When my Father died, no, SINCE my Father died I have always felt closest to him at Church, (even sometimes, albeit rarely, in what is nothing short of a mystical experience, when I am profoundly aware of the great "cloud of witnesses.")
It is both joyous and agonizing, and my Mother's death being much more recent, sensations of, or at least longings for the sensation of her presence are usually more acute.
This is compounded by living in the place whence my strongest memories have sprung, attending her parish, and my having "inherited" her pew, and in a sense, her friends, the people who knew her at daily Mass, (those of you who are daily communicants know that the grip people hold on their seats, in their pews, makes Disney's protective grip on its intellectual property positively magnanimous by contrast,) who now presume to know me.
I was quite prepared, with extra tissues and dark glasses, sitting in her seat at her Mass, next to her friends this morning, for mentions of Mothers' Day, and extra prayers and extra blessings, and extra acknowledgements.... but did I cry?
Did I weep? Was I overcome, or even undercome or mostlycome with emotion?
I was not.
Because the celebrant kindly, I might say, preemptively, began the opening collect by launching into, "'M' is for the million things she gave me, 'O' is only that....."
The sermon was mostly sentimental poems about mothers.
No one else seemed taken aback at the conflation of the Good Shepherd and Good Ol' Mom.
It is a strange liturgical landscape in which many of us find ourselves, no?
Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment