Just when you thought it was safe to go to a liturgy near you, that annual dilemma strikes again: its vacation Mass time.
You know the experience. One day you are on the beach relaxing, watching your children innocently playing in the surf. The next day you’re wedged into a pew full of tanned fifty-somethings singing “Come to the Water” at full voice, while Pastor Pete accompanies on guitar strolling up and down the main aisle. And all at once you’re wondering why you ever left home.
It’s an annual rite of passage. Sometime, somewhere during a restful vacation, far from home and your familiar parish, you suddenly realize, “Where will we go to Mass?” That’s when the panic sets in and you start to sweat but not from the ninety-degree weather.
Where do we go this year? Please, please, not the parish we tried last summer, the one with the submersible baptismal font and the altar-in-the-round. And certainly not the one from two years ago, a little further out of town, where everyone stands during the consecration and the extraordinary ministers are wearing flip-flops. I know this is a beach community, but….
It’s enough to make any reasonable-minded woman throw her missal down and shout, “Sanctuary, sanctuary!”
This year looked so promising, too. We located a parish, even further out of town, named after St. John Vianney, the Cure d’Ars. Alleluia! A suburban church dedicated to the patron saint of Catholic parish priests and — this really sealed the deal — during the “Year of the Priest,” as proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI.
“It must be a sign,” I told the kids and my husband, as we cleaned the sand from between our toes and squeezed into real shoes for the first time in five days. “If we get there before the vigil Mass, maybe we can even go to confession.”
Ah, the eternal optimist. Every family should have one.
With more than an hour to go before Mass, we became familiar with every corner of the church, every dedication plaque and every public notice on the bulletin board in the ancillary “meeting space.” We never did find the confessionals.
By bodily contortion we could just about pray in the vicinity of the tabernacle while kneeling on the tile floor. Good thing too, because it lessened the surprise of having to kneel on the same tiles during Mass, sans proper kneelers in the pews.
The people were friendly enough. In fact they never stopped chatting, unless it was to sing. The Sign of Peace took longer than the Gospel reading.
But surely the apex of the liturgy was during the consecration when the pastor, newly-appointed by the diocese, decided our responding “Amen” lacked the true gusto of the universal Church. “Come on now, we can do better than that, can’t we?” he said with all the vim of a team mascot during a big game. “Everyone, all together, and really give it to me this time: ‘Amen!”
At least it was air conditioned.
If you’ve stayed with this article so far you’re either thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve been there too” and shaking your head in commiseration, or you’re thinking “What a vacation Mass snob she is.”
Snob may be a little strong, but I do admit to being extremely protective of my rights to a valid and appropriate liturgy. I recognize that the Mass is a communal experience, but I also know that it is a sacrifice. It is solemn in its awesomeness; the Mass is necessarily a vertical experience. Even on vacation, I need quiet at Mass. I need to be alone with the Eucharistic God.
If that’s the attitude of a vacation Mass snob, then I am guilty as charged. As my 14-year-old daughter expressed as we unlocked our hot car in the parking lot, “That was like a TV show!” I don’t go to Mass to be entertained or to feel like one of the gang. I go to face my Lord and beg Him to mercifully transform me into something He can make use of.
So it was back to the beach for a last day of relaxation before we followed the predictable pattern of so many families and joined the vacation traffic heading home. As we coasted into another village of stop-and-go motorists, I spied a white framed church with a cross atop its spire, one I hadn’t noticed before. “St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church” read the roadside marker. “All are Welcome.”
Peter, Rock of the Church, Keys to the Kingdom — it must be a sign!
For next year, at least, hope springs eternal.
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