Breaking in the new priest

Sunday at St. Stephen Martyr we had a new assisting priest celebrate and preach. He was just ordained last summer, but he's a middle-aged man who previously had a career as an attorney. Now he's in Washington working on a degree in canon law at the Catholic University of America, so he's been assigned to help out at St. Stephen. His prior legal education has suited him well, because he freely admits that they did nothing in seminary to prepare the new priests to be liturgists or properly to chant the Mass. I thought he did okay for a newbie, though, so I'm sure his learning curve won't be that steep.

Father preached about the old "why do bad things happen to good people" theme started by St. Augustine in the fourth century in his book The City of God and recently resurrected by the mid-20th century evangelist Norman Vincent Peele. Between that topic and some of the music Sunday, I felt like I was at a funeral! LOL

Hymns Sunday were Passion Chorale ("Our Father we have wandered") for the processional, Repton for the offertory, and In Babilone for the recessional. The communion hymn the congregation didn't sing with the cantoress was a responsorial ditty with the Wilcock "My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord, my God" antiphon.

The choir did a very nice job with "Thou knowest, Lord" from Henry Purcell's Funeral Sentences for Queen Mary as the communion motet. Mass setting was as in previous weeks, with the difference that for the Kyrie, they mixed Proulx's A Community Mass with choral extentions from Mass for Three Voices by the 16th century John Taverner.

Robert met me at the church for Sunday's service. We actually hadn't planned on going to St. Stephen, or even, really, going to church at all (Robert especially, since he'd been out late Saturday night partying), but dear Michael really, really wanted to go to St. Stephen's (he recently moved to the neighborhood), and he's been trying for several weeks to organize something that fit into everyone's schedules. So, we acquiesced to going Sunday. And then, you know what? Michael didn't show up! He did, eventually, wander by the church, and we found him standing around on the sidewalk by the door after Mass, dressed in an old polo shirt and faded blue jeans looking like a transient. He was not contrite in the least! :-P