Baccalaureate Mass

Commencement weekend at Georgetown started wrapping up today with a 9 a.m. Baccalaureate Mass outside on Healy Lawn. I was surprised how many students came and didn't look hung over at all! There was also a big crowd of family members sitting in the back section.

A professional organist, brass quintet, and typanist provided music for the ceremony, and I was very pleased to hear them singing proper hymns and anthems instead of some of the awful "St. Louis Jesuits" music—in fact, other than the communion hymns, the music sounded positively Anglican this morning (of course, everyone knows that Anglicans/Episcopalians do the best liturgical music these days). Since my friend Drew has been serving as the Student Director of Liturgy this past year, I wonder if he had anything to do with the great music?

As we in the faculty began to process into the seating area itself, we began to be pelted with huge drops of rain! The rain was short-lived, though, and stopped by the time we got to the Gloria.

The processional hymn was Lasst uns erfreuen (A hymn of glory let us sing!) and the recessional hymn was Sine Nomine (Go to the world!). Somebody likes Vaughn-Williams. During communion, they did a couple of hymns I didn't know, "No Greater Love" by Joncas and "Take and Eat This Bread" by O'Brien. The Mass setting was the too-familiar Haugen Mass of Creation (they only have the Gather hymnal in the pews in the college chapel).

Drew conducted the small chapel choir during the offertory and communion anthems, and I was quite impressed with what he'd done with them, especially since he was a sociology major/government minor. For the offertory, they did "If Ye Love Me" by Thomas Tallis and for communion, they did a Proulx arrangement of Thaxted called "O Spirit All-Embracing."


Drew conducting the choir.

After Mass, we processed directly to the Leavey Center Ballroom for the Commencement Brunch.