wooden church.

Some group members who performed the devotion on the evening of June 22 spoke with UCA News at the church about their involvement.

"I am very happy to dance and offer flowers to the Sacred Heart for three years," Pierre Ngo Ngoc Trien, 10, said. He noted they spend the last two weeks of May practicing their dances.

According to the fourth-grader, his performance helps him feel Jesus' great love for children, which inspires him to study hard, help his classmates with lessons, obeys his teachers and parents, and not lie or use foul language.

Maria Nguyen Thi Linh, 8, said she can "talk with Jesus" while she dances in front of the Sacred Heart statue. "I pray for my family, especially for my grandmother, who is 86, to have good health," added the girl, whose parents extract rocks from a quarry and load them onto trucks and boats to support their six children.

Joseph Vu Trung Duc, 7, added that after their performance, the children are given food prepared with the help of local Catholics' donations.

Michael Mai Xuan Vuong, a parish council member, told UCA News his parish, with 5,000 Catholics, has been offering flowers to the Sacred Heart statue since the early 1980s. Local Catholics built the current wooden church in 1974, when their subparish was founded, and practiced their faith for decades without resident priests or Religious, he said. When Mong Son became a parish in June 2007, Father Michael Nguyen Tien Quang was assigned as parish priest.

Vuong, 65, recalled that during difficult times without priests, local Catholics maintained their faith by gathering at their church to say prayers, recite the rosary in October, chant Jesus' suffering in Lent, and dance and offer flowers to the Blessed Mother and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They also held catechism quizzes they picked up from other parishes, he added.

Children, who danced and offered flowers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, have dinner together.

Without such religious activities, the lay leader said, "we would have led a sad and boring life."

Vuong pointed out that in the past they also had difficulties with the local government, which did not recognize Catholicism, discriminated against them, limited religious activities and barred them from repairing or building churches. But he added, "Such difficulties did not discourage us from gathering at the church for prayers and traditional faith practices."

Father Quang told UCA News the late Father Vincent Nguyen Van Trong, pastor of Yen Bai parish, 40 kilometers away and also in Hung Hoa diocese, began flower offerings to the Sacred Heart in Yen Bai in 1980.

The songs that accompany the devotion he noted, are Sacred Heart hymns set to music composed by Cardinal Paul Joseph Pham Dinh Tung, retired archbishop of Ha Noi, who served as bishop of Bac Ninh, another northern diocese, 1963-94.

The 35-year-old priest, who used to join children's groups offering flowers to the Sacred Heart and served as an altar boy while growing up in Yen Bai parish, said he tries to keep such traditional faith practices alive.

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