I was daydreaming at Mass yesterday – mea culpa Father Bala – and was wondering what the best mass I had ever attended was.
I can think of a lot of worse ones: our only Irish mass in Tralee with zero assembly participation and a rush for the doors after communion by all but a couple of stunned tourists. I recall some mechanical twenty minute Cathedral masses at sixish at St Mary’s in Sydney.
I was greatly uplifted by the masses at the APMN conventions. When the assembly is entirely made up of singers it is astonishing.
My mind wandered to Kagoshima at St Francis Xavier Church in the chapel at the base of their steeple with no more than twenty people singing the mass in Japanese, call and response with a cantor and a Vietnamese priest. I had sat inadvertently in an elderly lady’s favourite chair at the end of a row of seats and with her struggling to move she needed it. You have to be tough to be a Catholic in Japan. She wouldn’t leave at the end until she had given us a small gift – this has happened once or twice in Japan over the years.
The priest interrupted his homily to give us precis in English, which was most pastoral.
I think that was about perfect. I have been to mediocre masses in Japan as well mind you. I have been at masses that may have appeared perfunctory but touched me. I have been to elaborate masses that left me feeling alone.
I invite comments.
BTW I recovered in time to play the Sanctus … just.