Making the paper

I made the parish newsletter! The pastor always writes a weekly pastoral letter that takes up most of the front page of the newsletter. Today, it started off with "Walking past me after Sunday Mass a parishioner asked, 'So, Father, when are we going to have a Latin Mass?' I am not sure if he was being sarcastic or sincere, but no doubt he was alluding to Pope Benedict's recent letter, Summorum Pontificum, in which he allows a greater use of the Mass as celebrated before 1970." Alas, though, in talking about the Tridentine Mass, he goes on to say, "I must admit, because [of] its requirements of precision and movement, even if inclined, I am not trained to offer this Mass properly."

Mass today was actually kind of nice. The choir quartet was, once again, in surprisingly excellent form, doing a lovely job on Harold Friedell's "Draw Us in the Spirit's Tether" as the communion motet, and having an amazingly audible descant for the processional hymn (remember, this was a quartet). They really do so well when they sing Anglican literature! (Last week, they sounded good, too, doing Vaughn-Williams' "O How Amiable.")

Hymns today sounded interestingly similar, especially the offertory and recessional. For the processional, they did Leoni (The perfect law of God) with descant, the offertory Wareham (This is my will, my one command), and the recessional Sweet Sacrament (Jesus my Lord, my God, my All). The organist/choir master wrote a new third verse for Sweet Sacrament, "As we go forth from this, Thy house, Slay us with love and charity. Thine is the earth and stars and sun, Let now our hearts, Thine also be."

During communion marching music, the responsorial hymn was the ever-saccharine "God is love, and where true love is" with the Proulx antiphon, but they actually had more than the choir singing today! There was a lady a few pews behind me who was singing along lustily, but, let's just say she was making a joyful "noise" to the Lord.

Mass setting was the same as last week. Msgr. Filardi preached on today's Good Samaritan Gospel reading.