There is so much to talk about, I hardly know where to begin.   Trying to narrow the focus of my postings is the hardest for me.  What to talk about, what not to talk about, how long to talk about it.   So, here goes…

Over the past year I have been attending Catholic Mass.  I don’t know why, maybe because there is a church on my street, making it very easy to attend services.   Raised in parochial schools, I have been steeped in Catholic traditions and as a result was a devout child.  That was until I attended college where I studied art and by extension, art history.  I learned about how the early Christians commandeered the symbols of the earlier religions, Greek and Roman mostly.  The more I read, the more I doubted, the less I practiced until I didn’t practice anymore.  I didn’t feel the need to  replace my lost faith with any thing else.  I followed the golden rule and felt it more than adequate as a guide to proper living.   It seems to have have worked so far.

Now I attend mass weekly and I enjoy it.  Not so much for the Catholic-ness of it all, I’m not even sure what that means.  But, somewhere along the line, the priests have changed.  Or, maybe it’s me.  I am finding these men of God pertinent.  The priest in my neighborhood is a young man, probably in his 40s and has an intellectual bent to him.  It is obvious he puts a lot of thought into his sermons and reflects on the world at large, American society and individual challenges.   Sometimes, after mass, I see him in his bright red tennis shirt walking  his short, rather rotund dog.  He seems to be a quiet, thoughtful, thinking person.  Not quite a monk but definitely a contemplative man.

Then there’s Father Hughes.  I met him recently.  I haven’t spoken much about a very cataclysmic event that has happened in my family – my youngest sister died recently of a heart attack.  We are all heartbroken about losing her.  Father Hughes gave an amazing, beautiful homily at her funeral.  The church we grew up in closed a few years ago so we buried her from the old family church, St. Anthony’s.  It is in the heart of the Portuguese part of my home town.  The neighborhood of my parents.  Father Hughes is a tall man who speaks with a Boston Brahmin accent you don’t hear anymore.  He moves like a Shakespearean actor – he’s quite a character.  Irish by birth but after his consignment to this tiny parish, he has adopted the Portuguese language and culture.  Well, the food and wine anyway.

My sister is visiting this week from South Carolina and wanted us all to go to mass at St. Anthony’s.  We piled into cars and got there for the 5 pm mass – the English version, Father Hughes’ mass.  Portuguese version starts at 6 pm with a different priest.  Father Hughes decided to read a poem before the gospel – quite an unusual thing to do.  It confused and maybe even irritated a few of the older ladies.  They stood up in preparation for the gospel.   As no precedent had been established for the poem before gospel portion of the mass, they remained standing.   To their dismay, it was quite a long poem but as Fr. Hughes had announced prior to his recitation, quite beautiful.

After the gospel, he talked about Shakespeare – that people think it is complicated but it isn’t.  It is just using old words but once you understand the old language, you can read it and understand it and experience the beauty of it.  Then, he talked about the old ways of the church before Vatican II.  He said a bunch of new changes were coming and he didn’t seem too happy about it.   He talked about the value of the older traditions and how to honor them, the importance of honoring them.  And then, at the end of mass, he did something very old.  He walked towards the side alter where the Virgin of Fatima reigns over a bank of red candles and recited a series of Hail Marys, alternating between English and Portuguese.

That’s why I like mass, now.  The priests are intelligent and actually have something meaningful to say about modern life.  All the while, they are reviving the old ways, the magical part, the mysterious part of Catholicism.   The tinkling of bells, the candles, the statues, the low mumbling of the people and all that sitting-standing-kneeling seems bizarre to friends who weren’t raised in it.  To me, I find comfort in this pattern, in these rituals.  They all form a meditation.  A time away from the noise (both sound and stress) of my everyday life.  This weekly Sunday morning hour in mass has become a refuge, both intellectually and spiritually.  A refuge from the hectic world, 60 minutes of peaceful ritual, 60 minutes when I don’t have to be anything but a quiet person, quietly mumbling, and sitting-standing-kneeling.  It has become sacred time.