Pre-Game Warm-Up

Week Thirty-Four - Our Lady of Victory

11:15 Sunday morning mass, Our Lady of Victory. I can take two different approaches regarding my visit to Our Lady of Victory. First, the glass half-full approach: There were a lot of families at this mass, several of them fairly large families. The parishioners of OLV had clearly made the Sunday morning effort and made it to mass. How much of an effort that actually was leads to my second approach, the glass half-empty approach. Confirming all of the traditional "west sider" stereotypes, dress for the day was casual, and I mean, casual. An abundance of jeans, t-shirts, and shorts (and, even worse, denim shorts) made my khaki pants and polo shirt look like formal wear. Consider the family in front of me sporting their finest athletic wear: mom in her matching black Adidas pants, jacket, and tennies, a daughter in a high school soccer jacket, snagged and flimsy gym shorts, and Adidas sandals with white footies, and a son in basketball shorts and a t-shirt. Dad, of course, had on his best denim shorts. Sigh. This particular family brings me to my next glass half-empty point of contention - arrival and departure times at OLV.

With mass scheduled for 11:15, my daughter and I looked at each other during the tolling of the bells at 11:10 - there must have been less than 50 people in the church. "Is this it?" we wondered. No, that wasn't it at all because by 11:15 and the start of mass, the bells apparently had worked because, in that short five minute interval, the church had become roughly half full. By 11:30, the church was 3/4 full - courtesy of countless late arrivals, including Sports Family in front of me. Wow, that Delhi traffic must have really been bad this week. Uh-huh. After communion, the church was back to half full - courtesy of early departures . . . including the folks in front of me. Probably had to get to "The Game."

Our Lady of Victory reminded me vaguely of Saint Ignatius in size and layout with a few notable differences. No kneelers. Grrrr. A huge disproportionate cross behind the altar that looked to me more like a giant plus sign with a teeny-tiny Jesus figure in the middle of it. And no center aisle, just a section of "center pews" with aisles on either side. That last one bothered me - how do you work a wedding around that? Which aisle does the bride walk down? Is that center section the "bride's side" or the "groom's side"? I did like the servers' garb, "coloring book" altar boys complete with the black cassock and short white frock over the top. Yeah, they've definitely been using those for a while, but I like them. I especially liked the servers' black dress shoes.

I always consider the 10:00 to 11:00 Sunday morning time slot to be "prime time" for weekend masses. You get the biggest crowds, the best music, the whole shebang. So, although this particular mass at 11:15 technically fell outside of my allotted time period, I still felt it was close enough to qualify as "the really big show." Didn't happen. On the contrary, something about OLV made me feel . . . sad. Even the adult guitar group seemed sad. Maybe they too sensed what I sensed - the feeling that no one really wanted to be there. You know how the early morning conversations in the homes of these Delhisians went: "Just hurry up and get in the car. We can run in Victory for the 11:15 mass and, if we leave after communion, we can still make it in time." Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it went.

ATTENDANCE: varied throughout the mass

DURATION: 1 hour