Church and a nice day

Ah, it's such a lovely warm day out today! I wore a light sweater-shirt to Mass this morning, and I got hot! There's a light sprinkle every now and then, but otherwise, it's a nice day. I'm thinking we should go ice skating today so we can have some semblance of winter this year.

This is, of course, in contrast to what I'm hearing from my friends from Dallas to Tulsa to Kansas City to Chicago, where they are buried under layers of ice, with more predicted to come today; it's supposed to stay cold til at least Wednesday, there, too, so it won't melt off immediately. I'm not a great fan of ice. Aside from it breaking major tree limbs and pulling down power lines, unlike snow, it's impossible to drive on.

Meanwhile, I walked to the church this morning without wearing a jacket. :-)

Nothing exciting at St. Stephen's today. Hymns were Abbot's Leigh (to bastardized "inclusive" words based on "God is here! and we are His people") for the processional, Repton (He comes to us as one unknown) for the offertory, and Ellecombe (I sing the mighty pow'r of God) for the recessional. During communion the choir sang the "congregational" walking responsorial hymn with the Christopher Wilcock antiphon "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord."

Mass setting was Proulx's A Community Mass for the Kyrie and Sanctus, How's Parish Communion Service for the Gloria, Nestor's Mass for the Parishes for the Memorial Acclamation and Great Amen, André Gouzes's Non sum dignus, and the traditional plainsong for the Gospel Acclamation, Intercessions, and Agnus Dei. The Psalm antiphon was by Robert Carroll.

For the communion motet, the choir did a very nice job on "Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread" by Samuel Scheidt (1587–1654), plus choral interjections on the Kyrie and Agnus Dei.

I forgot what the homily was about.

Now, I saw Monsignor Pastor and had an actual conversation with him after Christmas Eve's midnight Mass just two weeks ago, yet he said this morning that he "hadn't seen me in a while." Hmm. This isn't the first time he's said something like that. Were he not younger than me, I'd wonder if he were suffering from dementia! LOL I guess I'm just not memorable.