Tag Archives: mass

Mar9

God’s Time

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Beige and White Clocks on Wall

We started Daylight Saving Time yesterday. The event snuck up on me (as it often does) and I didn’t get this post scheduled to pop up before it was time to spring forward. I hope everyone remembered to update their clocks. In honor of this moving of the clocks, today I’ll tell you about my grandmother’s reaction to Daylight Saving Time becoming the law of the land.

The events I will relay today happened before I was a conscious being, but I’ve heard the story retold so many times, I feel confident I can share it as if I had been there.

My paternal grandmother was a hardheaded Cajun woman. Born in 1913, she birthed my father, her youngest child, at the ripe old age of 32. She married and buried four husbands and tried to be a good Catholic until the day she died. Did I mention she was hardheaded? Once she made up her mind, there was no swaying her.

Daylight Saving Time has existed in one form or another in the United States since the turn of the 20th century. According to Wikipedia,

Daylight saving time was established by the Standard Time Act of 1918. The Act was intended to save electricity for seven months of the year, during World War I.[3] DST was repealed in 1919 over a Presidential veto..

During World War II, Congress enacted the War Time Act (56 Stat. 9) on January 20, 1942. Year-round DST was reinstated in the United States on February 9, 1942, again as a wartime measure to conserve energy resources.[5] This remained in effect until after the end of the war.

From 1945 to 1966 U.S. federal law did not address DST. States and cities were free to observe DST or not, and most places that did observe DST did so from the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in September. In the mid-1950s many areas in the northeastern United States began extending DST to the last Sunday in October. The lack of standardization led to a patchwork where some areas observed DST while adjacent areas did not…

According to the article “Here’s When and Why Daylight Saving Time

White Clock Reading at 2:12

Started in the US” by Kathleen Elkins,

Daylight saving time didn’t officially become a law until 1966, under the Uniform Time Act.

I can only imagine this impending springing ahead an hour must have caused much discussion across the nation. Certainly my family members were discussing it. My grandmother, for one, thought the idea was ridiculous. Nobody was really going to go along with this foolish idea. She maintained that most people would refuse to participate. She would not be participating, that was for sure.

Her kids tried to explain to her that there wasn’t a choice. Folks weren’t going to be able to choose between participating and sitting on the sidelines. People would grow accustomed to the twice yearling changing of the time. The hands on clocks would be moved, people would lose (or gain depending on the time of year) an hour (of sleep or watching TV or whatever they did with their leisure time), life would go on.

My grandmother was adamant. She was sure people would not go for such foolishness. She was sure people were not going to change their clocks and their lives, and certainly they would not give up an hour of sleep.

As the night of the change drew closer, my grandmother’s friends and family members shrugged and admitted they would move the hands on their clocks. What else could they do? Businesses were going to recognize the time change, and employees who wanted to get to work on time were going to have to recognize the change too. There just wasn’t any way around it.

My grandmother still maintained that she simply wouldn’t do it.

What about mass, Mom? one of her kids asked, pointing out that if MawMaw didn’t recognize the time change, she was going to be late for church on Sunday.

Oh no! My grandmother wasn’t hearing that. The Church was run on God’s time, she said. No way was the Church going to participate in this time changing business. The Church would not be messing with God’s time.

Family folklore holds that the first Sunday of the national observation of

Analog Alarm Clock Displaying 07:00

Daylight Saving Time was also Easter Sunday. Of course, my grandmother went to bed on Holy Saturday without touching her clocks. She was confident she and the Catholic Church were on the same page when it came to God’s time. Surely mass would start at the same hour it always did.

MawMaw woke up on Easter Sunday joyous in the rising from the dead of her Lord Jesus Christ. She put on her best clothes, applied her makeup, and styled her hair. At just the right moment, she got into her car and drove herself the few blocks to the Catholic church she attended every week. She had plenty of time to get here, find a good seat, and still be early.

I wonder if she was confused when she arrived and found the parking lot already full. Easter is a holiday when lapsed Catholics come out of the woodwork, so maybe she chalked up the abundance of cars to the yearly brief return of the lost flock. In any case, she found a parking space on the outskirts of the lot.

She must have congratulated herself on being early as she walked across the lot toward the church. Even having to park so far away wasn’t going to make her late. She had plenty of time. I can imagine the small self-satisfied smile on her face. She knew she was early enough to find a good seat.

