Trying to stay occupied today because I am fundamentally terrible at fasting without being a whiny little shit. Anybody else here seen, heard, or smelled something noteworthy while we wait for Sunday's big Christos Anesti moment?

I've been shopping around for a new church (parish, not denomination) during Lent, which has resulted in a wider view of what my fellow papists are up to this spring. My usual has been Annunciation, which I like because I can walk there but it got a bit stale. So far, managed to run through:

Cathedral of St. Matthew - went here when I lived in Adams Morgan, but now that I have to drive it's location is nearly prohibitive. It's a good spot, but on occasional weekends (Red Mass and Easter in particular) becomes a place for DC careerists to be seen at church which doesn't bother me because it's irreligious but because it's just deeply, deeply lame. Anyhow, went here for Ash Wednesday because I work both my jobs on Wednesday and the Cathedral is the only place with enough masses for me to make the obligation.

Notre Dame Cathedral - took a trip to France and this was the closest church to our hotel. I've been to churches that are also big tourist destinations but nothing like this. They try to keep the pews clear for people to attend mass, but really all they had was an absolutely ancient lady asking what we were there for before she admitted us to the seated area. The ushers were willing to get kind of aggressive though. Some tourist tried to pop into the center aisle to take a picture of the altar during consecration and an usher put his hand over her camera and gave her a *very* convincing frown.

Shrine of the Sacred Heart - my favorite of the new tries (at least the viable ones as there are at least two reasons why Notre Dame won't work on a weekly level) though driving and parking over there is exceedingly rough. The first time I went, though, was to the 8am Spanish language mass. That's fine in itself: my spanish is pretty okay and the delightful thing about Catholic's catholicity is that the rite is the same always, everywhere so they could do it Mandarin and everybody would more or less get it. But that Sunday was also the very first feast day for St. Oscar Romero, and since most of the parishioners who attend the 8am mass are Salvadorean it was easily the longest, most crowded early morning service I've ever seen. Little bit of a shock coming in, but I really liked it. I've been to the English language masses since and those are good too. If I can figure out parking, this will be the spot.

St. Ann's - Another beautiful building. I've been there the last few Sundays and yesterday for holy Thursday. I love the stained glass windows since I get bored pretty easily and trying to figure out how they grouped the saints (bunches of three, with utterly unhelpful thematic titles announcing the group - the only one I've gotten was Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome as three roughly contemporary 4th/5th century doctors of the church). Regular Sunday masses there are nice. Priest is a little bit didactic but he talks fast, and there's a good mix of respectable churchy folks and Joycean Here-Comes-Everybody-style weirdos. They didn't manage to catch the "gloomy reverence" that *really* makes for a good holy thursday mass last night, but they burned an absolute ton of incense and that's a good start. They let a young/new priest give the homily, which meant it was long and really on-the-nose. New vocations are good, but tone it down a little bit buddy. We've got two thousand years of church and as long as Augustine and Chrysostom existed nobody's sitting around waiting for *your* take on John's Gospel.

Anyhow. Back to St. Ann's today at noon. I've only really appreciated the Good Friday narrative once before, at St. John Cantius in Chicago. I don't expect I'll find something in this substantially less Catholic city that will match it, though obviously that's not the standard for today.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

I love a *good* Easter Vigil, but the downside of a boring one is pretty substantial. It's long and it's a Saturday night, which is risky. What do you nerds go for?

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

Like I said above, St. John Cantius' Good Friday is the only one that I've ever really understood. The Passion narrative is done in Latin, which just takes a really, really long time. So people come and go and wander around confused and the whole thing is jarring and alienating - which actually seems appropriate. Further, the Latin in this case does it's job and makes you feel just washed away by endless history. In forty years, I've been a good Catholic and a deeply shitty one at different points but the durably attractive thing about the Church has been the idea that I'm not special or interesting and that I'm joining two thousand years of other miserable dullards as we live our petty lives hoping for a chance to cooperate with some kind of transcendent grace that assuredly won't look how we want it to look. And the church is going to stand in one place, recapitulating Christ's sacrifice every single day, offering it to all the Here-Comes-Everybody's who wander in and offering it again tomorrow when we don't take Christ up on this unmerited gift: we're all going to die, and everybody who remembers us is going to die as well. And more people are going to come along and the same thing is going to happen. And Good Friday is supposed to remind us of the grim freedom in this.

St. Ann's didn't quite nail it, but I think this is probably a hard dynamic to find, liturgically. They kept it dark, quiet, and spare, which works. Everybody shut up and listened, which is the point. But I'd like a place that keeps pushing that and reminds us that we aren't shit both in place and time.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad