Mass report

Quick Mass this morning at St. Stephen's. Msgr. Filardi was celebrant and homilist and talked about prayer. He had an interesting central premise, that one needed to believe in a deity in order to pray to it.

Mass setting was much the same as last week, except the choir did the communion antiphon this time, and they did the plainsong Agnus Dei with choral extensions from William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices. For the communion motet, the choir sang "O for a Closer Walk" by Charles Villiers Stanford that sounded very nice. I do wish they'd sing their motet at the beginning of communion instead of at the end. They even could do longer motets. Those responsorial communion "hymns" that nobody sings are always so worthless anyway, if some of those got truncated after the ablutions, it would certainly be no loss.

Speaking of which, hymns for today were Swabia ('Tis good, Lord, to be here) for the processional, Jesu dulcis memoria (O Sun of justice) for the offertory, and St. Flavian (Lord, who throughout these forty days) for the recessional.