Celebrating Mass.

Introduction

To a remarkable degree, Catholics of all stripes cherish the Mass, judging it the most important expression of their faith, the place where their religious identity continues to be forged in the most distinctive ways. But exactly how well and how faithfully are we doing the Eucharist? And how do Catholics of diverse theological and ecclesiological views understand what it is the Eucharist does?

Opinions vary--wildly, and sometimes heatedly. In hopes of making a contribution to this often contentious debate, Commonweal asked fourteen correspondents to report on their participation in a typical Sunday Eucharist, and we asked them all to report on one Sunday in particular: last October 19, Mission Sunday (the readings: Isaiah 53:4, 10-11; Hebrews 4:1416; Mark 10:35-45). The homilies, the music, the quality of reverence exhibited, even the churches' architecture were all fair game for comment. Did our correspondents' attendance at Mass on one typical Sunday make their faith more or less of a compelling reality in their lives? Above all, how faithfully did the liturgy make Christ present to those in attendance? In an anecdotal, but we trust not an entirely idiosyncratic fashion, we think these brief but informed reflections will help us better understand what American Catholics believe today.

Our fearless reporters went far and wide to get that story: from the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in London, where the liturgical reforms of Vatican II seem to be little more than a nasty rumor, to one of California's first Spanish mission churches, to the quiet of a Catholic Worker house in Notre Dame, Indiana, to a bustling "megachurch" in Minneapolis where high-tech visual aids keep the congregation singing while gazing heavenward. They found that there is still a lot of stained glass and plaster statuary; still a good number of indifferent parishioners; a great deal of singing, some of it fitful; much decent but little inspiring preaching; and enough conflict among generations, immigrant groups, and ideological factions to keep sociologists employed for another millennium.

Why people go to church and what they get out of doing so are complicated questions. In imagining how the future will regard his desultory Manhattan congregation, Paul Elie issues a useful caution: "I thought of the 166 or so of us here today, and how we would be made over into people of our time and place, all our particularities falling away with the flesh, our doubts and misgivings and mutinous impulses smoothed out into generalities about modern American Catholics."

As Elie suggests, generalizations often miss the essence of religious motivation and belief. In reading these liturgical critiques, it would be inappropriate to make any hard or fast judgments about the participants; better to keep in mind the implicit vulnerability of people caught in the act of prayer. That does not mean all analysis should be foregone. One observation made by a number of contributors seems to merit some comment. On this point, Dennis Burke, reporting from California, describes the actions of the celebrant: "There was no doubt about his belief in the Real Presence, but his behavior said to me, `This is meal more than sacrifice; horizontal more than vertical.'" Similarly, Brian Doyle notes how the word "community" was repeated seven times by the priest at his Portland, Oregon, church, while Kathleen Hughes, R.S.C.J., simply judges the Mass she attended "decidedly low church."

Our hunch is that the "vertical" or transcendent aspects of the Mass are more likely to be presumed than explicitly affirmed by most Catholics today. As the squeakiest wheel, it is the "horizontal" that gets most of the attention and much of the criticism. After thirty years of the "reformed" liturgy, have our understandings about the Eucharist shifted too far in a horizontal direction? On the basis of what our correspondents found, we could not say that they have. In fact, it is surprising how little "high" or "low," "horizontal" or "vertical" figure in the quality of the liturgical experiences they report. Still, the ways in which ecclesiology and theology shape each other are real, if subtle. Polls assessing Mass attendance and what Catholics believe about the Real Presence suggest some diminution of confidence, or at least some confusion, in the pews about the nature of the Eucharist.

As more than one of our correspondents reminds us, however, it is not we who judge the liturgy, but the liturgy that judges us. The Mass is where heaven and earth touch, where God makes himself present to his people, as Peggy Rosenthal so aptly puts it, on the "only plane that matters, where we are one Body."

Finally, what is most remarkable, and remarkably evident in the following pages, is how Catholics, despite their disputes and despite constantly falling short, continue to persevere, continue to "do this in memory of me."

Atlanta, Georgia

Sacred Heart Church is downtown, with the SunTrust bank on one side and a "businessmen's hotel" recently restored for urban housing on the other. My geographical parish is also where I choose to worship. The French Romanesque building is one of the few in Atlanta with any age, so it is a historical monument, beautifully maintained by the second collection. The nineteenth-century piety displayed by paintings and windows and statues, or by the marble high altar with gilded tabernacle would not be everyone's taste. I'm not sure they're mine. But they are quietly harmonious, and the adaptations for the reformed liturgy have had to work around them, so that the simple wooden altar facing the people and the lector's podium seem part of a larger eclecticism.

I attend the 10:00 A.M. Mass together with a full and diverse assembly: old people and young (lots of babies), black, Oriental, Hispanic--the Atlanta spectrum--also socioeconomically, from stylish Buckhead matrons to folks a step or so above the street. It feels catholic, this diversity. In a city divided along all these lines, it is healing just being here.

Father Churchwell is the pastor. Trained by Benedictines, he has a good liturgical presence, speaking the words of the liturgy slowly, carefully, and meaningfully. I am here primarily because when he says the eucharistic prayer every syllable sounds as though understood and intended. He is a convert. He takes none of this for granted. The liturgy has spaces for praying in silence and there is never any sense of haste, yet Mass takes only an hour. One reason is that Churchwell's preaching is humble and unadorned, rarely going past seven minutes but always worth hearing.

Today the pastor is hoarse from the flu so the lay deacon preaches. A little shaky with the Gospel (Gentiles get confused with Galileans), he settles down to a thoughtful homily on the Christian life as a life of service (getting the point of the readings just fine), with specific reference to the parish's Vincent de Paul Society, AIDS ministry, and help to Atlanta's street people. A faithful interpretation of the Word of God.

