Weekend Review and a Reflection on Vocation and the Sacred Liturgy
There are moments and even days when you can feel the Holy Spirit working. This past weekend was a busy one, and through it all I felt the presence of the Lord very near. Late Sunday night, I had a brief discussion with my friend Rev. Bryan Dolejsi about another such moment, but it occurred to me later that I had not really done justice to the incident in my explanation.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, this weekend, which was bookended by Masses celebrating vocations – one a Nuptial Mass and one a Mass of Thanksgiving by a priest ordained the day before. And between these two, the Mass and procession for Corpus Christi – the Body and Blood of Christ, who is the author of all vocations.
Saturday began with a large Nuptial Mass for one of the sons of Tacoma’s Connelly Family. It was a beautiful occasion, led by our pastor Father David Mulholland and including the largest bridal party I’ve ever seen.
We don’t always have servers at weddings, but here I was privileged to serve with three members of the Hygema family. I’ve known them since about 2015 or so, and they are a beautiful and devoted family and some of the best and most reverent servers I’ve had the honour to serve with.
I understand why the Holy Spirit is so often depicted in art as a dove – there are times, and this Nuptial Mass was one, when you can feel the wings of God enveloping a community in love.
Afterwards, we had a short practice with some of the servers for the next day’s Corpus Christi procession. Given a looming storm, not to mention the fact that Father was feeling a bit ill, we practiced for holding the procession entirely within the church rather than through the neighborhood.
That evening, at the Vigil Mass, two of our more senior servers failed to show up. This left me with two brand new apprentices serving their first Mass and not really knowing what they were supposed to be doing.
Fortunately, the apprentices were both very bright and dedicated and took direction well, even if one of them was extremely young, having received his first Holy Communion just a few weeks ago.
In short, it was a trial by fire, and they did great!
It’s exactly how I don’t like a first Mass for altar servers to go, but it’s far from the first time that it’s happened, and it won’t be the last.
Sunday morning’s Corpus Christi Mass and procession was inspirational and affecting. I’ve often said that I feel the presence of Jesus most closely during the sacred liturgy, and that morning He felt particularly close.
Father Mulholland was obviously feeling under the weather, so we had to make some small adjustments on the fly. And, of course, the procession was held indoors, around the perimeter of the nave.
The object of these Eucharistic processions is not just to honour the Lord, but also to bring Him out among His people. This is in many ways the ultimate form of evangelization, to show the face of the Lord throughout our neighborhood and in a certain way to the world.
While holding the sort of procession inside the church building still allows us to honour and glorify the Lord, that evangelization is a little less apparent. Just before the procession, Father encouraged us to gaze upon the Lord and invite Him to reveal His will for us – in a sense, to invite the Lord to reveal to us our mission and our vocation in the world.
We had sixteen servers in the procession1, which is a bit much for indoors, but of course we had planned originally for an outdoor procession. The kids who had received their first Holy Communion a couple of weeks ago also got to put on their finery for a second time and walk in the procession as well. So it was quite a parade in honour of our Eucharistic Lord!
Finally, on Sunday night, our normal 7PM Mass was instead a Mass of Thanksgiving, celebrated by Rev. Kyle Rink, who had been ordained to the sacred priesthood just the day before.
We had a full choir, led by the always amazing Maestra Amy Gallwas and supplemented by a seminarian, a priest, and some of Father Rink’s friends and relations. I think that it was the first time I sang the Missa de Angelis since Holy Rosary was closed. We even chanted the Gloria in Latin. I was kind of surprised at how much of it I remembered, though I did lose the thread a bit in the middle third.
There were, I think, four concelebrating priests, plus two or three in choro, two deacons, and one of our servers was a seminarian friend of Father’s.
Father chanted the prayers throughout.
It was a beautiful and moving Mass. When we sang the Sanctus, you could feel the presence of the angels and saints joining us, as we joined with them in with the heavenly liturgy singing the words recorded both by the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 6:3) and the Apostle Saint John (Revelation 4:8).
It was glorious.
It was at the reception afterwards that I was able to catch up a bit with my old friend, Rev. Bryan Dolejsi. I first met him when he was newly ordained, and he officiated at our wedding, which was held in Saint Patrick church.
