Here in my little corner of the Lord's vineyard, I blessed throats three times today: once at the daily Mass at 8am, then when CCD was about to end at 5pm (a Liturgy of the Word service), and then for the commuter crowd coming home at 7pm (again a Liturgy of the Word). Morning Mass was more full than usual. The 5pm service had about 75 people (of which 40 were CCD students), and there were about 25 at the 7pm service. Not bad.
PS - poor St. Ansgar. Same feast day. Rarely celebrated.
3 comments:
It's a case of "if you have it they will come". If you just blessed throats AT MASS (as it should be done) and don't add two (!) services just for blessing throats then it wouldn't seem as though there is a demand for it. Keeping the tradition of blessing throats at Mass for the saint's feast is great. Creating liturgies for the sole purpose of having a justification for blessing throats is ridiculous.
The blessing of throats at Mass was just that. The 5pm was because it had value as a teaching moment for the children in Religious Education on a sacramental as well as a Catholic tradition. The 7pm was, I'll give you, an add-on. I wanted to see what kind of turnout I'd get from those who get an early start in their day and couldn't be at a morning Mass. In the end, the space-time continuum was not disturbed and life went on after a 15 minute effort.
We had an extra evening Mass (we don't usually) on St. Blaise's day. I attend morning Mass so I don't know how many came at night, but at the 9 AM, we had 2 1/2 times MORE people than normal.
I vacillated between wishing that those people would come every day, not just on special blessing days, and being glad that they wanted to be there at all. And I am firmly convinced that "if you build it, they will come." People like sacramentals. It's something concrete. And it can be a wonderful tool to teach everyone, no matter their age, something about their faith.
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