A St. Peter’s Sunday

Shot down to the Loop on Palm Sunday for mass at St. Peter’s on Madison Street.  Green Line Special, fast and easy.

I went partly for that urban anonymity celebrated 50 years ago by Harvey Cox in his Secular City.  I found the crowd leaving the 9:30 mass, then waited for the 11:00. 

Found the service:

Neither pedestrian nor parochial. 

Marvelous organ playing as mood-setter and during mass, never intrusive.  The hymns were sacred, no pop melodies to be heard.  Acoustics excellent, nearby pre-mass chatting was absorbed, presented no problem to the would-be meditater. 

Sermon short and to the point (after long reading of passion).  Reading mainly by 50–ish short-haired petite blond woman in vestments who in the spoken word approximated the depersonalized, ceremonial style of the chant.  Same for other parts taken, each by a priest — the celebrant and his helper at the altar, acting as a sort of combination deacon and server. 

Nothing amateurish or stylized about any of this.  Indeed, the whole liturgy exuded professionalism, as in the church’s excellent sound system.  The building itself matters, and expense is there, but there’s also attention to important detail.  It’s how a parish can spend its money well. 

Later: Holy (Maundy) Thursday and Good Friday, more of the same.  Huge crowds, as today, they crowded in the back at 1:15 or so, filled the center aisle waiting in silence to “adore” (I’d say “venerate”) the cross, a Good Friday staple.  Preacher noted that Jesus’ “It is finished” from the cross has recently been discovered (the Greek word) to mean pay or paid — “paid in full” on the recently excavated tax-collector’s site.  So Jesus paid up for us all, restoring the balance so we have an even playing field, you might say.

Personal high moment in today’s passion narrative, per John’s gospel, was Jesus from the cross, looking at his mother and saying, “Behold your son.”  Poignant doesn’t do that justice.  The preacher cited that, repeating from the gospel, as I recall, so chalk up another for him.

Occurred to me about St. Peter’s: it’s not a parish church, which I knew, but an adjunct to Old St. Mary’s, once on the south edge of the Loop, for some time now in the heart of the farther, relatively new South Loop residential neighborhood, whose parish includes the Loop.  I doubt if they have baptisms and weddings at St. Peter’s, for instance, though they clearly have regulars who donate and help out.  So what is it?  A mission church, for one of the nation’s biggest commercial districts.