The hottest Mass

I love summer. I love the clothes. I love being able to dress like a Moroccan and walk out of the house in sandals.

However.

Today I went to the hottest Mass in my life!

I made a mistake and wore a long rayon dress. You think rayon is OK! But it is not. Its real name is Viscose. I learned that recently and I will never forget it. Still I thought, rayon is my friend, and because it was sleeveless I had a light cotton jacket to wear over it and ....

I got to church 15 minutes early because I wanted to go to Confession. Which, as usual, is a whole other story. I chose a pew and then I went to Confession and then I returned and knelt and began to say the prayers I had been assigned for my penance.

Then I started sweating.

What to do? What to do? The priest was still hearing confessions. Mass was overdue. How would I survive this? Here I was sweating in my Viscose gown and I had, what, an hour to go?

A fan was oscillating at the front of the church and I decided I would switch pews and park myself there.

I said a few of my Hail Marys and then I moved again a pew up because I realized that the social distancing cord that had blocked this pew off had fallen off. Also, moving up a pew moved me closer to the fan.

But I was still sweating!

Vicious Viscose!

Finally I thought: Mass has not even started yet. This is hopeless. And I got up once more. This time I went out to my car. I was going to leave. Then of course Catholic guilt took over. Other people were in the church and they were sweating it out.

Besides which, I had just been to confession which does not happen as often as it should and how often do I get to go to Communion after just having been to Confession? If you do not go to Communion after Confession that almost adds up to wasting a perfectly good Confession.

I took a drink of water and turned off the car engine and went back in.

By this time Mass had begun. We were at the Kyrie. I found a pew near the back so I would not make a spectacle of myself one more time. Also I wanted to be able to leave if I had to. I have to say, this was a record.

This was the fourth time I had switched pews in one single Mass!

But it ended well because fourth time's a charm and I was able to get through it.

That is a lesson you learn in life. You are always afraid to switch seats but what the heck, people will get over it. I did that I do not know how many times at Kleinhans Music Hall. One time I remember was in Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde" where this couple in front of me was making out. I do not mind if you want to make out to Mahler but not in front of me. So I moved.

They will get over it. Repeat as needed.

End result, as we say here in Buffalo, I made it to Confession and Mass. When I got home, this is funny but I felt better. Everything felt less sticky. It was as if something had been corrected.I credited Mass.

I'm glad I sweated it out!

Martha, Mary, and online Mass

Today being Sunday I got the trusty tablet and I heard Mass from St. John Cantius in Chicago. Remember, that was the church I went to that time where they gave me a holy card in the confessional.

I tuned in to this Mass last week and I liked it. It is live at 9:30 Chicago time, 8:30 Buffalo time. It is a Low Mass. There is a High Mass but it is something like noon, and that gives other things time to get in the way. One of these Sundays I will try the High Mass but today was not that day.

Instead I parked myself at the dining room table with the tablet. The Wi-Fi is good in there.

Everyone tells you to watch Mass online but it is easier said than done. Do you stand when you are supposed to? Do you kneel? How do you behave? I have decided the best thing to do is sit with my missal and I follow along. St. John Cantius is a huge and gorgeous church, rather like our dear departed St. Gerard's. I found myself just enjoying the pleasure of it all. It is actually a luxury to be able to follow along so carefully. At our usual in-person Mass I am so distracted by coffee hour and choir it is hard to think.

After all these years of being a Martha...

... I am turning into a Mary!

Mary is the one in the center of the picture at the top of this post. With her prayer book before her, like me.  I love the details and humor in the picture. The elaborate buffet in the foreground. The people eating in the other room. The birdcage! Of course there is a birdcage!

It's sweet how the artist captures St. Martha complaining about doing all the work and St. Mary just sitting there piously, having chosen the better portion. I always did have sympathy with Martha. Someone has to do the work. Also you have to remember that Martha is a great saint, as is Mary, and there is a high place in heaven for them both.

I did a little digging and the artist is a Renaissance German master, Georg Friedrich Stettner. I should have guessed German. We Germans, we love our food. And everyone in the picture looks German. I mean look at Mary, with her blond hair. I love the palette, the muted tones contrasting with that beautiful rich red. Nice work, Herr Stettner! Terrific job.

Back to my Low Mass. I am sitting there and Howard comes in to feed Jeoffry.

"Don't pay any attention to me," he said, getting on with his work.

