A Grand Assumption

Mystical rose, Tower of David, House of god, Tower of ivory,
Ark of the covenant, Gate of heaven, Morning star, Pray for us.

We had a grand feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 15. Our choir was back for a command performance and did a fine rendition of that first polyphonic mass by Machaut. It was a dark and stormy night but we had a good crowd with many visitors. We processed to the Shrine of St. Mary and Our Lord, which was nicely adorned with roses and some devotee had scattered a small sea of rose petals, which was a nice touch. It was the debut of our new deacon, Rev. Paul Kahn, and he did a fine job with an excellent singing voice for the Gospel. We only sang one Marian hymn, however, which rather disappointed a few of us, and I would much rather have heard Charpentier's Missa Assumpta est Maria. I went home and listened to it on CD but it wasn't quite the same. It was the tenth anniversary of the St. Mary's diaspora and I was reminiscing on that glorious Assumption at SMV on a hot Friday 10 years ago. I had gone by the Shrine Church of St. Mary at lunch hour to pay my annual respects. They were in the midst of the sung mass as I arrived, so I enjoyed Kenny's latest blend as I said a prayer at the shrine and asked her forgiveness for saying for many years that she didn't live there anymore. For years it really felt that way after the great debacle that was the end of the Wells era there, for which I was witness three years before returning to the Ignatian fold. I thought about that day ten years ago that I had so enjoyed being subdeacon for the Solemn Mass. It was probably the grandest High Mass I'd ever been subdeacon for and it was a wonderful if blazing hot night complete with the now-discontinued procession of the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, although by then without those mythical twinkling lights. Three days later the infamous train wreck occurred which sent 10 faithful MCs and acolytes fleeing the premises and rang down the curtain on an era of the SMV sacristy although it was the beginning of a new one at St. Ignatius.