Blessings through paper

We had quite the adventure for church today, starting off with a bus ride across town (it was too pretty out today to go underground) as we went to the noon high Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the Catholic University campus. Laurent had never been to Shrine or CUA before, so we got to play tourist. The Shrine is a fun place. It has quite a nice organ, and the building is beautiful (though acoustically challenged), but the 45 minute travel time discourages me from going often.

Today, the guest celebrant and preacher was the retired bishop of Scranton, who seemed to be a delightful man. He rather reminded me of an Irish Jimmy Stewart. Gave an interesting homily, too, about being buried with a rosary in one hand and a fork in the other.

The Mass setting today was the Palestrina Missa Aeterna Christi munera sung a capella by the choir (although they omitted the Sanctus and Benedictus, with the congregation singing the Proulx A Community Mass for those, the memorial acclamation, and the great Amen). The choir sang a lovely O Sacrum Convivium by Thomas Tallis as the post-communion motet and a rather short Benedic Anima Mea by Claudin de Sermisy for the offertory. All were a capella, as the nasty echo in the church makes it difficult to do organ and voice together. I only wish they wouldn't mike the choir, because it kills the choral blend and allows voices by the equipment to stick out of the texture. The amplification also detrimentally affects the cantoress, too, I think, since there's never any sense of vocal power from the speakers.

Hymns today were Lubeck (On this day the first of days) for the processional and Christe Sanctorum (Christ is the world's light) for the recessional.

Organ prelude and postlude were from Leon Boëllmann's Suite Gothique, Op. 25, with the "Introduction–choral; menuet" at the beginning and "Toccatta" at the ending.

I don't know why, but they never offer the chalice to the people at this place. For some reason, I always come away from Mass feeling a bit cheated.

After Mass, we had to walk around and look at the place. The Shrine is the largest Catholic church in the country, seaeting over 6,000, and is rather unique and unexpected with its contemporary take on Romanesque and Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture and interior art. In the basilica design tradition, it has a series of small side chapels along the side aisles flanking the nave and another series of chapels and a large crypt chapel (seating 400+) occupies the undercroft.




We ended up in the bookstore and the gift shop, where Laurent picked out a sterling silver Celtic crucifix for him to wear. Then, as we walked through the cafeteria, he espied a table of seminarians in their clerical uniforms and asked them to bless his crucifix for him, but they had to decline, since they hadn't yet been ordained. Then while we were walking through the crypt, another man in clerical garb walked by and Laurent stopped to ask him if he was a seminarian or a priest so he could get his purchase blessed. He was a priest. Well, yeah.....I didn't tell Laurent until after the fact, but the man he stopped was the rector of the basilica! LOL He patiently acquiesced to the request, but, no doubt anxious to move on, stopped Laurent from digging the cross out of the sack and box, saying, "Blessings go through paper, you know."