So it was funny, all there was, was this silence. A Low Mass is quiet! There was nothing but silence and whispering and occasionally the tinkling of a bell. Once in a while a floorboard groaned.

Howard said, "I like the sound of this."

I did, too!

I can tell you what the Gospel was about. Go on, ask me. I know what the Secret Prayer was. I knew that it was the Fourth Sunday of Easter, alleluia, alleluia.

I miss being at actual Mass, that goes without saying. The situation can make me terribly uneasy when I think about it because I have not seen the like in my lifetime and I pray that when this is all over I never shall again.

But you cannot and should not ignore the blessings that are there!

Like a Bos

You know how people ask you, "And what did you get out of Mass today?"

Today I have an answer!

Sleepy as I was, and preoccupied with the coffee hour as I was, nevertheless this Mass taught me something I will never forget.

In the Gospel today there is something about a cow. And the Latin word for cow is "bos."

I gazed at that word charmed.

Bos!

That explains "bovine."

And even better, it explains "Bossy."

That is why people have historically named their cows Bossy!

Remember the bossy Lutherans and the bossy estate sale people? "Bos" does not explain them. Nothing can explain them! But cows named Bossy, the Latin word has to be the reason.

It has to be!!

Naturally I could not wait to share this observation -- or should we say rumination -- with a couple of my fellow choristers up in the organ loft. A few minutes later I felt terrible. Here I am diverting their attention from the Gospel. What is it in me that makes me want to disturb people's devotions?

But still, Bos.

They will remember it.

They will thank me!

The hurrier I go...

It is funny how the morning slides.

I get up early. 6 a.m., sometimes. And I have grandiose plans for the next two hours. There is editing to do on chapters I have finished. I am going to take care of correspondence regarding Leonard Pennario, write notes and letters. And emails! There are emails too about Pennario to be taken care of.

Here is one email that landed the other day in the Leonard Pennario Question Box. It is typical!

Hi: I see via google you are writing a biography of Leonard Pennario. I have just discovered him through a collection of LPs given to me recently. One has a great oil portrait of him at the keyboard but I cannot google any information about the painting or the artist who seems to be "Boyle." No credit is given in the liner notes. If you would care to see a scan image of this album sleeve let me know and I will send it to you. Or if you already know of what I speak and can shed some light on its origins, thank you in advance. --Tom Higgins

It is great to know that Pennario is so relevant to the general public! You see, if I were writing about Sviatoslav Richter...


... no one would care about an oil portrait of him.

Speaking of which, my morning. You see, this is how it goes. This morning I feel great, slept great as usual, looking forward to my day, I run downstairs in my bright blue Goodwill pajamas. I wear used pajamas. That is a confession I do not know if I have made yet.

That is a picture up above of me getting up!

For five or ten minutes I am going full speed ahead. I had begun making white bean soup in the crockpot lastnight. So now I gave it a stir, added caramelized onions left over from something else I had made, added escarole that I had also cooked up lastnight. Can you believe I did all that? I pushed the button on the coffee maker because I had set that up also the night before.

I ran out in my used pajamas and picked the paper up off the driveway. I wrote onto my mental to-do list to pay my Buffalo News bill which is probably overdue. That was another thing I could do this morning.

Impressive, right? You go, girl!

But wait.

Now it is 8:20 a.m. How much do you think I have accomplished? Editing? No. Email? No. Well, I got an email from my new friend Tom Higgins saying he is out of town. We are corresponding now!

Paid News bill? No. Packed lunches? No. Read the paper? No. They did not even bring us our Wall Street Journal either. So, again, behind the eight ball.

What have I accomplished? Uh...

Had fun with the Web logs. Searched down a picture of Sviatoslav Richter so I could make him the butt of a joke. That is a phrase I love, the butt of a joke. Oh, and on my other Web log I linked to that song by Johannes Brahms that I cannot put down these days. I listened to that song twice.

Other than that, drank coffee. Took a long shower during which I did not think about work, just daydreamed and sang the Gloria from Mass to myself which, ta da, now I know by heart.

Laudamus te
Benedicimus te
Adoramus te
Glorificamus te
Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.

That means: "We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you. We give you thanks for your great glory." In the shower I wool-gathered about how much I love that last line. I love the concept of thanking God for His great glory. In the English language Mass that has been lost in translation.

La la la la la la.

When I got out of the shower of course it was time to eat. And drink more coffee.

And now ... nothing is done!!

Am I the only person in the world with mornings like this??

Help!!!