The story I tried to tell him took place in Moissac Abbey when I visited there last year on my walking pilgrimage. I’ve told the story several times to different people, and I never have gotten it quite right. So here goes again.
The day was September 7, 2023, and I was about 480 kilometers (300 miles) into my pilgrimage at the town of Moissac in France. The walk that day had been long and difficult.
I had visited the Moissac Abbey church on the way to my gîte. The church is an absolutely stunning and sacred place, possibly the most complete example of late Romanesque / early Gothic architecture that I had seen up to that point. Beautiful and serene.
That part of the sanctuary was built several centuries later in a very different style did not detract from it, rather it complemented the original architecture in a fitting way.
After checking in at my gîte and taking a shower, I resolved to return to the Abbey church to pray Vespers before dinner.
My gîte was at the top of a steep hill overlooking the town, and on the way back down I stopped into another small church that had originally belonged to a 19th century Carmel.
This little church was a sad sort of place, whitewashed and bare. It was evidently in use for something, because there were plastic lawn chairs scattered throughout the small nave. The altar stones in the side altars had been crudely chipped out with what looked to be hammer and chisel. It broke my heart to see them this way. I don’t know if the high altar sees any use, but I doubt it, as the sides of the sanctuary are being used as a haphazard storage area. It was painful to be there – it’s as if the place had been plundered.
From there, I hurried the rest of the way down the hill to the Abbey.
Moments after I arrived, about a dozen nuns filed in and took their places in the choir stalls to either side of the sanctuary. There were a scattering of other people in the pews, and the sisters began to chant Vespers in French.
Though they sang in French, I quickly realized that they were using the same form of the monastic office that I pray, and so I was able to follow along in my breviary in English.
The nuns ranged in age from the very young to the extremely aged. As they prayed, they performed all of the traditional movements and gestures of the office. But it wasn’t a fussy, ritualistic sort of thing – it was instead a familiar dance that they had done countless times until it was in their bones.
It wasn’t exactly casual, but rather simple, graceful, and comfortable as a well-worn pair of shoes.
It was beautiful. And I don’t mean that it was pretty or necessarily elegant. Rather, it seemed to perfectly reflect, even incarnate, their prayer.
I prayed with them, and I could feel the luminous, healing presence of Jesus among us.
When Vespers had concluded, and the nuns had filed out, I sat in the mostly empty church for a long time and wept. I wept for the sheer beauty of it. I wept because I was overcome with the consolations of the Spirit. I wept because I knew that the Lord was calling me to something in this moment, this moment where He had shown me the barest glimpse of heavenly joy.
It was such a simple thing, to sing Vespers, but it was one of the most profound moments of my life.
When I finally left, I passed by one of the sisters. She was changing out votive candles by one of the side altars. I bid her bon soir, and she returned the greeting. Then she placed her finger to her lips with a sort of bare, repressed smile. She knew.
The whole way walking back up the hill I prayed in argument. I don’t really know how to describe this.
For much of the last decade, perhaps longer, I have served in liturgical ministry. I felt, and still do, that part of my ministry was to evangelize through beauty. But here, I felt the Lord calling me and challenging me to more. I’m still not entirely clear what this will entail. This ministry is perhaps a vocation in and of itself, I don’t know.
All I know is that what I experienced at Moissac Abbey church – prayer, beauty, and the deep and abiding presence of the Lord – are an experience that I’m called to help bring to others as it was brought to me.
Why was I arguing with the Lord in prayer? It’s a big mission, even if I don’t really understand it quite yet, and I am absolutely unqualified to carry it out.
The various attempts that I have been part of – starting or leading the prayer of the divine office in four different parishes now, training altar servers, even helping or developing written resources – have been met with indifference or hostility or failure on so many occasions.
And yet, here was the Lord showing me how it’s done. Encouraging me to begin again and double down. And, most importantly, chiding me for my continual failure to trust in Him and to trust in the fruits of His work.
Because the sacred liturgy is indeed His work, and no one else’s.
This past weekend was in so many ways another reminder from the Lord to keep doing the work, but to trust to Him to see it to fruition.
Procession video!
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