I’m sure she expected to walk into a quiet church. Perhaps the organist would be playing softly. Perhaps parishioners would be greeting each other in whispers. Perhaps she’d hear the soft rustling of people shuffling through the church, dipping into the holy water near the vestibule before making the sign of the cross, genuflecting, sliding into pews.

Surely she was surprised when she walked in and the church was not quiet at all. The priest must have been talking when she walked through the doors because she immediately knew she wasn’t early, but late. Mass was almost over, and in my family, walking into a church after the service had started was considered one of the most embarrassing things a Catholic could do. MawMaw must have been mortified.

White and Brown Tower Under Blue Sky

I wonder how long my grandmother stood there before she realized even the Catholic Church had forsaken God’s time and sprung forward.

Images courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/ancient-antique-art-business-277371/, https://www.pexels.com/photo/alarm-alarm-clock-analogue-clock-280257/, https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-clock-reading-at-2-12-1537268/, and https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-and-brown-tower-under-blue-sky-2450283/.

Feb26

Our Lady

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During my years as a Catholic, the Blessed Virgin Mary was usually off to the side. She was the mother of Jesus, of course, but she only got attention during Christmas (happy) and Easter (sad) and in the story at the wedding where she tugged on her son’s robe and asked him to do something about the wine situation. Like most women in the Catholic Church, she was a helper who got second billing.

I hadn’t been in a Catholic church for years. It was the late 90s, and I was in a long-distance relationship with a Texan. The last time I’d been in a Catholic church had probably been six years earlier while on an art tour in Venice, Italy. The last mass I’d been to was probably the one for my cousin’s wedding a year or two before the trip to Europe. It had been a long time.

My Texan was an activist and during one of my infrequent visits, he was participating in a reenactment of a massacre of Zapatistas in Oaxaca, Mexico. I knew about the reenactment before my visit, but my Texan hadn’t told me it would take place on the grounds of a Catholic church, so the location was a surprise. Even more surprising was when the reenactment turned into a precession that proceeded into the church.

Oh yeah, my Texan’s comrade said to me with a shrug, there’s a mass.

A mass? I wasn’t prepared for a mass.

The comrade thought we should go inside and join the mass. Not knowing what else to do, I followed him in.

The priest was already in front of the congregation when we walked in. Someone was already doing the day’s first reading from the missal. Instead of slipping into the back pew as I would have done left to my own devices, the comrade walked all the way up the aisle to the very first pew. I could have ducked into a pew anywhere along the way, but for some reason that must have made sense at the time, I followed him all the way to the front.

He grew up Catholic, I reasoned. He knows what he’s doing.

He hadn’t grown up Catholic, I found out later. Sure, he’d grown up in Central America, but contrary to my assumptions, that didn’t mean he came from a family of practicing Catholics.

In my Catholic family, we did not show up late to mass. If we stood to arrive even a few minutes after the ceremony started, our plans would change abruptly to include a later mass. Had my mother ever arrived late for mass and been forced to enter the church, she would have scurried into the first available pew. Nothing could have made her walk all the way to the front, flaunting her tardiness in front of God and everyone.

I remember a few other things about the mass that day in Texas in addition to bringing shame on my mother by advertising my late arrival. I remember the priest (an ostensibly white man with white hair) speaking a mixture of English and Spanish to the congregation of predominately Mexican descent. I remember my Texan’s Irish comrade chastising me and the comrade I followed in for sitting when everyone else knelt, and I remember the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In every (and I mean every) other Catholic church I’ve been in, Jesus on the cross was front and center. Maybe Mary was on one side or the other, but often enough, she was in some little alcove in the back. In this church, Mary was up front, in the middle, larger than life and looking serenely on us all. Jesus on the cross was relegated to a supporting role presiding over where the choir usually sat.

I made this devotional called “Our Lady.” I can’t guarantee it will glow like this once you get it home.

I was shocked and pleased. I wondered what it would mean to attend a church where the Mother stood peacefully over the congregation week after week, where folks didn’t have to stare at bloody Jesus for an hour every weekend. How different my Catholicism might have been had I belonged to a church where the feminine was in the forefront.

Interior of “Our Lady of the Tiny Box”

Even though I haven’t been a practicing Catholic for decades, I still have a soft spot for the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the Catholic representation of the Mother after all. She loves us and takes our petitions to Jesus. There are no stories of Mary being wrathful, only stories of her being loving and kind and concerned.

