Recently some friends of mine were discussing the misapplication of the word “heroic” to denote efforts which people ought to make simply as a matter of course. Staying married, for example, is not an act of heroism, at least in most cases, yet you read in the tabloids — that is, maybe you do. I of course stand in the grocery checkout line with my eyes carefully averted — of famous people who’ve managed to stick with each other for six months, and you’d think they’d cured cancer, discovered seventeen new planets, and figured out how to make tofurkey taste like actual turkey, from the way the headlines carry on.
But in some cases the term actually applies. I’m thinking here of my own parish priest, whose efforts to create an atmosphere of holiness in the church represent a triumph of will over architecture.
In purely material terms, our parish church radiates all the obvious sanctity of your average office plaza. We’ve got your linoleum floors. We’ve got, flanking the altar, your jazzy back-lit faux windows depicting the four Evangelists, so that even at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, the sun is always shining. In fact, it turns on with a click at the start of every Mass, which is how you know to conclude your private prayers and prepare to stand up.
Of course, objectively it’s a holy place because it’s been consecrated, and the sacrifice of the Mass occurs in it daily. But Father has, as I say, made efforts to build something on the foundation of that objective holiness.
He ensures, for instance, that the smell of incense lingers on the air.
When you go in for Confession, the church is dark, and music plays quietly: the Tallis Scholars singing Palestrina, or some plainchant.
As my teenager points out pragmatically, the walls are thin, and the music means that the people outside won’t overhear what you’re spilling in the confessional. Whether it’s a matter of secondary effect or not, the result is at least a step towards building, out of what’s available, the kind of atmosphere in which people instinctively fall silent as they cross the threshold.
Of course, if we could, I think we’d happily make Father a fraction less heroic, by trading our four backlit Evangelists for those three women at the tomb.
Dream, dream, dream.
Incense and music: [Rating: 95/100]
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