25 Years On

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful;
Enkindle in us the fire of your love

I guess this painting gives a precedent for standing, sitting and lying on the altar, but I'm sure on the first day of Pentecost it was probably inevitable. That first rush of the Holy Spirit must have been awesome and gave original meaning to slain in the Spirit. These days it is all very formal and one who gets as carried away as those in this painting is most likely to be seen as mentally ill. We have our own extremist who comes around when the Spirit moves I suppose, caressing the statues and lighting candles, usually during the sermon or some very noticeable point in the service. She used to light her candle right from the altar before they were extinguished but was finally persuaded that was not kosher, so now she just likes to prostrate herself in the sanctuary after Mass and gets very irate if she is told that this is not done at St. Ignatius. Perhaps she is filled with the Spirit, but cursing me when I asked her politely (at coffee hour) to just kneel on the cushion at the rail and not enter the sanctuary and telling me I am going to incur the wrath of God for interfering with her prayers, somehow that doesn't sound like the Holy Spirit. We have this scene about once a year and I have gotten used to it, but it had to happen on the one Sunday in a long time that I got to sit in the Zabriskie pew and enjoy the service. Such is life at the shrine church.

This Holy Week was the last for two of our most senior MCs who are retiring, and the sacristy will not be the same without their wisdom and experience. Next year someone else will have to learn the Good Friday and Easter Vigil services and maybe Maundy Thursday also, who knows, but life goes on and we are training one new server and a new MC and welcoming back a former MC who will add some depth.

I was MC for Maundy Thursday, as I have been for the past 10 years, and it went very well until the Procession to the Altar of Repose. You'd think after 10 years I would remember that it is not like Corpus Christi, as I was waiting for the choir to start the O Salutaris. As Fr Wells famously shouted at Benediction once at St. Mary's, I was about to say "Will the choir please start the O Salutaris!" Luckily I restrained myself and we simply got going and the choir started the processional hymn.

Good Friday marked the 25th anniversary of my first service at St. Ignatius and I was able to "enjoy" (if one can possibly enjoy Good Friday) the liturgy from the Zabriskie pew in what was the first blessedly child-free Good Friday in recent memory. It was an appropriately cold and dark day and I was suffering from a terrible boil in a very inconvenient place. I was able to get through the service sitting very still, but had to go walking all over the West Side afterward looking for ichthamol ointment, which is rather hard to find these days. All in all, it made me feel very close to Job as I had been for several weeks during Lent after having a tooth pulled and suffering a splitting headache for 10 days straight, then getting this boil which felt like a volcano erupting. They say suffering is good for the soul, but I think it is overrated!

We had good crowds for all the services and quite a few visitors.The Great Vigil went well with some ceremonial adjustments, and we had a beautiful new fire from our new, fireman approved hibachi. We did the blessing of the water and paschal candle at the font this year, a first as far as I know. We had always done it in the sanctuary because we thought it couldn't be done at the font due to the height between font and covering, but Fr Blume got just the right angle to avoid dripping wax or having the follower fall off and it did work much better there as it was intended. We also started the practice of lighting everything from Easter through Pentecost from the original new fire, keeping the flame going in the sacristy until just a few days before Pentecost when we finally slipped and let it go out, but at least it was after Ascension.

I was subdeacon for Easter Day and that would have been fun if I hadn't been so tired, in spite of the earlier hour for the Vigil and actually getting a few hours sleep. It was a cold and windy Easter, Gilberto was in Philadelphia, Laurie and the gang had other plans, and I was in no mood for any kind of company this year, so I walked around Central Park for awhile. I found no solace there with the boisterous mobs and relentless wind, however, and I ended up in a movie, as usual, and a scary one at that (Knowing), but at least it put my little boil in perspective!

Procession, Easter Day Solemn Mass