Exterior of “Our Lady of the Tiny Box”

Recently, I made some art featuring the BVM. I guess I’m getting back to my roots. “Our Lady of the Tiny Box” was spoken for almost as soon as I posted a photo of it on Facebook, but “Our Lady,” a tribute to Our Lady of Guadalupe made from an Altoids tin, is still available for purchase for only $18, including shipping. With this little devotional, you can bring the peace of the Mother into your life.

 

Feb23

My Religious Upbringing

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Priest Holding HostiaI grew up Catholic. My parents were Catholic too, as were their parents before them. As far as I know, my ancestors were Catholic all the way back to France and were kicked out of Nova Scotia in 1755 at least partially due to their Catholicism.

I was baptized in a Catholic church by a Catholic priest when I was a few days old. I went to a Catholic school for prekindergarten and admired the older girls in kindergarten and first grade who wore pleated plaid skirts and white shirts with buttons. Preschoolers were too young for uniforms; we wore civilian clothes to class, but I hoped someday I could wear a cute school uniform too. Alas, my family moved, and I got the rest of my mandatory education in public schools.

In first grade, my religious indoctrination began in earnest. Every week of the school year, I attended what my parents called “catechism” and the church referred to as “religious instruction.” Each week, the teacher (always a woman) taught us what we needed to know in order to grow up to be good Catholics.

In the town where I went to elementary and middle school, kids made their confirmation in tenth grade. Confirmation is the Catholic sacrament of choosing to be Catholic. Up until Confirmation, a kid’s parents and godparents make religious choices for him or her, but at Confirmation, the young person chooses to continue life as a Catholic. After accepting Catholicism and being confirmed, a person is seen as an adult in the eyes of the Church. It seems ridiculous to me that a 15-year-old could be capable of making an informed choice about something as important as religion, but that’s the way it worked in our community.

My family moved a few weeks into my tenth grade year. Somehow in the hubbub of my dad starting a new job and my mom getting me and my sibling enrolled in our new schools, our parents didn’t enroll us in religious training. Maybe they looked into it, and the new church didn’t want us starting late. Maybe money was tight and my parents couldn’t afford tuition. In any case, we sat out catechism that year.

Our family still went to mass, but it wasn’t the big deal it had been before we moved. In our old community, my Cathedral Interior Religious With Benches Empty in Backdad sang in the church choir; later, my parents sometimes read the Liturgy of the Word at mass. Even though my parents weren’t huge movers and shakers in the group, our family was part of the community. In the new, much larger parish, no one seemed to care if we attended mass.

I don’t know how we got the information, but we learned that in our new parish, kids made their confirmation and became adults in eighth grade instead of tenth. I was not only missing out on preparation for my confirmation, I was already behind.

I suppose the next school year, 16-year-old me could have joined the 12 and 13-year-olds in confirmation preparation, but my parents never pushed the issue. Perhaps because it was a sacrament of choosing, my parents were waiting for me to take the initiative and ask them to help me get confirmed. Perhaps their own doubts about our religion had crept in far enough to make them hesitant to insist I get with the Catholic program.

I had my own doubts about the Catholic Church. I wasn’t keen on the way men got to be movers and shakers (priests), while women were stuck in helper roles (nuns). No one had been able to give me a good reason why women couldn’t be priests too. At that point, I hadn’t decided to quit being Catholic, but I knew I didn’t want to make the adult decision of being all in.

In any case, I wasn’t confirmed that year; I wasn’t confirmed the next year; I wasn’t confirmed ever.

Our whole family attended mass less and less frequently. No one saw to it that I went to confession (or “the sacrament of reconciliation” as the Church had started calling it by the time I came along). My sibling and I were busy with school activities, and my parents’ marriage was crumbling. Maybe my parents felt getting everyone to church was no longer worth their energy. (I remember once dragging my feet as the family was getting ready to go to the new church, and my mother said, Fine! Stay home if you don’t want to go! Would I actually be allowed to skip church and stay home alone? I didn’t find out because I was scared of the passive-aggressive repercussions I might face if I took my mother up on her offer. )

I don’t remember the last time my family attended mass together. Somehow my life as a Catholic ended with a fizzle instead of a bang.

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