The liturgy has a sense of formality, yet is also familiar and friendly. The small ceremonies (on other Sundays) of inducting new acolytes, commissioning catechists, and welcoming first communicants, are all simple and warm. Today the little boy and girl acolytes--in white robes and wooden crosses--are characteristically solemn and attentive, doing their business unobtrusively. The eucharistic ministers scramble to get the required number but administer both species to virtually all communicants with appropriate demeanor.

The church has a fine organ and a splendid organist. The well-trained choir is garbed in traditional choir robes. They take the lead in the ordinary (Kyrie, etc.), but are joined only raggedly by the congregation today--this is a less-familiar version. The people do join heartily in all verbal responses, the sung responsorial psalm and alleluia, as well as the hymns taken from the 1990 Collegeville Hymnal. Nobody rehearses the congregation, and nobody here seems to miss the busy-work of rehearsal and direction. The choir sings motets during the offertory collection and during the post-Communion meditation period.

Today, after the Communion reflection time, there is a crisp financial report from the parish council. Churchwell makes announcements, says prayers, and gives the blessing. We sing a good song. I walk into the Atlanta sunshine, glad to have been part of a worship, both old and new, classic in its restraint yet giving life to all these various people it draws from every part of this most variegated city of the South.

Luke Timothy Johnson teaches New Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University.

Dayton, Ohio 

Corpus Christi is a small and Spanish-style urban church. Gladioli and ferns decorate the altar. A large crucifix looms prominently in the background. A support for my kneeler is missing; a fellow parishioner quickly explains why two hymnals hold it up.

My son, the football player, notices a teen-ager wearing a jacket from a rival high school. I remind him that here we are all one in Christ. He grimaces playfully.

The pews are full, but not packed, with a mix of people of all ages, 280 altogether (our diocese requires an October count). Dress varies from casual to semidressed-up. There are about fifteen black people present (our socially and economically diverse neighborhood is 50 percent black) and a few Asians and Hispanics. Among the white majority of the congregation, many are of German descent. There are at least three mentally handicapped people in attendance, as well as several who are physically handicapped.

The music director is Chinese, and leads us from the People's Mass Book. The twelve-member choir begins the entrance hymn as the pastor processes up the main aisle along with our permanent deacon, a seminarian-in-residence, two altar girls, and a lector. Over 90 percent of those in the front half of the church sing with pep, while under 10 percent in the rear half of the church sing at all. The overall impression, though, is of a church filled with singing.

The pastor, an excellent liturgist and homilist, welcomes everyone and announces World Mission Sunday. The atmosphere is celebrative yet reverent. The deacon invites all the young children of the parish to come forward to be blessed and sent off to an adjoining room for Liturgy of the Word. About seventeen children and two catechists march off.

The lector and the deacon proclaim the Scriptures loudly and clearly. In between readings, two parishioners lead the congregation in the responsorial psalm. We sing: God is love, and all who live in love live in God. The participation is excellent.

The seminarian-in-residence gives the homily. He bases his reflections on the readings for the day, and he has intelligent things to say. He speaks of how difficult it was to have faith even for those closest to Jesus, and of how faith remains difficult today. James and John missed the point that in this life we are called to be servants. Service begins at home and at work, but on World Mission Sunday we should also be mindful of our call to evangelize the larger world. The homilist's delivery could use improvement, a point he has made himself in the past.

Several candidates for baptism rise to be blessed and to leave with the director of religious education for "breaking of the word." Now at the offertory, the children and their catechists return. During the consecration, the tone shifts from celebrative to solemn. Many heads are bowed. At the elevation of the chalice, a man two pews in front of me strikes his breast. During the Lord's Prayer, people throughout the church hold hands. Their handshakes and greetings at the kiss of peace register as heartfelt. The Lord and his love are present among us.

Almost all of the worshippers receive Communion. Several men and women serve as eucharistic ministers, distributing both host and cup. The Communion hymn is one of my favorites: "We Hold the Death of the Lord Deep in Our Hearts."

Very few people leave immediately after Communion. We move briskly through prayers and announcements and close with a rousing "To Jesus Christ Our Sovereign King." A few people genuflect as they leave their pews. On leaving Mass, many conversations begin among small groups of people. Ten minutes later several groups are still conversing. Many others have already gone over to the school building for coffee and doughnuts.

Several members of my family who attended Mass with me have looked over this liturgical critique and say that, while no one sentence is false, the overall impression I give is idealized. Many of those in attendance, my critics say, were distracted and probably did not get much out of it. I thank God for my gift of experiencing reality in an idealized and glorified manner, and for the grace of this sacrament which nourishes my ability to do so.

Dennis M. Doyle teaches theology at the University of Dayton.

Villanova, Pennsylvania

In undertaking this task I felt a kinship with Justin Martyr, the second-century apologist who described a Sunday assembly in his First Apology. But, unlike Justin, I am not mounting a defense against the misconceptions of non-Christian Romans.

I joined the community assembling in Saint Thomas of Villanova chapel on the campus of Villanova University. We gathered for the earliest of three evening liturgies celebrated to meet the time preferences of students. It was 6:00 P.M. on the Sunday after fall break, and students were still returning, but the pews, seating about 550, were filled. As usual, the congregation likewise attracted persons from the surrounding area, including a diversity of ages and families, which added the exuberance of small children to the assembly. The liturgical coordinator, a young woman, greeted and welcomed us, announced the names of our readers, and encouraged us to turn and greet one another. Accomplished student musicians and singers drew the congregation into song. Instrumental accompaniment for the hymns and responsorial psalms on this evening included guitars, piano, and organ. Did everyone around me, particularly the males, sing? No. But all had come, and most did sing!

