An epic Palm Sunday

This morning I sang in the choir of St. Louis Church -- remember when I joined? It was quite the adventure then and it has only gotten better. Above is a photo one of my friends in the Alto section took of me on her phone as I was looking down admiring the church. I cannot get over how beautiful it all is!

Today being Palm Sunday we sang "All Glory, Laud, and Honor." That is the traditional Palm Sunday hymn. You may not deviate from it, not that we would want to.

The organ that accompanied us this morning!

Our choir director and organist, the great Frank Scinta, he pulled out all the stops. I mean it was as if we were in a movie. An epic movie. He is improvising this, too. He is pulling it out of his head. It is not as if you can go out and get this arrangement. 

I am sure that nobody in the entire world heard an "All Glory, Laud, and Honor" remotely like ours!

Oh, brother. I wanted to put the video on the Web log however the person in charge of the live stream is not letting me do it. So here is a link to the video.

"All Glory, Laud and Honor" begins right about 16:20. Actually a bit after that, however tune in at 16:20 so you can hear the announcer announcing it... "Number 97, on page 120," as if it is just another hymn, on just another Sunday. It is not!

That fanfare that introduces it!

It was like "The Ten Commandments"!

Then Scinta just takes off with his improvisations. We were so dazzled in the alto section we were all just smiling dazedly.

It is hard to get it across just in a video. I should have been recording it up in the choir loft. The volume of it, you can't imagine. Like an ocean wave. Here is where I wish it were a Latin Mass, where I also sing. This kind of church, this kind of music, calls for incense and pageantry. 

I recommend you watch the entire video because all the music was interesting. The Mass ended with the spiritual "Were You There." It was very quiet compared with "All Glory, Laud and Honor" -- in between of course you have gone through the entire Passion, and everything feels different. I was crying in "Were You There" and I was not the only one.

An epic Palm Sunday, as I said to one of my friends.

A Mass to remember!

She takes the cake

So, yesterday, my baking marathon, it was worth it!

Good thing I did it! Because we had over 50 people at coffee hour.

We needed that food!

It is funny because it is hard to predict what kind of crowd we will have. I brought two Crock Pots and I felt stupid, doing that. I thought: It is Palm Sunday, the Mass will be long considering the procession and the Passion and everything, no one will come.

However!

As if in a dream I saw everyone heading for the hall. Which makes me very happy. If there is one thing I hate it is seeing people getting into their cars and heading for home instead of to coffee hour.

Here is another thing that made me happy. Everything went smoothly with my friend Margaret doing a lot of the set-up ...

... and I was able to make the tail end of the Palm Sunday procession. Here I had been thinking I would miss all of it. I kind of gave up on it and perhaps that calmed me down because I was resigned to that. I worked calmly getting things together, no hurry, and lo and behold, there I was, in the procession. Not for all of it, but for some of it. That was neat.

There was one other year when I was late and experienced the procession from the inside out. Now THAT was really cool.

I stood there in the church with my usher friend Mike and we waited in silence. It was Mike's job to open the door when he heard the knock.

The priest raps on the door. That is how it has gone for centuries and so we were upholding this ancient tradition. We waited, not knowing when the procession would arrive.

And all of a sudden, the knock!!

And we opened the door. And Father Justus was standing there, surrounded by pomp and circumstance and all the parishioners behind him in this great procession.

I was telling my usher friend Joe today, I cannot believe traditions like that have been lost in the modern Catholic Church. I cannot believe I did not grow up with them. I was deprived.

I should sue!! Because there is nothing like this. It is beautiful and magical. Better late than never, you know, that I have come to experience it.

That and, I got to hear the lines about the horns of the unicorns.

A perfect Palm Sunday!