Catholic Sensibility

I hope you all had a good Triduum in your parishes, or at least a prayerful time in whatever tradition you follow. I'm taking a few days off to build a door frame, tune up the mower and test it, bake an apple pie or two, and otherwise relax. We might head out to the theatre to see The Incredibles later today. I confess up front I'm not the most organized person by nature. It takes great discipline for me to navigate Holy Week well. A cross, if you will. Many years ago I had considered chainging ministries or getting out of church work altogether. My wonderfully sensible wife reminded me I'd probably do much more poorly as a procrastinator in the Real World. Perhaps so. Our new pastor is great to work with, but I wanted to be sure he felt good about the weekend. I was relieved that everything went so well. Our new associate was probably the most nervous of us all. But with only minor mishaps, I think all were pleased. Our big choir tackled Holy Thursday and gave up Good Friday this year. Given their "pattern" for "meditation" pieces, that was a demanding switch for them, more than they realized. The director had wanted to pass on the Vigil, and I was prepared to assemble an "all-star" schola for it, but the choir members all voted to do all four big Masses: Palm Sunday with procession, plus three Triduum efforts. We might have to look at that next year. Palm Sunday might be a good week for one of the youth choirs to spell them. Maybe they'd want Good Friday back. We'll have to see. I added a few singers and instruments to my ensemble and both Good Friday and Easter 9AM exceeded my hopeful expectations. One of the big choir members known for his ... frank, shall we say, evaluations, had nothing but good things to say about a group that some, shall we say, suggested retirement as an option. Not dead yet, I guess. I'm embarassed to report our Easter Vigil went only 2 hours and 7 minutes. That kind of timing gets your Progressive Liturgist card revoked. We have long done minimal readings here, and I'd like to add one for next year. I thought I had my friend Dave lined up to do the fire again this year. Last year, we had a bit of a flap over it. I had persuaded our outgoing pastor to permit a big fire (instead of his alcohol flare on wheels--don't ask). The weather was miserable, so we conferred and decided to go inside. I called Dave and left a message the fire was off. Only thing is, he didn't get the message, so Fr Bill seemed somewhat ticked I "went back on a team decision" and built the fire anyway. This year, it was fifty minutes before Mass time, with no sign of my favorite scoutmaster/firestarter. Our poor associate panicked and asked a neighbor to set something up quick. When I saw Dave Easter morning, he said, "You should've trusted me, Todd. I wouldn't let you down." He did show up with a truckload of kindling, which helped the neighbor's good fire. Despite fire worries, we did have a good bit more trust this year than in the past two. The people came out in bigger numbers than last year for the Big Three. Fr John was impressed with the Easter Vigil turnout. Lots of people had more room to maneuver than under the previous administration, so even with minimal changes from last year, we did very well, and the people seemed to appreciate it. I think we have some good foundations on which to build. Next year, I'd like to work on drawing more families to HT/GF/EV. We can look as choir assignments and make sure the workload is more balanced, especially for our big choir. I think we can widen the parish discussions on planning, too: give the parishioners even more input on things, setting up a deeper sense of ownership. Even though I'm supposed to be relaxing today, I'm still feeling excited about 2006.