After the Mass is Over
The sound of 120 seminarians chanting the psalms, (beautifully, I might add) was the main attraction, and helped overcome my serious objections to Lauds and Mass beginning at 5.45 AM! The feeling of being part of a community at prayer in the morning brings me back to my own seminary days and the innocence of one’s first halting steps towards priesthood. It is a quiet joy to be able to join the faculty and student body for the daily celebration of the Mysteries from time to time, but, increasingly, it is the mood that descends on the place as Mass ends that draws me back, despite the ungodliness of the hour.
After the Mass is over, the students recite the Angelus, using the traditional chanted style that owes more to Buddhism than Christianity; it is deeply moving. Then they shuffle out to breakfast and slowly the place becomes quite. The pious lag behind, for a few moments at least, but eventually, the delights of the chapel cannot compete with those of breakfast and they too leave. The sacristans bustle about the sanctuary, carefully draping a protective mantle over the altar, and then they too rush off to break their fast. Just when one thinks that the last of the seminary sounds has died away, a stray footfall will reach the chapel, bounced off the bare walls of the empty corridors and a voice, unaware of its audience, will test the acoustic with a sung phrase from the just finished liturgy. Eventually, I have the chapel to myself and a sort of silence descends on the place.. I say “sort of” because it is not quite complete. Outside, trains carrying people to all corners of China trundle by, farmers walking to distant fields exchange greetings, machinery begins to chug their contribution to the ever expending economy. These sounds creep through the open window but barely nibble at the substantial silence.
The benches, empty now, seem still to have a patina from the prayers that have been recently said in them. Despite the absence of people, the place still retains an atmosphere of active worship and feels almost haunted by the just completed Mass. A red light glowing beside the tabernacle declares that HE is has not left and the Saints who gathered in Communion with us around the altar are slower in taking their leave than the seminarians. One can almost feel their presence in the quietness.
In my head a jumble of meditations, distractions, and a to-do list for the day ahead all compete for attention in the beautiful stillness. Occasionally, (perhaps rarely would be more honest) a moment of real prayer will present itself, when the to-do list is set aside, distractions banished and a conversation can begin with HIM, HIS Mother or one of the Saints in my personal pantheon of Holy Men and Women. From time to time more mundane matters infringe, but even these earth bound reflections take on a heavenly quality during this special time. Eventually the nibbling sounds become more insistent and the spell is broken. HE is still present, of course, but somehow the space seems more like just an empty Church which can no longer capture my full attention. The Saints have left for celebrations beginning in other places, breakfast cannot be ignored forever and a new day’s possibilities can no longer be resisted. But for a few fleeting moments, before the day’s issues took hold, one felt something, something of God, in an empty Chinese Church, after the Mass was over.