The Gothic Revival chapel in which we were gathered has been completely redesigned in accord with liturgical practice after Vatican II. It has white walls, a white marble floor, and an abundance of light, even in the evening darkness. The Eucharist is reserved in a chapel at the front right. On the left is a Mary chapel, with a simple icon portrayal. The altar-table, made of marble, has been moved forward, so that the front of the congregation wraps around it. The chapel's simple decoration will not send lovers of baroque into rapture, but I like it.

The Word and responsorials from the Scriptures were read by women and men. The presider, Father Richard O'Leary, O.S.A., from campus ministry, homilized on the themes of suffering, compassion, and service which resonated in the readings and Gospel, making connections with the service projects for which many students had volunteered during the previous days of fall break. He compared the disciples who were afraid to really understand Jesus' openness to suffering with the blindness and fear in his own/our lives as related to the poor and suffering. In reflecting on how a Christian is called to be different in that regard, the homilist did not set himself above the community but acknowledged his own struggle, relating what the guests of Saint Francis Hospice in Philadelphia taught him about the presence of Christ, as he worked there with student volunteers. Having joined his struggle to ours, he proclaimed the eucharistic prayer in the name of all.

Women and men assisted the presider in the preparation of the gifts. The entire assembly then stood during the eucharistic prayer, singing the "Holy, Holy, Holy" and the Great Amen. We were not passive observers but baptized concelebrants. All joined hands for the Lord's Prayer. All offered greetings of peace, but with greater warmth evident among those who came as friends. Admittedly, the web of relationships in our complex, mobile society differs from those of a village. We have left behind other barriers: the Apostolic Tradition of the third century was adamant that men not give the kiss of peace to women, or vice versa; church orders of the third and fourth centuries also insisted that different genders, and thus families, sit apart. We, by contrast, were served by eight eucharistic ministers, both men and women. All received the body of Christ; a majority took the cup. The reverence indicated that those receiving did not consider Eucharist to be ordinary food. After the closing song, everyone applauded.

Could I find shortcomings? Certainly--but as Pope John XXIII noted in his speech opening Vatican II, the past is not perfection in comparison to our era. The third-century Didascalia instructed the deacon to keep people from "whispering, falling asleep, or laughing." Caesarius, the sixth-century bishop of Aries, complained that many left right after the homily. Our gathering did not have that problem. I think God was pleased to hear our prayer.

Bernard P. Prusak teaches theology at Villanova.

New York, New York

The Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Mission Sunday, was also the day two friends of mine were married. The evening ceremony threw the morning Mass into relief, and left me with a liturgical melancholy.

Richard and Margaret are Jewish; he was raised Reform, she as an atheist. They decided to be married at a former synagogue on the Lower East Side, now the headquarters of a progressive art foundation, a crumbling building with a shaky tabernacle surviving at one end. It was Jewish, and it was not. Everybody thought it was the perfect space.

The couple forbade any mention of God during the service. Instead, the cantor would sing an Italian love song as well as some of the old blessings. We would dance to Western swing, eat slices of a wedding cake decorated like a mosaic. And I would stand in the nave, wine glass in hand like the microphone of a man making a documentary, and try to ask people about the past history of the place, the city's oldest synagogue and its first Reform temple. I pictured men in black suits shaking their fists at the deity as the pogrom came. How many prayers had they lofted toward that ceiling, how many shouts and murmurs of praise and thanks and supplication? What had they prayed for? I could read about Jews of that time and place, but I would never really know what the people of that congregation had brought to synagogue each week--the particulars of their observance, the inward back-and-forth of their struggle to believe that God was just, that there was a God in the first place.

I hardly knew any better the particular beliefs of the people with whom I had attended Mass in the morning. Whereas my friends had fashioned a liturgy for themselves, those of us at the church in Chelsea that morning took the sacrament more or less as we found it. Were we some people just passing through, or a people with a faith being passed through us?

Guardian Angel, on Tenth Avenue at Twenty-first Street, is built like a fortress on the outside and a compact basilica within. There were no black suits in this congregation. There were no suits of any color. Levi Strauss was here. So was Tommy Hilfiger. The bulletin said 166 people had come to Mass last Sunday, and there appeared to be about that many today. The little group in the pews near me might have been an entourage representing the church of the next century: a Hispanic mother and her two children, a young black woman who could have been a model, an aged Irishman in a windbreaker, a white nun in a black habit, and me, a sometime churchgoer, going to Bloomingdale's afterward to exchange a gift.

The announcement came: The Mass would be celebrated by the parish administrator. The priest strode up the aisle and took a seat to the side. Two altar girls accompanied him, and in his opening remarks he told the congregation that the servers were taking part in the liturgy for the first time. Then he moved through the opening prayers with dispatch. Maybe he had another Mass to say in another parish.

The homily was a missed opportunity. On Mission Sunday last year, a priest working in Africa had come and given an expert homily on the need to spread the resources of the gospel worldwide. Today, the missionary was the parish administrator, trying to convert a few dozen Americans to a faith deeper than what they came with.

As I listened, I thought of all the homilies that had been given over the centuries so that this priest could stand before me today and give his. Imagine all the trouble that had been taken so that there might be a Roman Catholic church on the far edge of Chelsea! One day, this church had not been a church, just a cleared lot, stacks of bricks and stone, pledged human labor, and an aspiration: to plant Catholic Christianity in North America.

Those efforts had been a success, by most reckonings. But one day, as likely as not, this church would be a church no longer. What then? I tried to imagine the old Church of the Guardian Angel deconsecrated, sold, and renovated--now an art gallery, say, or a dozen apartments, each with a stained glass window in the breakfast nook. I thought of the 166 or so of us here today, and how we would be made over into people of our time and place, all our particularities falling away with the flesh, our doubts and misgivings and mutinous impulses smoothed out into generalities about modern American Catholics.

Supposedly we were bound together by the liturgy, and bound back to the past. But the liturgy is meant to bind us to the future, too, in hope and expectation, the way my friends bound themselves together on their wedding day.

Suppose someday there was no liturgy here. What would the future think of us then? Over Sunday breakfast, at the video art opening, or during the wedding in the rented space, the people who would come after us would try to know us through what they felt they lacked, through the vestiges of Catholicism still lingering on the premises. I could hear them already, telling each other that once upon a time, back when we were here, God lived in this place.

Paul Elie is a frequent Commonweal contributor.

Rochester, New York 

A lot would have to go wrong with the liturgy for Mass not to make my Catholic faith a more compelling reality. On October 19, things at my parish went fairly right--which means, to my taste. But, as Annie Dillard brilliantly dramatizes in her essay, "An Expedition to the Pole," personal taste is not what Mass is meant to serve. Only when Dillard imagines herself transformed into the most ridiculous member of her church's dreadful singing group can she join the wacky communal trip toward the Absolute.

I'm not as tough as Dillard, so I was grateful this Sunday that the music was mostly congenial. The choir did well for amateurs. I liked their brief chanting of the Asperges me during the opening sprinkling rite. I liked the organist's perky improvised march as the children left, with the presider's blessing, for their own Liturgy of the Word. I had to put up with only one hymn I can't bear, "Here I am, Lord."

I was grateful, too, for our pastor's eucharistic reverence as presider. Though I'm frustrated that his pre-Vatican II conception of the Eucharist keeps our parish locked in an outmoded theology, his joy that Jesus is "truly present in the Holy Eucharist" (as he appends to some of the prayers) overflows into a genuine welcoming spirit. So, as is his custom, he invited those bringing up the gifts to set the table. He beamed encouragingly at the altar servers, especially the girl with Downs syndrome whom the parish has nurtured since infancy; when she started serving last year our hearts collectively melted. Our pastor's repeated metaphor of "parish family" was enhanced by our visual surroundings: the Gothic carved wood Apostles joining us in the sanctuary, around the walls the extended family of stained-glass saints surrounding us in this 1910 church.

I was even grateful, in a way I've learned from Dillard, for the disastrous homily given by a guest priest. Choosing to read the Gospel option for Mission Sunday, he then performed a stand-up comedy monologue on his hilarious adventures with alligators and tarantulas in the Nicaraguan jungle. I was furious at his wrecking of the liturgy's spirit; yet it gave me something concrete to forgive at the Lord's Prayer. I also had to forgive, there, the irritating inattention of about a fifth of the congregation: those who drifted in late, who sat with dully blank faces, who didn't sing the hymns or Mass parts, despite the cantor's joyously energetic efforts to engage them. But praying "forgive us ... as we forgive," I thought: Am I any different? My attention drifts even as I sing; my body gets to church on time while my spirit lags behind; surely I can be as ridiculously maddening to others as the homilist was to me.

I'm not trying to make a case for inattention or lousy liturgy. But I'm willing to forgive some bumbling at Mass because, really, we are all just bumbling toward the kingdom. Sunday Mass is most meaningful to me when I'm celebrating it with those I've stumbled along with--even crashed into--in our efforts to build the kingdom during the preceding week. So this Sunday, my Catholic faith became the most compelling reality at the moment when I received Communion from a fellow parishioner with whom I clash on every political issue of church or society. As we exchanged the words "The Body of Christ" and "Amen," and our Lord passed between our hands, our eyes met on what we both knew was the only plane that matters, where we are one Body.

Peggy Rosenthal is co-editor of Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry (Oxford University Press).

London, England

Maybe it is not as important as we often think it is that the eucharistic liturgy be celebrated according to contemporary sensibilities and postcounciliar changes. These things are certainly important to me, but after my experience on October 19, I have been questioning some of my assumptions.

The liturgy we attended couldn't, by my standards, have been more off-putting. But the church was surprisingly full for a Sunday evening at 7:00 o'clock. And it was most noticeably full of young men and women in their twenties, people in decidedly short supply at the Masses I usually attend. I was in London at the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri in Brompton Road, Kensington. I have been to Mass at the Oratory several times over the years--not because I admire either its architecture or its liturgies, but because I can reliably find my way there.

Brompton Oratory, as it is usually called, is an Italianate basilica, vast and ornate, easily seating 1,500. Its founders were Fathers Frederick Faber and John Henry Newman and the present church was completed in the late 1890s. To my eyes, it is an ugly church even though it has lately been restored so that the gaudy marble, plaster, and paint look as good at they were ever meant to.

The main altar was the style of altar I grew up with, part of the east wall of the huge sanctuary, raised up five or six steps, and placed so that the celebrant's back is to the congregation. There was no altar placed at the front of the sanctuary so that Mass could be offered by a priest facing the congregation. (Later in the week I checked at Westminster Cathedral in London and found that the placement of the altar was the same as it is in all American churches I have seen. The great Gothic cathedrals in Paris and Chartres have also successfully adapted altar and sanctuary to the demands of the liturgical reforms.)

