Attending Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral
This was from a friend of mine
So on Sunday as a gesture to Mary Ellen who is nominally Catholic, and to Cory we attended mass at the magnificent (usually) St. Patrick's cathedral.
Mass was poorly attended and the entire of the interior of the cathedral was a huge mass of scaffolding. Here is symbolic point number 1: the work is presumably being done to repair the crumbling structure of the church building having not been maintained for many decades. I.e., I don't think they are doing this to create some incredible new vision of the cathedral. The sermon was very hard to follow due to the poor sound system and the priest was at the altar that seemed to be a mile away. The cathedral was slightly cool and dark and it was bright and hot outside. Probably close to the experience by a typical medieval mass goer. Believe it or not the sermon as best as I could make out was that we shouldn't concentrate on the seen, but that would should concentrate on the unseen and the life hereafter. That's what really counts. There were two collections and so I dropped a 20 for each collection. Here is the kicker - get ready for it. I didn't feel anything particularly one way or the other and as we sauntered out the bright sunlight hit me full force and what did I see right in front of me in all of its glory? The statue of Atlas boom right in front of me! I thought that that was so shocking and such a contrast to the whole mass experience that I just had to share it with you. I will leave it to you to connect the dots and write an essay about it and let me know what it all means if you ever feel like it.
So on Sunday as a gesture to Mary Ellen who is nominally Catholic, and to Cory we attended mass at the magnificent (usually) St. Patrick's cathedral.
Mass was poorly attended and the entire of the interior of the cathedral was a huge mass of scaffolding. Here is symbolic point number 1: the work is presumably being done to repair the crumbling structure of the church building having not been maintained for many decades. I.e., I don't think they are doing this to create some incredible new vision of the cathedral. The sermon was very hard to follow due to the poor sound system and the priest was at the altar that seemed to be a mile away. The cathedral was slightly cool and dark and it was bright and hot outside. Probably close to the experience by a typical medieval mass goer. Believe it or not the sermon as best as I could make out was that we shouldn't concentrate on the seen, but that would should concentrate on the unseen and the life hereafter. That's what really counts. There were two collections and so I dropped a 20 for each collection. Here is the kicker - get ready for it. I didn't feel anything particularly one way or the other and as we sauntered out the bright sunlight hit me full force and what did I see right in front of me in all of its glory? The statue of Atlas boom right in front of me! I thought that that was so shocking and such a contrast to the whole mass experience that I just had to share it with you. I will leave it to you to connect the dots and write an essay about it and let me know what it all means if you ever feel like it.
