Different Parish, Some Same Problems

I went to Mass Saturday evening at St Henry Parish, in Dayton, Ohio.

I asked an Usher about St Henry and he said he was an Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, a long ways back.  (Not quite as exciting as if he had been Saint Henry, Bishop of Uppsala, who is much honored in Finland.)

At the beginning of Mass I was a bit concerned that I had stumbled into some High Church Episcopal service or some Eastern Right Church.  The reason for my concern was that they sang all THREE versus of the Processional Hymn.  But, things went along according to the rubrics and later the organist assured me that it was a real Roman Catholic Mass.

Just before beginning the Consecration, Father Tom Shearer invited some parishioners to move to other seats. It seemed a ceiling light was acting funny.  During the previous choir practice a light had burned out and exploded and the remnants had burned a hole in the rug.  So, like the Immaculate in Lowell, St Henry's is having problems with its ceiling.

A fairly modern church, the lighting is 30 years old and the bulbs burn hot.  More interesting, replacement bulbs are now made in Viet-nam.  More important, the quality control is not consistent.  So, the parish is going to undertake a repair of its ceiling.  At least they are not also dealing with a leaky roof.

My take was that there were about 250 people at the Mass.  Holy Communion was served under both species.

The homily was about two things.  The first was that the Holy Trinity (this being Trinity Sunday) is a mystery and that trying to explain a mystery is near on impossible.  The second part was the changes to the mass coming with the new Roman Missile.  This new Order of the Mass will be implement in late 2011, but Fr Shearer is beginning the introduction of the new order early.  One of his points was that while this is "change" it is an opportunity to increase one's own spiritual devotion.  He noted that he had initially resisted the idea of more changes, but then decided that he could grow in holiness by using this as an opportunity for such growth.

If you clicked on the first link you saw that the Parish has a great web page, including each Sunday Bulletin provided in Adobe Acrobat format.  The web mater is also the music leader.

I like visiting new Parishes, but I promise, Jimmy, that I will be back in Lowell to be able to help count money on the 6th of June, the 62nd Anniversary of D-Day for OVERLORD.  I will not, however, be there at H-Hour for the landing, but will be there for H-Hour for counting.

Regards  —  Cliff