The liturgy at Saint Philip Neri was certainly a "one-man show." The priest, unassisted by servers, offered the opening prayers and read from the Old and New Testaments from a lectern facing the congregation. Then he crossed the sanctuary to read the Gospel. When I saw a man in cassock and surplice enter the sanctuary, I thought, "Ah ha, the server is running late." But no, this was a missionary priest come to give the homily. October 19 was World Mission Sunday. The homily consisted of several amusing stories about life in Pakistan and East Africa and was not entirely without theological content. However, no attempt was made to tie it to the readings for the day. After the homily, the celebrant made a few announcements. Among these was an observation that there was a shortage of readers and servers at this Mass, and a suggestion that perhaps some young men in the congregation might wish to consider this ministry. After the prayers of the faithful, several young men in cassocks did manage to take up the collection, and I couldn't help meanly wondering why the shortage had not included that ministry.

There were no individual greetings at the "Peace be with you." In fact, I didn't even notice the words of the greeting. The prayers of the offertory and the consecration were audible because there were microphones on the altar, but the effect of the celebrant's being sixty feet away with his back turned to us was more painful to me than I ever would have guessed. We received the Eucharist kneeling at an altar rail in exactly the way I remember doing in my childhood. A second priest appeared to assist, gesturing impatiently when we didn't fill in the empty places at the rail quickly enough. There was no chalice for the communicants.

If I were reviewing a theatrical event, I'd have to say it couldn't have been worse. But there were seven or eight hundred people there on a Sunday at seven in the evening! Their devotion was palpable; most received Holy Communion. In a village in Sussex the following Sunday, the liturgy was similar to the beautiful, communal Eucharist in my home parish of Saint Agnes in San Francisco--to which I have gratefully returned.

Lyn C. Isbell teaches English in a Catholic high school in San Francisco.

South Bend, Indiana 

On alternating Sundays, we go to Mass at the Holy Family Catholic Worker House in South Bend. Because our motley congregation is diminutive and predictable, because most of the priests are also our friends, and because our venue is a medium-sized living room, the liturgical complexion, if that's the right phrase, usually combines familiarity and formality. And we usually start about fifteen minutes late.

This is a usual Sunday. Two Mexican families have been staying at the house, and they have joined us for the last couple of Masses, but today we are a middle-class, mostly Anglo group of some thirty folks. From nearby Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College, there are teachers, students, and administrators, some of their spouses and some of their kids. There are also young and old social workers, a high-school teacher, a video producer, a couple of longstanding friends of the house, and a couple of grandparents visiting from Tennessee.

The Saint Joseph River Valley is astun with autumn, and, in observance of Notre Dame home-game football weekend rites, many of us have been together at parties last night, so our procession from the front porch, through an aromatic kitchen and dining room, is a confused, noisy, and meandering affair of gossip resumed, good-natured taunts exchanged, and adolescents exasperated. In the living room, where a dozen folding chairs have been added to the furniture, we arrange ourselves around an end table which will be our altar. It is covered with an embroidered cloth on which have been placed a thick yellow candle, an earthenware vase of wildflowers, and the missal. It takes only a few seconds for a recollecting silence to dissolve the general chat, and we begin.

An abrupt, mutual diffidence and the absence of musically gifted members preclude an opening hymn this morning, but there are some newcomers among us, and the murmured round of introductions initiated by our priest seems an appropriate replacement. We make the sign of the cross together and recite the anciently prescribed words. When or whether our reflex becomes fervor, I wouldn't presume to say. I do know that we've shown up, we are trying to pray attentively together, and we are awaiting Jesus.

An intimate friend of many present--conversant with and even participant in the joys, woes, follies, and triumphs of two generations of us--the priest is able to homilize compellingly about the subtle and lethal ways any of us can abandon the trail of our Lord to go whoring after status in the kingdom, and about the mercy which might inhere in our occluded perceptions of his grace. I notice that even my teen-agers seem to be listening.

With the exceptions of the Gospel reading and the recitation of the Our Father (during which we, including my own curmudgeonly self, join hands), we remain seated throughout the liturgy. In the prayer of the faithful, the present and former guests of the house are remembered, as are two relatives dying of cancer and the victims and perpetrators of a recent round of driveby shootings in town. Rap music from a hyperamplified car stereo throbs on the street outside as the priest holds up a small loaf of bread and a ceramic cup filled with wine and utters the words of institution. There is silence for a minute or two before we proclaim the mystery of faith. We receive Communion together, under both kinds. We pray in silence for a time before dismissal, after which a burgeoning general chat dissolves our recollected silence.

A new staff member at the house shyly announces that she has made some apple cobbler, and that there is fresh coffee brewing in the kitchen. Both are delicious.

Michael O. Garvey is the author of Finding Fault (Thomas More).

Corpus Christi, Texas 

The cathedral of Corpus Christi, after surviving hurricanes and termites, stands sturdily on the high bluff overlooking Corpus Christi Bay. The architecture is New-World Spanish, appropriately, since the ethnic make-up of the city is now about 50 percent Mexican-American.

The interior of the cathedral has preserved its colorful flavor: statues of Mary and Joseph, still in their niches, with their own altar; Saint Patrick and Saint Therese of Lisieux; paintings of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary; and a large mural of Christ the King and several saints in the apse. The high marble pulpit is still used for the readings.

My observation of the congregants at the 9:30 A.M. Mass revealed an impressive devotion, so that any question of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist would have been an act of supererogation. Nearly everyone in the church partook of the Eucharist, I thought with due solemnity, yet a feeling of intimacy.

The music was magnificent, led by two highly professional ministers, Lee Gwozdz and Greg Labus, and the Pontifical Choir of about a hundred voices carrying the congregation along in the sung parts, all but the Creed and the Our Father.

