Tonight's church

They've added instrumentals to the Sunday evening Mass at St. Stephen's. Tonight a violinist and a flutist played accompaniments for the hymns and Mass setting. It was an interesting touch, though on those rare occasions the congregation actually sang they drowned out the instrumental sound.

Hymns tonight were Leoni for the processional, Slane for the offertory, and Nettleton for the recessional. The communion song printed in the bulletin wasn't used and they did "You satisfy the hungry heart" instead (not that it mattered, since the congregation never sings the communion song). The Mass setting was a hodge-podge with How's Parish Communion Service for the Gloria, Proulx's A Community Mass for the Sanctus and Benedictus, Mass for the Parishes by Leo Nestor (2001) for the consecration, and Isele's Holy Cross Mass for the Agnus Dei. Nestor, incidentally, is the director of the sacred music graduate program at the Catholic University of America here in D.C.

Msgr. Filardi was celebrant and homilist. He spoke about Hell—the real "Gehenna" that was the trash dump outside the city walls of Jerusalem and how that land was originally used by the Canaanites to worship the Mesopotamian god Marduk by sacrificing human babies. Interestingly, Marduk was often depicted as a horned monster, which became the basis for our modern concept of the devil.

I was surprised to hear one of the petitions in the Prayers of the People being in support of the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday, which starts tonight, and general good wishes and blessings for the Jewish people.

Once again I got put to work. This time I had to count people in the pews on the left half of the church. I really must stop going to the evening service.