Mass Today

We went to Mass this morning and it certainly did us good.  Afterward, my wife was talking about the length of Mass and that when she was a child her parish had very short masses because of the size of the church and number of parishioners to serve.  Our daughter who was with us this morning is a high school student.  She seems to enjoy hearing about stuff "back in the day," at least within reason. We continued to reminisce. 

Looking back at Mass as a kid, I mentioned going to Mass with my dad who for a while liked to go to the High Mass in our parish in Chicago.  The High Mass was very long and like all Masses at the time, it  was in Latin.  I remember being very young and trying to make sounds like I was reciting Latin---mimicking the adults around me were.  It was something like shishwa-shishwa-shishwa...

Second, I thought of my dad's devotion to God and his church.  He was an Irish Catholic cop whose mother, Mary Callaghan Norris, had him going to Novenas and other services as a small boy.  My dad was an extremely humble man and always in his own world at Mass.  Often the old school Catholics followed the prayers at Mass, but also said the Rosary between them.  You saw a lot of beads at Mass in those days.  I know this runs contrary to what is taught today about the Mass being a communal celebration, but a lot of old school Catholics were inwardly focused at church.  

My dad gave us a great example of how to look at the world and faith.  His faith was never very far from what was going on around him.   If we heard an ambulance, we'd pray that the person being transported would be OK.  If we passed a cemetery, as we did often in my neighborhood, we prayed a Hail Mary.  If someone mentioned that somone from the neighborhood was sick, there were more prayers.  But my dad never asked us to say them out loud.  We would just say them to ourselves as he did. There was never, ever any show with faith.  It was very personal.  That was how it was at that time.  

I loved so many things about my dad and tried to copy him.  I would often walk with my dad to church and try to imitate his gait.  He walked slowly with his feet pointing out.  On cold days I would walk behind him and use his big wide body to shield me from the wind.  As I got older, he consistently had a working car and we switched going from the later Masses to the  earlier ones.  He probably did it for my mom who was claustrophobic and had difficulty going to crowded services. If he took her to Mass very early, she could attend comfortably. If we went to the later ones, she would stand in the vestabule and seemed very uncomfortable.

My memories were very simple with respect to my dad's faith, but they were strong.  And when we went to Mass with Dad, he was always in a good mood after the service.  In good times, when Mass was over he would take us to a restaurant.   I'd order chocolate chip pancakes and a chocolate milk.