Touristing

Happy New Year! What a glorious day today! The weather is warm and sunny and everyone is walking around in their shirtsleeves. One would never know it's January. I got out this morning and walked to the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. I could have taken the subway, but by the time I walked to my subway stop and then walked from the stop nearest the cathedral, the distance was nearly the same.

St. Matthew's is a gorgeous basilica structure filled with elaborate mosaics. Today was the Feast of the Solemnity of Mary, but for some reason having to do with the new calendar, it was not a Holy Day of Obligation this year. A lot of people were at Mass, though. The cathedral has a lot of interesting traditions. The lectors were all robed in light grey albs with a white choir overlay (the thingies the Protestants developed to take the place of the English academic hood). The cantor was in a magenta alb, but with no choir overlay. They had a signer for the deaf who was a very attractive, slender, young woman in an all-black suit with a very short skirt. They process their eucharistic ministers, all wearing rose boutonnieres, with the altar party and seat them in rows in the back corner of the sanctuary.

The organist played a very contemporary arrangement of "Silent Night" for a prelude. They used the Proulx A Community Mass setting for the service, except for the Gloria, where they used a "Christmas Gloria" by Paul Gibson, which was an arrangement of the carol "Angels We Have Heard on High." For the offertory, the cantor sang an "Ave Maria" by Marcel Dupré which was not familiar to me, and for communion, she sang "The Virgin's Slumber Song" by Max Reger. Tomorrow morning, I was thinking about going to St. Paul's K Street (high church Episcopalian with a supposedly fabulous choir), but at St. Matthew's, the cardinal archbishop of Washington will be celebrating, and both their Schola Cantorum and Gregorian Scholars are slated to sing the Mass, so I may pop back in there just for grins and jollies. Catholics transfer Epiphany to tomorrow morning and the Episcopalians do it on the proper Twelfth Night, so I can always catch St. Pauls and the National Cathedral later.