Felize Pascual!

So, it being Easter and all, I decided to go to church. I know fom my rides down to the beach that there exists one St. Mark Catholic Church and Education Center along Eastwood Avenue, which made it well within biking distance, so that's where I went for the five o'clock evening Mass.

I was handed a songbook on the way in, and figured, correctly, that's how things are done there. Or, that's what I thought until I saw a hymnal already in the pew. It was at this point that I looked around, taking note of how, well, brown most of the other attendees were. I do realize that I live in the South now, and given the overwhelming practicing Catholic bent of the Central and South American immigrant communities, this ethnic makeup is to be expected. Just because the surnames of the local church families in the West Park section of Cleveland were Corrigan and Sweeny and Kilbaine and McCaffery doesn't mean the whole of the Church is of Irish descent. I then noticed that the songbook I was handed on the way in is written in Spanish, and that, as the Mass began, that's what the priest was saying it in, and that I was going to have to follow a Spanish/English program located near the hymnal. It seemed to me a mite curious that no one felt any need to note on the sign (written in English) out front that the evening service was in a language other than English, and wondered further if I was the only one who had made this mistake. I mean, really, since half the people at an Easter srvice are attending the first of two Masses they will attend annually, it might be helpful for a parish to point them toward a service time in which their respective vernacular is employed. Sure, the program was helpful and the Spanish singing was nice, but other than the dozen or so words I figured out (via proximity to French/Latin) by midway through the Mass, the homily was a bit beyond me. I got from a lot of "nuestros" that Heysoos died for our sins, but couldn't work out much beyond that. I felt like all those poor pre-Vatican II kids suffering through the Latin Mass.

If my Reflective Catholic Rhetoric weren't so rusty, I'd no doubt observe that the Lord sent me to that particular church for some as-yet unarticulated reason in His plan, but I'm not really of that habit. I'm glad, in an odd way, that I went, and may even go again and see what Spanish I might pick up from the hymns. But I am sincerely puzzled that a church whose sign out front is in English, whose daytime services are apparently in English, felt no need to make note of the small departure from form for the evening edition. You have to coddle us C&E folk if you want us to come back more often.

Happy Easter to all nonetheless. I hope yours was at least as blessed as mine was interesting.