The service began with an excellent organ prelude. The Kyrie was sung in the Latin of the old Mass XVI, alternating between choir and congregation. The Gloria, also in Latin, was from the old Mass VIII, the Mass of the Angels, and was sung in its entirety by choir and congregation.

Other musical highlights included a thrilling rendition of the anthem--appropriate to the Gospel reading--"Seek to Serve," by composer Lloyd Pfautsch; the Agnus Dei, which came out, "Cordero de Dios," from the Misa Guadalupe by Joel Martinson, sung entirely in Spanish; and finally, the Communion hymn, sung by choir and congregation, "In This Sacrament, Lord Jesus," by William J. Marsh, whose Latin Masses and motets were very popular before the council.

Father Lowery Ross, the celebrant, based his homily on the Gospel reading, to scold us a little bit about being selfish, like James and John. He spoke from the steps of the sanctuary, with the usual lapel mike. I found the amplification very poor, with too little treble for intelligible speech.

In the sanctuary were three altar boys and one girl.

For me the Mass was a means of palpable grace and reaffirmation of faith, in great part, I must confess, because of the extraordinary music. I hope I may be forgiven: I was director in that same choir loft for ten years.

Ralph Thibodeau is professor emeritus of Music Literature and Western Humanities at Del Mar College.

Queens, New York

On a typical Sunday, Saint Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Jackson Heights, Queens, is one of the busiest places in this bustling neighborhood of immigrants, old and new. With at least 5,000 families in the parish, this grand Romanesque-style church has eight Sunday Masses, including two in Spanish. I went there seeking quiet prayer and reflection and wondered if that was any more likely to happen there than at Grand Central Station at rush hour. Saint Joan's main sanctuary is a spectacular mosaic of marble and bronze. Even when empty, the space is alive with images of the saints, from the Twelve Apostles to Saint Ambrose to Saint Gregory the Great.

The noon English Mass was a staid and solemn affair, attended mostly by the neighborhood's graying Irish, Polish, German, and Italian parishioners. A single, sweet voice from the organist's loft resonated throughout the service, singing the hymns I've known and loved my whole life. As familiar as the Mass was, I found it hard personally to connect to a priest who was himself a visitor and had to ask the congregation if there was to be a second offering, then apologized for rushing because he was due in a separate part of the church for another Mass.

Minutes later, the church was bursting with more than a thousand mostly young Hispanics. Crowded around a statue of Saint Joan in her armor at the front of the church, a youth choir, complete with an electric-guitar player, a percussionist, and a keyboard player, belted out lively Spanish hymns. Listening to the quick tempo and rich voices of the group, I remembered the hymnal from my Catholic school in Texas with the words of Saint Augustine on the cover reminding us that singing was like praying twice. Surely that would make this choir a veritable novena in every note.

The parishioners of Saint Joan, though divided by language, listened, for the most part, to the same readings and recited the same prayers, each group with its own sense of devotion. They shared the same wooden pews and absorbed the grandeur of the sanctuary. And yet, it was as if they were in two separate spiritual worlds. So I sat there, feeling myself somewhere in between the two. Amid a symphony of sights and sounds, I searched for the spirit of the liturgy and found it, not so much in the splendor of the altar nor even in the chimes at the consecration, but in the small details from both of the scenes I had witnessed: young men kneeling in their blue jeans and sneakers on the marble floor; women tapping their hands on the altar to the beat of the choir band; a priest laying his hand on a child's head as he gave the host to the boy's father; an old Hispanic woman making the sign of the cross four different ways across her wrinkled face, praising Christ in a whisper of Spanish; the tiny palm of a child's hand turned upward as she recited the Lord's Prayer. In all of these things, I found the mystery of the sacrament that made this church alive and whole.

Elena Cabriel is a free-lance writer who lives in New York City.

San Rafael, California 

Saint Rafael's, one of the original California missions, sits on a rise 200 yards above the main drag of American Graffiti and downtown San Rafael. Fifteen minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge, Saint Rafael's is the principal church in Marin County, where only 31 percent of the people are churched. My only explanation for the low degree of churchedness is that Marin County is so beautiful that many believe they are already in paradise. So, the 250 people--middle class, shop owners, contractors, retired--at the 9:00 A.M. Mass were among the religious elite.

Three things struck me about Saint Rafael's. First, they take the liturgy seriously. The old, high-ceilinged church (not the original mission church) has been nicely redone to accommodate the reforms of Vatican II. The altar is in the center of the nave facing the people on three sides. A young woman smartly introduced the celebrant. Then the young music director led the congregation with a guitar and a clean, pleasing voice in a key we could sing. A beautifully modulated organ accompanied us twice and, along with the music selections, enhanced the sense of the sacred. I can't say our singing loosened the stained glass, but the people--many older, silvered, and bent--sang hard, for Catholics.

Second, the young priest celebrant was obviously invested in this liturgy, speaking and singing in a spirited way, making eye contact with all three sides. When people clapped half-heartedly to the rhythm of a zippy alleluia, he chided them gently: "The clapping is new, but we have to grow. We don't come here to be just head Catholics but heart Catholics." I must say the sermon, though heartfelt, was not tightly tied together: Stretching the Gospel theme of service to mean compassion was off-target and disconcerting. And I would have liked a few more ideas. Everybody shook hands at the kiss of peace, some rather shyly, and we received the Eucharist under both species before we shared a sacred minute of silence.

