Called Out of Darkness Page 0,66

was to learn the Mass in English, to learn to participate in it aloud as Catholics of our time now do.

The idea of the English Mass was distasteful. I grieved inordinately for the old Latin - the beautiful Tridentine Mass on which I'd been brought up - and it seemed an immense tragedy to me that the service was so changed, and that the magnificent hymns of my childhood were apparently almost entirely gone.

But I was determined to learn the new Mass. I was there for the Lord, and I was there as a Catholic. And I was bound and determined to do what was required.

I soon settled into a weekly regimen of attending the Saturday Vigil Mass rather than the Sunday morning Mass something easier for me during my physical recovery - and I took my place in the front pew of the church, not because I wanted to be seen, or to feel important, but because I wanted no distractions as I followed the movements and gestures of the priest and the altar server in front of me.

St. Mary's Church, as I believe I mentioned earlier, had been built by the German immigrants of our parish.

And during my childhood it had operated right alongside St. Alphonsus, the church built by the Irish. But now St.

Alphonsus was no longer a consecrated church at all but a prized historical monument being used for other purposes, and so St. Mary's was the parish church to which I had to go.

Whereas St. Alphonsus is in the Romanesque style, St.

Mary's is Gothic, but certainly no less magnificent than St. Alphonsus, and in fact it houses an altar of uncommon intricacy and beauty because it is made up of so many statues of so many Apostles, angels, and saints. The altar even includes a huge and ornate depiction in plaster of God the Father, seated on His Heavenly Throne, with Christ sitting beside Him, and beneath them the Virgin Mary being crowned as Queen of Heaven.

Before Mass and even in moments after it, the contempla-tion of the details of this altar gave me a supreme pleasure. I was home, yes, home, amid images I understood, and let me say once again - because it's so important - I never confused these images with the entities that they represented. Rather I gazed on them to be reminded of things eternal, and things which I now felt "free" to study and experience to the full.

But the most vital part of my reeducation was hearing the Mass spoken aloud by the priest and by those of us in the pews, indeed hearing words of it spoken aloud by me - and focusing for the first time on words which decades ago had been buried in the printed missal.

In other words, prayer was once again acoustic for me rather than something read. Reeducation in Christ was acoustic and gave my mind an immediate and powerful sequence of impressions of the sort I'd never really been able to gain so easily from books.

Also this weekly Mass involved singing. And though the congregation was small, and mostly made up of elderly people, there was a gifted cantor, a soprano named Sheila, who sang with operatic power and grace.

My first full participation came through singing the "Gloria" with Sheila - the hymn I described earlier in this book.

Whatever grief I felt for the old Latin was soon burnt away by the power of this hymn, guided as it was by the soprano's clear and soaring voice.

The most moving verse of the "Gloria" for me, as we sung it, was:

For You alone are the Holy One,

You alone are the Lord,

You alone are the Most High,

Jesus Christ,

With the Holy Spirit,

In the glory of God the Father.

Amen.

It was possible to look up, as I sang these words, and look at the statues of God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, hovering above them.

I wish I could convey what it meant to sing this hymn because I wasn't just singing it with my voice; I was singing it with my will. I was abandoning my will, no matter how bitter my fears, to the sentiments expressed in this hymn. Week after week as I sang the words "You alone are the Lord," I would feel chills over my entire body. It seemed I had come home to something of incalculable power. And there was the opportunity, the opportunity, after decades of silence to pour