Back to mass time

It's Sunday morning, and time to go to church.

Actually, since elders were banned from going inside the church for two years, and then I got Dengue and was too weak to attend, and then I got shingles and the pain medicine knocked me out, I haven't been to church a lot in the last three years.

And no, I don't consider on line services worth it: receiving God in the Eucharist is the center of the Catholic mass, and the rest is just prayers or boring sermons.

Well, anyway, I am now a lot better, so we went to the early mass here in Gapan. 

I go with Kuya, who is half Catholic and half Baptist, but like me not a true believer who just parrots stuff and obeys, but just one who wants to say hi to God.

The 5:30 am mass has a lot of men there, who attend the early service so they can go to work. And the church is full, but not packed like the later services. 

Every week, they have the statue of the week on the side of the altar. Usually I have to look up whose feast day it was, but today it was Jesus with someone kneeling or groveling at his feet. So I checked, and yup, the gospel is about the Transfiguration, where Jesus took a few apostles up a mountain and suddenly turned bright and started talking to two guys who Peter figured out was Moses and Elias, and as usual he started babbling to cover up his nervousness about building some shelters for them at which point they heard a voice and that really freaked them out and they fell on their faces. Then Jesus came up and told them not to be afraid, and everything was back to normal.

My aunt explained that such a miracle was for them to remember when the shit hit the fan and Jesus was killed. Didn't work for Peter and Andrew who fled, but John remembered...

Even though it was 5:30, we did have music and a small choir there. Hey, this is the Philippines. And it was ordinary Filipino style music, but not the loud happy happy praise music like I am hearing right now from the pentecostal church service held in our meeting hall, which is full of young folks who like that kind of thing.

 Garrison Keillor, of Prarie Home Companion, is still on line with a blog.

Last Sunday his essay was about attending mass: although it was at the local Episcopal Cathedral, one that supports peace and justice, and is nice enough to mention it's memorial healing service for the Red Lake school shooting on it's Wikipedia page. The church seems to be high church (aka similar to the Catholic services or that of many Lutheran churches). 

So go and read it with pleasure.

an excerpt:

I remembered as I came into the cathedral that there is no music at the 8 a.m., no chipper Bach chorale to brighten the mood, no rousing opening hymn, just this scattering of folks in the vastness, like the Church in apostolic times, a few believers hiding out in the catacombs, hoping men in heavy armor don’t break in and bust our heads.

I knelt and prayed for my loved ones, that they be spared my anxiety.

..... What I found inspiring were two Scripture readings, one from the prophet Micah, where the reader faced the line, “O my people, remember what happened from Shittim to Gilgal that you may know the saving acts of the Lord,” and she slowed down when she saw “Shittim” and got traction and very carefully pronounced it “shi-team.” I was the only one in the sanctuary immature enough to enjoy this moment. There were no 13-year-old boys there, just me. I could tell from her voice that the reader had been dreading this for an hour, trying to decide between “shy-tim” and “shi-team” and fearing that she’d slip and pronounce it phonetically and a marble angel would fall and crash and red lights would flash and people would require treatment for post-traumatic stress.

And then moments later she read from First Corinthians that we do not find God through wisdom. No, God chose what is foolish to shame the wise, for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.

The thought of God’s foolishness is a radical one, seldom mentioned in church, and near me were some highly educated people, including a man who got his Ph.D. in classic philosophy from Harvard and here I sat, a writer of limericks and a lover of juvenile jokes (Knock-knock. “Who’s there?” Eskimo Christians. “Eskimo Christians who?” Eskimo Christians, I’ll tell you no lies.) and when I went forward for Communion I felt foolishly happy.

.....The world is a mess but dread gets us nowhere so cheer up and then go do what you were put here to do. I was put here to cheer you up. So smile.