Week Seventy-Six - Nativity
4:30 Saturday afternoon mass, Nativity. No, this is not the church I had planned to visit this week. An odd assortment of other weekend events made the timing all wrong for my intended visit elsewhere. The runner-up? "Nativity," as indicated on their website . . . or "Nativity of Our Lord," as indicated on their church bulletin . . . or "Church of the Nativity," as indicated on the inside of their church bulletin. Really? Is it too much to ask for a little continuity?
NATIVITY in Pleasant Ridge was surprisingly newer and bigger than I expected. My husband commented that it was one of the "wider" churches he had been in so far - he didn't get to experience the vast expanse of St. Maximillian's church. Nativity is a perfectly square church. Four huge supports run from each of the corners, meeting in a slightly raised point at the center. Aesthetically speaking, it isn't pretty, and to be honest, "pretty" probably isn't a word that gets used a whole lot here.
The mostly-barren wall behind the altar - and, recall, it's a big, wide wall - is solid, brick-red in color. On the brick-red wall is a crucifix hung disproportionately high for its mediocre size. The crucifix is different enough itself, but it's what's below that crucifix that really caught me off-guard: a large multi-colored Star of David, a Star of David with all sorts of . . . rays and . . . and . . . stuff coming off of it is. What the heck? This was clearly the focal point of the sanctuary. Whether it was intended to be or not, it just was because there was no avoiding it. It was just so . . . odd.
Minimal stained glass windows hang in "fringe" around the perimeter of the church. There's really no other way to describe it - "fringe." I couldn't find any statues or candles until I was in line to receive communion. Off to the side are two small alcoves, each holding a statue - one with Joseph and one with Mary - and each with a "tree" of ten votive candles. I felt bad for Mary and Joseph. Each of the stations of the cross consisted of a simple wooden cross with a Roman numeral below it. The minimalism was killing me here.
The mass itself was uneventful. I liked the way the woman soloist sang. She really put feeling into the lyrics of the hymns and sang with a certain emotion and cadence that I hadn't heard before. I was briefly concerned when the celebrating priest took a seat to deliver his homily, thinking if he's getting comfortable, this could be a long one, but that wasn't the case at all. His homily was fairly brief, to the point, and spoken with clarity and volume.
The church was fairly full for this Saturday afternoon mass, and for the first time, the seniors may have been in the minority. Somehow, my husband and I ended up surrounded by about twenty eighth-graders. There was no question that these kids were Nativity eighth-graders - the attitude just oozed out of them: "WE RUN THIS CHURCH." They were good kids, all sitting together. Two of them carried up the offertory gifts, two were communion distributors, and almost all of them opened the hymnals and joined in the songs. I don't know if they meet for mass like that every weekend or if there was something special still to come for the group. Either way, it was a nice change of scenery.
DURATION: 50 minutes
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