Palms today

Thank you, Father Brady!!

This is Palm Sunday, the day the church reads the long, long Passion Gospel in quasi-dramatic form, with all the words assigned to different speakers, and even the congregation getting into the act with fun lines like "Crucify him!" Unfortunately, though, the gospel takes a long time (did I mention it was a long, long gospel?). That, coupled with the added time commitments from the blessing of the palms and the palm procession with everyone singing the traditional hymn, "All Glory Laud and Honor," meant it was 11:40 by the time the gospel was over instead of the usual 11:20-25. :(

But then Fr. Brady came to our rescue, with a record one minute homily! We just love Fr. Brady! And, to think, he's a lawyer, too! LOL

Hymns today included a "Hosanna to the Son of David" antiphon written by the organist/choirmaster for the palm blessings and the asperging of the people, the aforementioned St. Theodulph for the palm procession, Morning Song for the offertory, Jerry Brubaker's "O blessed Savior now behold" for communion, and Wondrous Love for the recessional. The Mass setting was from Hughes' Mass of the Divine Word.

I was excited to hear the choir do a nice anthem during the offertory today. They sang "Solus ad victimam" by 20th century composer Kenneth Leighton, and it was very nice. They also did a beautiful Agnus dei from the Missa in Simplicitate by Jean Langlais, and for post-communion ablutions did Anton Bruckner's "Christus Factus Est" (which has the unfortunate quality of repeating the last line over and over and over and over and over and over again until we begin to despair that the choir will ever stop singing so the priest can finish the Mass).

It's Holy Week now. That can be both good and bad.