A couple of weeks ago something truly amazing happened. It was a Sunday morning. Dave and I got an early start, as always, to arrive at the church right around 8:00. This week was a bit special because the choir leader was going to be away, leaving him in charge for the first time. He wanted to be a little extra early this week so that he could warm up with the accompanist.
Even though Mass is scheduled to begin at 8:30, our priest lives on the other side of the mountains and also suffers from positional vertigo so he doesn’t always get out the door when he’d like to. So, our start time is usually at least a few minutes late. This week, as we passed the ten minute mark, one of the parishioners stood up and announced that Father was running very late and wanted us to “start without him”.
Strange as it may seem to many Catholics, that is what we did. The choir began the opening hymn, the first reader got up and read followed by the Responsorial Psalm. Then the second reader read the New Testament reading. So far so good. Where things began to unravel came when it normally would have been the place in the Mass for the Gospel to be read but Father still hadn’t arrived.
Unsure of whether or not we should pre-empt the Presider’s role, we instead moved onto announcements and the collection; to parts we knew we didn’t need a priest for. The choir led us in a few additional hymns until we were all getting a little tired of singing (and poor Dave was running out of material.) Still no Father.
Finally, the lady sitting next me stood up and called across the worship space to the first reader. “Bill, I think you should read the Gospel.” she said. “Do you think it’s okay?” he asked the congregation. After a few moments of mumbling affirmation, we all rose singing the Gospel Acclamation and Bill proclaimed the Gospel to us. From there we proceeded into the Prayers of the Faithful and Father made his entrance. Once vested, he came out to the altar, walked up to the ambo and announced there wouldn’t be a homily. The faithful giggled and then Father began to talk to us about his health.
With his vision failing, he’d been planning on having cataract surgery the following week. In the process of testing, the doctors had discovered a much more serious problem that would require the removal of a tumor from his pituitary gland or in other words: brain surgery. He expected to be away from us for at least three weeks. Wow! Father allowed a few minutes of questions and answers and then, after we let him know which parts of the Mass we’d already covered, he picked up where we left off and continued onto Communion. When Mass was over, the congregation blessed him with raised hands and prayer.
Last Thursday, Father had his surgery and is doing well.
In the weeks since this happened and I’ve gained the perspective of a little distance, I continue to be so very proud to say I am a member of Shepherd of the Hills. True, we are very small and perhaps don’t have a cadre of semi-professional church types who know all the ins and outs of protocol but what we lack in size, we more than make up with just by the sheer willingness of the average person in the pew to stand up and become part of the solution instead of creating a bigger problem. Maybe Mass that morning didn’t follow the strict rubrics of the Roman Missal, but we certainly came together in our “common-union”. And that’s what it’s all about.