Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Traditional Mass in Our Area; how it started and kept

I thought I should write about the Thursday Traditional Mass that has been offered now for 2 years before I forget and take it for granted.

One of the young priest started Traditional Mass on Thursdays in Glen Burnie as his private Mass a couple of years ago and was able to invite people by words of mouths. One of the priest I have known told me about it, and I started to attend it with my homeschoooled boys. I thought it would be wonderful for my boys to experience the Traditional Mass, The Sacrifice of the Holy Mass, since they are also learning about it at home. It is pretty early, 7AM and we have to get up by 6 and just go, but we kept going. When this priest became the pastor of St. Agnes, he continued this Mass in the small chapel in the new church in Catonsville. It was very small, and he was quite busy, but one of his friend priest who specialized in liturgy and studied in Rome came to rescue. He made this Thursday Mass regular, and we ddidn't have to skip weeks any more. The amazing thing is that my boys picked up a prayer card at the Glen burnie church for who was ordained a couple of years ago, and they prayed for him for a year in the 'year of priests' without knowing who he was. After the year, they still kept the prayer card near their beds, and finally they got to meet him.
This is the priest who came to help with the Thursday Traditional Mass. Now my boys are being trained to serve, and celebrating the Mass with him. What a joy and miracle for us.

The main server is a convert of 3 years. He said he went to a very anti-Catholic unversity, but while he was getting a Master's degree in history, he found out that Catholic church is the true church and converted. Now he learned all the Latin prayers and serving the Traditional Mass, and he is quite busy with young people introducing the beauty of The Traditional Mass. One of his friends who was not so thrilled to go to Mass which is only in Latin at the beginning is now joined FFSP seminary.

We also had a beautiful Missa Cantata for Epiphany in a small chapel this year. As the number of attendees grew, the priest was able to move us to a bigger church which still had a high altar. Now we have a big church and can invite more people. On the first day, we had to move the altar table that is used for Novous Ordo on Sundays, but still altar severs couldn't use steps to the high altar, because a big wooden plank has convered the steps. We thought it was bolted, but found out that we could actually remove it. And voila! there were steps. My boys and the main server, Matt cleaned out all the dust, and now they can actually use the steps and have space to receive communion. The high altar and the steps probably have not been used for 40 years(pretty sad). But it is cleaned and dusted now. It seems to me that the glory and the beauty of this church has returned. We still have to put everything back after the Mass, but we are quite happy that we can still have this beautiful Traditional Mass in this beautiful church. After a few generations, will people find out how we kept this traditional Mass? I do surely hope so, and I hope they treasure this Traditional Mass as we did.
Deo Gratias.

2 comments:

Fr. Larry said...

I saw you advertisement in the Archdiocesan Bulletin and thought that was your group. Welcome to the blogosphere. I have two sights. The one for my homilies is called Roman Catholic Homilies (www.romancatholichomilies.blogspot.com)
The other website is for other things is called Ubi Petrus, Ibi Ecclesia (www.wherethereispeter.blogspot.com)

miacoyne said...

Thank you Father. I hope everything is well with you.

Mia