A Convenient Continuation

Week Eighty-Eight - Saint Louis (Part Two)

10:00 Easter Sunday morning mass, St. Louis.  I'm a big fan of Christmas, but, in the holiday smackdown, Easter is, by far, my favorite of the two.  It's so much more sincere.  The commercialism is minimal, the gifts are downsized, the colors are brighter, the days are longer, and (well, usually) the weather is nicer. And the religion?  That's what Easter is all about, Charlie Brown.  Also, as the chief - and only - holiday coordinator in the house, I can't deny the appeal of a holiday that's so much . . . easier.  And just between you and me, I'll take a giant bunny rabbit with a basket of colored eggs over an unshaven fat guy who runs an elf sweatshop anyday.  Easter is just a win-win all around.  Now to the business at hand . . .
   
The planets must have been properly aligned this week or maybe it was just a fluke or maybe hell actually did freeze over, but whatever the reason, the family agreed to venture outside of its parish boundaries for Easter mass this year.  The possibilities were endless as I pored over Holy Week schedules, but I finally settled on wrapping up the "Saint Louis" series.  When visiting St. Louis's no-nonsense Saturday afternoon mass well over a year ago, I had only gotten to see their undercroft.  I was anxious to see the actual church, and going downtown for Easter Sunday mass seemed like the perfect thing to do this weekend.

We arrived early, anticipating a crowd possibly similar to that of St. Louis's Saturday vigil mass.  Doing so made parking easy, but the early arrival wasn't entirely necessary.  It wasn't until the last minute that the church reached SRO status.  It was a classy crowd, all dressed up and looking good and apparently arriving from a wide variety of locales.  Incredibly, we ran into someone we knew . . . from Cold Spring, Kentucky.  What are the odds? 

It was a visually interesting crowd.  I loved the family with four young boys who, along with dad, all wore identical navy blazers and khaki pants.  You really can't go wrong with a navy blazer and khaki pants.  Another future heart-breaker of no more than seven or eight sat in front of us, taunting his equally-cute younger brother with candy mooched off mom, and no, he wasn't sharing.  Anderson Cooper may have been there.  Miss Havisham sat behind us. 
    
I'm not including a photo of St. Louis Church with this entry because nothing on the exterior has changed since October of '09.  Enjoy the bunny.  The interior of the church wasn't at all what I expected.  I was immediately surprised by the size of the church which is fairly small, roughly the same size as its undercroft, which makes sense, I guess.  A square church, St. Louis is primarily concrete block with touches of marble.  There's really nothing fancy here - gotta love those practical Germans - although the intricately carved scrollwork and lettering in the stone is pretty amazing.  Mosaic stations of the cross looked to hold some promise.   The right side of the church is a wall of confessionals, while the left side has four sets of small, innocuous stained glass windows.  Although it was particularly dreary on the morning we were there, I'm not sure a sunny day would have added any significant illumination to much-needed lighting.  In spite of prominent lighting fixtures throughout the church, most of which oddly resembled upside-down flashlights of all things, St. Louis remained too dim for my personal preferences.  There was a large statue of Mary to the right side of the altar but only a mosaic of Joseph to the left, a noticeable incongruity that threw off the whole symmetry of the church.  A prominently displayed statue of my girl, Saint Therese, made it all better though.
 
It was a nice mass.  Music was provided by single woman who both sang and played the harp.  She did both beautifully, although considering this was a celebratory liturgy (which she herself made reference to), she could have picked up the tempo a bit.  In retrospect, it probably should have been disappointing to have attended Easter mass in such a somber gray church on such a gloomy gray day, but it wasn't.  The extracurricular chaos that had engulfed our lives for the past few weeks has (finally) come to a successful close, allowing our lives to return to some semblance of normal.  Plus, after a barrage of runny noses, sore throats, and lingering coughs, we're all healthy.  Oh, and did I mention a little thing called summer is just around the corner?  Alleluia!   

ATTENDANCE:  Full

DURATION:  50 minutes

Where Does It Come From?

Week Eighty-Seven - Pass the Robitussin

Still hacking . . .

The Nose Knows

Week Eighty-Six - Ugh

Admit it.  You hate it when you go to church and the person next to you spends the whole time sniffling, sneezing, coughing, and blowing their nose.  Well, this week, I'm that person, so I'm doing everyone a favor and going back to bed.  Now if I could just get this vise off my head . . .

Clermont County

Week Eighty-Five - Saint Veronica

4:00 Saturday afternoon mass, St. Veronica.  Knocked a big one off the list this week, not in terms of the physical size of the church, but in terms of mileage to get there.  Seriously?  Clermont County?  Not only is this little hobby of mine eating up more and more of my time each weekend, it's running up quite a gasoline tab.  It was a nice day, however, so the ride was a pleasant one, taking me to places I had never been before, among them St. Veronica Church.

My daughter has a friend who is a parishioner at St. Veronica.  As he likes to say, "She wiped that face," a phrase to be read with a considerable amount of sass.  St. Veronica's parish dates back to 1947 when donations from St. Martin's parish in Cheviot (what?) and from John Wargo in Pennsylvania (huh?) were used to purchase property in Mount Carmel and to build a church.  The church was initially to be named after St. Patrick but, in memory of Wargo's mother, St. Veronica was chosen instead.  I'm sure the money had nothing to do with it.  The current church was dedicated in 1985, with numerous additional buildings completed since then.

A sprawling, well-kept campus, everything at St. Veronica is clearly-marked, orderly, and new, and everything matches!  You don't see that much.  As a result, the exterior is quite attractive.  I was impressed.  Entering St. Veronica's church, however, prompted another unfortunate episode of deja vu.  There's a certain generation of churches that all look the same, and this was definitely one of them.  I've seen this church before, although I'm having a hard time pinpointing exactly where - to be honest, they're all starting to blend together.  The panoramic Wall of Brick behind the altar is a rerun, St. Veronica punctuating their span of bricks with nothing more than two very prominent listings of the hymns to be sung.  The shallow, rectangular windows - also familiar, although a splash of color was incorporated with the inclusion of non-descript stained glass.   A ceiling of wooden panels and beams seems to be standard for churches built in the 80's, and St. Veronica's was no exception.  A skylight running the length of the center aisle was nice, but, for some reason, it also unnervingly reminded me of St. Joseph's in  North Bend.  Statues? Only two in the rear of the church - Mary and, I'm guessing, Veronica.  Kneelers?  Nada.  Votive candles?  I didn't see any.  Did I mention the lights looked like peanut butter cups?
  
Music was adequate.  The inclusion of what I finally decided was a clarinet was not a good choice, however (is it ever?), and there was an awkward hesitancy among the members of the group which didn't help things.  Although the church was nearly filled to capacity, vocal contributions from the congregation were minimal.  Oddly enough, however, a considerable amount of other noise and inattention was noticeable - whispering, disagreements between parents and children, restless youngsters - but I guess you get that with a crowd that large.   I will add that it was a friendly group, everyone smiling and greeting the newcomers, i.e. yours truly and the mister.  That's something I always notice, and it was nice.

I'm currently reading Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy in which Michelangelo makes the statement that "the importance of a church is in its artwork." Of course, that's Michelangelo talking, but if that was the case? . . . St. Veronica would barely be on the radar.  Pleasant?  Effective?  Yeah, I'll give 'em that.  So, sure, you can go to mass here, but I doubt if you'll remember it.
  

ATTENDANCE:  Comfortably full

DURATION:  One hour