Third, the way the priest said the words of consecration implicitly emphasized the Last Supper over Calvary. He used a smooth, reverent, conversational tone not much different from the rest of the canon. There was no doubt about his belief in the Real Presence, but his behavior said to me, "This is meal more than sacrifice; horizontal more than vertical." And I couldn't help but compare his style with that of a particularly pious priest in a parish nearby, who brings the canon to a halt and utters in a kind of hush: "This is my body," then holds the upraised host for long, mystical moments. More sacrifice, more vertical, less horizontal.

Do these subtle emphases impact beliefs in the reality of the Eucharist? I can't say, although I would prefer a mix of the two. Even the banquet is a mystical action. There may have been a serious doubter or two at the Mass, but my guess is that most if not all believed in the Real Presence and found that belief nourished, as I did, by this liturgy.

Dennis Burke is a writer living in Ross, California, just over the hill from San Rafael.

Gaithersburg, Maryland

I began vesting for the 11:00 A.M. Mass only minutes before the cantor started rehearsing the assembly. Someone after 9 o'clock Mass had needed to talk over a crisis at home, and it took me a bit longer than I had anticipated to hear her out. So, now I was in a rush to get to the entrance as the cantor began going over the refrain to the responsorial psalm. Part of my brain was still revising the conclusion to my homily. It had gone well at 7:30 A.M. Mass, and was better at the 9, but I still didn't feel the close was strong.

"Here in the place, new light is streaming," we began to sing, and off we went down the aisle, as I put aside any effort to find a better closing for the homily. People are really singing today, I thought. It's a good song, they like it and know it well: "See in this space our fears and our dreamings.... "

After the greeting, I urged people to raise their hands if there was an empty seat near them--the walls were already lined with standees. "Gather us in," we had just sung, and the Lord certainly was answering our prayers! The claustrophobic feeling of the crowded room eased a bit as I dismissed seventy-five-plus kids to their own children's liturgy of the Word. Wondrously, everyone seemed to quiet down almost immediately, and a particularly good reader kept our attention fixed as she proclaimed the servant song of Isaiah.

The remainder of the Liturgy of the Word "worked," by which I mean people seemed attentive, engaged, not restless. I was satisfied with my homily, and I let go of any worry about how to wrap it up. "Third time's a charm," I mused, feeling good that I'd given it my best shot. I knew that some would be helped by what I had said and others wouldn't, and the rest was out of my hands.

"Columbia Road Health Services will receive our tithe this week," I announced; then I explained that the organization provides services for the indigent of our area, and I urged people to make their own gift a sacrificial one, just as the parish itself sacrifices by tithing each week. The energy in the room escalated significantly as the children returned to their parents, the youngest ones clutching some sort of papers that their leader of prayer had evidently used in her homily.

I listened carefully for those notes as I began singing Haugen's Mass of Creation. At the last Mass I'd lost track somehow and messed up part of the epiclesis, and so I was particularly attentive this time around. The assembly's responses were strong and clear, and today it seemed as if virtually everyone was singing. Their energy lifted me up. I felt their prayerfulness, and I thrilled at the strength of their faith. I thought of the woman dying of cancer whom I was going to visit in a few hours, and how her sufferings were what the first reading was about. As I broke the bread with the eucharistic ministers, I thought of the phrase in our parish's vision statement, " ... broken we gather ... " and the words of the opening song played again in my ears, " ... gather us in.... "

Robert D. Duggan is pastor of Saint Rose of Lima Parish in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

While visiting the Twin Cities, I worshiped in a suburban Minneapolis megachurch of 4,000 families where parishioners join at the rate of one family a day. My overwhelming impressions were of youth and energy--greeters at each entrance, the nursery filling rapidly, parishioners placing intentions in a basket which would be held aloft at the prayer of the faithful. A video monitor in the gathering space near the entrance scrolled through the events of the day and the week ahead--meetings for every conceivable ministry--testifying to high involvement in parish life and a huge outreach beyond its walls. Before Mass, the pastor roamed throughout the assembly, chatting, receiving "news bulletins," embracing and being tackled by children.

Remarkably, the 1,650 seats filled up from front to back; the "cheap seats" in the addition allow only limited sight of the altar and three-sided assembly. Many parishioners paused to bless themselves at the font, a large immersion pool near the entrance to the church. Although religious art fills the complex, there is none in the sanctuary space; only fall-colored banners adorned the back wall. But as I would discover, there is a strong sense of Christ's presence in the assembly itself.

Just before the Eucharist began, the music group led a rehearsal of "Lead Me, Guide Me," an African-American hymn. I noticed there were few black, Hispanic, or Asian parishioners--at least at this celebration. People rehearsed willingly and then rose for the procession. Today's presider was a religious-order priest who serves this community once or twice a month. He was joined during the liturgy by at least twenty others, women and men in equal number, all of whom appeared at ease in their ministries. The assembly sang well, perhaps because the lyrics were projected on two large screens. Everyone could look up, not into a hymnal.

After the liturgical greeting and an informal word, the presider introduced the readings with two questions which became part of the penitential rite. A sufficient pause followed so we could actually think about the questions. I suspect we heard the readings better because of this introduction. An improvised opening prayer came next. Because it did not employ the traditional cue, and because the sound system was either poor or poorly used, few said "Amen" at the conclusion of this prayer or any of the other prayers. Care had been taken with inclusive language and in using a variety of metaphors for the name of God. But having worked with the International Commission on English in the Liturgy for nineteen years, I would have appreciated some nod to the existence of a Sacramentary. Spoken prayers were the element of the liturgy least attended to.

The homily about gospel service was developed in the context of the recent national gathering of Promise Keepers. On this Sunday the homily was directed explicitly to the men. It offered the gospel injunction not to lord one's authority over others as a corrective to the notion of male leadership of wife and family. "Service does not mean that I decide what you need and serve you, but that we mutually serve one another after asking what it is the other really needs." Men--and the women and children with them. paid close attention.

