So today the priest at St. Peter's wanted to keep his homily short, because the mass was going to be longer since there was a baptism being held during mass. He accomplished this quite simply. He announced that he was going to keep his remarks short, and the reason for doing so. He then explained that that was the sum total of his remarks. I don't really hold this against him, as it's a lot to expect him to write two homilies, especially if one has to be short. Unfortunately while I like the priest, I really don't care for the parish.
Part of the problem I'm having is that it's a small town parish. So there are a number of things I find odd because of that. It's a much tighter-knit community. That's probably also connected to the fact that the parish seems to be a merger of what used to be three parishes. (Which means that I can't even make the trek to the next town to find a church I like more). Some things are just modern though. Such as having the children off at their liturgy of the word for more than just liturgy of the word. Or singing the Our Father. Fortunately I'm not being asked to make this my parish, but it's a less fun aspect of co-op that never occured to me.
On a more cheerful note, I'm going to suggest that we pray for not only Parker (who was baptized today) and his parents and godparents, but for his brother, Jonathan, who received first communion, and had his day quite overshadowed by his little brother. Congratulations and blessings to you both.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I understand that you don't like singing the Our Father because it keeps people who are not part of that parish from being able to join in, but don't you find that it often sounds really beautiful? When they sang it at St. Jerome's, it connected with me a lot more because it wasn't the standard droning mumble that I hear most Sundays (or rather, Sundays that I go to a church that says Our Father). By singing it, it forces people to actually say the words. Maybe if I sang it every week it would lose some of its meaning again, but singing it occasionally is very nice.
Basically it's that I agree with the directive that the Lord's Prayer should be spoken, not sung so that people can participate. I am used to following along with other songs, I go to churches that pray the Our Father every week, and I still had to work to follow along, despite having heard this version once before. Some people come to mass and don't know any part but the Our Father, and when it's sung they might not even really know that.
The other thing is that people often do participate less if they have to sing. They forget that a sung prayer is still a prayer, and think "it's a song, that's the choir's job". But I don't expect you to know that, because Protestant congregations actually sing.
Post a Comment