Getting ashed

A large standing-room-only crowd packed St. Matthew's Cathedral at noon today for the imposition of ashes and to hear His Eminence Terence Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, say Mass as part of the annual Lenten observance for Ash Wednesday. Cathedral rector Msgr. Ronald Jamieson concelebrated with the cardinal.

The congregation was packed into the pews and hundreds of people stood along the walls and in the narthex in back. Some unidentified press was there as well, both with video and still cameras.

I had been in the neighborhood for an interview late this morning and I didn't realize either that the cardinal would be celebrating that Mass or that it would be so crowded, or I might have gone elsewhere. It was a nice service, though, and I think this was probably the finest service from both the liturgical and the musical standpoints that I've seen at St. Matthew's in the past year.

The eighteen-voice Schola Cantorum was in full force, singing in Latin mainly a capella Renaissance works, and sounding very well-rehearsed and professional. They had quite a number of anthems to sing today, too. For the introit, they did the Mode I chant of "Misereris omnium, Domine." During the imposition of ashes on the foreheads of all of the people in the congregation they sang "Inter vestibulum et altare" by Cristobal de Morales and "Emendemus in melius" by William Byrd. The offertory anthem was "Exaltabo te, Domine" by G. P. da Palestrina. For communion they did the Mode III chant of "Qui meditabitur in lege Domini" and a wonderful "Os justi" by Anton Bruckner. The mass setting was David Hurd's New Plainsong Mass. Processional hymn was a psalm with a Richard Proulx antiphon and the recessional hymn was Erhalt uns Herr. There was no organ prelude or postlude.



Comic relief for the Mass was provided by this African lady who came in late and then tried to squeeze into one of the already packed-full pews. The ushers were trying to convince her that she couldn't sit there and had to stand at the back, but she was totally uncooperative and kept trying to climb into the pew (exactly where she was planning to sit I've no idea). Eventually, a man got up and gave her his seat, so she moved there with her two big shopping bags, where she promptly unfurled this large cloth with a picture of Jesus and a picture of Mary which she draped all over the back of the pew in front of her. Then she dug in her sacks and pulled out a big red square pillow held together with red tape and a big plastic gold toy crown she put on the pillow; she held the crown and pillow for the rest of the service, even when she went for ashes and for communion. She's apparently Catholic, since she seemed to know the service, but she spoke the congregational responses too slowly and too loudly to blend in with the rest of the people. I couldn't tell if she was mentally ill or just culturally different. She wore a dress made of bright red fabric with a gold metallic design on it, and a piece of the same fabric was wrapped around her blonde hair (I don't know if it was bleached or natural, but it looked odd on her dark skin) like a turban. She wore a white lace scarf on top of that and she had this thing that looked like a gold-glittered flat snowflake Christmas ornament safety pinned to the top of her head. White canvas shoes and white socks were on her feet.

The ushers just didn't know what to do with her. She didn't want to cooperate with their traffic control, and she didn't want to get her ashes or take communion from the station set up near our seats. Every time they tried to keep her from wandering off to other areas she threatened to scream. When it was time for the imposition of ashes, she managed to sneak past a woman usher and push her way through a full pew of people, carrying her pillow and crown all the time, and went to the center aisle where she cut in line to get her ashes from the cardinal. At communion, the ushers argued with her long enough that she acquiesced to going to the communion station by her seat, but instead of returning to her seat, she walked to the center aisle again and wanted communion from the cardinal, but he'd just finished and was returning to the altar, so she had to receive from the rector and she looked very disappointed about that.

Aren't cathedrals fun?

Here's a picture of the cardinal washing his hands just prior to consecrating the bread and wine.