There were warm greetings of peace, a reaching out toward others at the Our Father, and mutual affection among families. The seven-minute Communion procession (real bread; both species) was reverent and included blessings for infants and small children. Few left worship before the final hymn.

The liturgy was decidedly low church. The assembly was there by choice and participated actively. Insofar as any participant-observer prays, I prayed, giving thanks for this young and vital face of the church.

Kathleen Hughes, R.S.C.J., teaches at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

Chicago, Illinois

The morning is sunny but cold. Alone or in silent pairs, they enter the huge gray Gothic church for the 8 o'clock Mass at this suburban Chicago parish. Inside, there is something everywhere for the eyes: statues, paintings, mosaics, stained glass windows, and mottled marble pillars. At the altar, the vested celebrant will nearly disappear into the jumble.

The song leader welcomes the people, nearly all white and elderly, scattered three and four to a pew throughout the church. When she announces the first hymn, they stand dutifully but stolidly gaze forward. Despite the bouncy refrain, "All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place," they don't seem sure. They keep their coats on, just in case, and neither the spirited piano playing nor the enthusiastic song leader can draw a sound from them.

After the solemn cadences of Isaiah's suffering servant and Hebrews' great high priest comes the story of James and John, lobbying for promotion from "fisherman" to "Assistant Messiah," despite their lack of qualifications.

The pastor then comes down from the altar to the center aisle. He begins to reflect gently and conversationally on power, leadership, and service. At first his words are wispy, bloodless, remote from the din and dust of daily life. But they come alive as he points to good parents as common but powerful examples of suffering-servant leadership. Like Jesus himself, the pastor doesn't sugarcoat it. The power and leadership entailed in service, he says, will make us suffer. Yet its pain can make us wise and compassionate, like Jesus the great high priest. What we have in the Gospel this morning, he concludes, is really a new vision of what we are--and what we can become. There, in ordinary language, is the Paschal Mystery--in just thirteen minutes.

A stillness pervades the rest of the Mass. The pastor does not try to whip up their energy nor urge the people to sing or respond louder. At the Lord's Prayer, however, he invites them to stand and join hands. Most of them do. In the small tableau formed up in the sanctuary, holding hands with the song leader, piano player, lectors, and altar server, he is the only male.

In the final prayer, he improvises. He thanks God "for our selves, for each other, for this parish, and for every single member of this parish." This parish, however, has spent two hard years planning to renovate the church's interior. Angry parishioners, feeling thwarted in the process, have even aired their complaints in the local newspaper. He still gives thanks "for every single member."

Yet a third of the congregation is leaving or gone by the end of the final hymn. What this Mass has meant to them remains their secret. Alone or in silent pairs, they walk away from the church. The sun hasn't broken the morning's chill.

Jon Nilson teaches theology at Loyola University, Chicago.

Portland, Oregon

A little Catholic university chapel, all cedar and sunlight, amid a riot of rhododendrons. Behind the chapel a crowd of muscular old oak trees. Before it a sea of fresh-cut grass, dotted with scrawny cherry trees, toddlers, dandelions. Above it a ragged arrowhead of geese, southing.

Sounds: pants-legs scissoring toward Mass, small talk by the front door, chirping children, a metronomic phoebe, Bach's Organ Fugue in C Minor.

Inside: a small child with his right arm in the baptismal font up to his shoulder. Child's father turns and notices his son's oar in the water; father emits indescribable sound, carts boy off to dry pew.

Mass begins, gently.

There are perhaps 150 people at Christ the Teacher this morning, the great majority of them undergraduates, although it's an all-ages show, and from the balcony where I ride herd on my three small children, I see gray hair, white hair, green hair, blue hair, no hair.

My children, interested and hungry, eat crackers.

"This morning we gather as a faith community to broaden our vision," says the young priest. He will utter the word community seven times this morning, by my count; tribal binding is the clear theme of this Mass. Two other priests are robed and on the altar, and the whole crowd sings lustily, holds hands while chanting the Our Father, exchanges hearty handshakes of peace at startling length (one energetic boy making his way completely around the chapel). All but a handful will receive Communion; all but a handful will stay after Mass to chat in cheerful knots; all, apparently, are excited and stimulated by Mass. This crowd isn't dutiful; it's pumped. Rumors of death of faith among youth greatly exaggerated, at least this morning.

The Gospel, from Mark, is about the Apostles James and John, who itch for good seats in heaven and demand same of the Rabbi. Christ fires back classic Christly conundrum: he who wishes to be great must be a servant.

Homily: "Not the most flattering portrait of James and John, is it? They ask for prestige and power, and Christ rebukes them sharply, as he rebukes us, all these years later, as we itch for power, too. Be honest: Don't you wish for status among your peers? Don't you want to be first and best? We're more like James and John than we like to admit, and as usual, Christ disturbs us.... "

My children, having marched through crackers and ginger snaps, are now eating grapes.

Eucharist: At the moment of transformation the priest pauses for a tremulous instant, and the whole chapel is riveted and silent as he hoists I am who am aloft; and then comes the Communion shuffle, the sharp smell of mediocre wine, dry crackers on tongues, another hymn, and the ranks of bowed, meditating heads, blessing and dismissal, another hymn, and then the organ groans awake and sends us out again into the light, where the phoebe is still keeping time, and for no reason, every reason, I am delighted, my pockets filled with grapes, my pinkies gripped by small boys, my morning mad with miracles.

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He and his father, Jim Doyle, are the authors of Two Voices (Ligouri), a collection Of their essays.