Gaudete Sunday, 2024
Recollecting Guadete Sunday this year as a gift of a day, and one that keeps on giving, including the Very Marian Advent Prayer Service where my poem set as an Advent carol was performed again.
Yesterday was a long 12 hour day with Stewart. He picked me up at 9:15 AM and dropped me off at 9:15 PM. I have been savoring everything that happened yesterday ever since I got home last night and continued from since I woke up this morning until now.
One thing that makes me quite pleased when recollecting yesterday’s pleasurable moments is that almost everyone I talked to that I hadn’t previously met or met only once said, "I read your Substack," and said things like:
"I love it."
That last was from a young mother with wonderfully curly hair. She then held up a handsome baby boy and said, “‘Remember him? from the Artists Retreat?” (The Benedict XVI Institute had two artists retreats this year, a large one in the summer and a smaller one in the Fall, and we’d met at the smaller one.) I hemmed and hawed. I was glowing from her telling me how much she enjoyed this Substack and from embarrassment that I did not remember the charming baby boy she held up for me, so I couldn’t meet her probably expectation and say something like, “My, how he’s grown!” All I could manage to say was to ask her how old he was. He’s seven months old now. When was that four months ago? I was shocked because I don’t remember her being there with a baby at all. Later, I squinted a little in my memory and scanned around the circle of chairs where we all had sat and read paragraphs from Pope St. John Paul’s Letter to Artists, and only then could I dimly make out in my mind’s eye that one of the chairs across from me on my right could have been inhabited by her and her baby. Ah, the failures of old age.
Another man I remember from the other longer artist retreat last summer told me that he reads my Substack too and really enjoys it. "I read your story about your father's death. You are such a good writer . . .."
Hardly anybody ever comments on my Substack posts, so I was delighted to have that affirmation that there ARE readers out there who are enjoying what I write.
Another thing which I'm perhaps strangely grateful for is that I missed a big step and went flying when coming out of the Girl's bathroom with its little-girl-sized toilet at Star of the Sea school auditorium, where they held a reception after the Archbishop's Very Marian Prayer Service (more about the service later). I'm not glad I fell, but I'm relieved I had a soft landing in some unsuspecting guy's lap who was sitting next to his wife on a bench against the wall, eating the food from the buffet. I'm glad I didn't hurt him. Even his food escaped unmashed.
When I told Stewart that happened, he joked, “You’re such a flirt.” :-)
I'm even more grateful for other things that didn't happen. That adorable seven-month-old baby boy I mentioned was sitting happily on the floor about 10 feet in front of the step, and I could have squished the poor little thing if I landed on him. If I’d hit the floor, I could have broken any number of bones. I've read that when an old person breaks a hip, it's often the beginning of the end of their mobility and the beginning of a long decline to death.
So I am thanking God for giving me another stretch of time to enjoy getting around on my own two sometimes painful feet before the possible end of my mobility and the certain end of my life—which could come any day at this age. I’m not being morbid. Disability and death can come at any time in one's life, but the odds get higher as the years go by. It is a cliche, but I do think every day is a gift. Gaudate Sunday was an especially nice gift for me this year.
Stewart’s and my first stop earlier that day was at Thomas House next door to St. Thomas Aquinas Church, in Palo Alto. Stewart went down to the basement to practice with the St. Ann Choir, while I stayed upstairs in the kitchen and plated some charcuterie and snacks—for what Prof. Mahrt calls the "after Mass collation." My contribution was some Asian persimmons that had been given me on Saturday by my Vietnamese nail salon owner,—which I had cut up beforehand into thin persimmon-orange circles.
During the entrance procession at Mass, dear diminutive Fr. Morgan, wearing his lovely rose-colored Gaudete Sunday chasuble, was proceeded by well-known writer Fr. Dwight Longnecker in an alb and burgundy stole with rose stripes, who was concelebrating. Fr. Longnecker, who has a shaven head and a gray goatee, was in the Bay Area because he wrote the words to one of the two new pieces of Advent music that premiered later in the day at the Advent Service. When we shook hands as I was leaving the church, he remembered me, sort of, and said, "Rosemary, right?" And he mentioned we met at last summer's Artists Retreat. I told him that a piece by me was also being featured that evening, since one of the Advent carols on the program was based on a poem by me, which premiered at last year's Advent service. We agreed we would see each other there.
During the collation, I made Bill Mahrt laugh. I told him the distressing-to-me news that because I'd left my handicapped parking placard in Stewart's car the week before, I took a chance and parked in a handicapped parking spot at Trader Joe's, without what we call my “magic placard,” and I lost the gamble. When I came home and Liberty was bringing in the groceries, he found a ticket stuck in a windshield wiper—for $720!!! Bill said I should contest it. I agreed, “Yes!” I continued, “I should show up in the courtroom with my cane!” He laughed, then he made me laugh too, when he added I should wear dark glasses!
Stewart had the great idea of our lunching at the Beach Chalet which looks out over Ocean Beach in San Francisco, before we went on to the 4 pm Advent Service. We've dropped in there like that several times, before going to concerts at the cathedral. I love going to that restaurant because it’s in a historic building and because of its view. The food is good too. We split an entree of lox, capers, and goat cheese with toast, had a cocktail, shared a brussels sprouts appetizer, and I was able to look out the window at the waves and the bundled-up people walking on the chilly beach all the while. This December day in San Francisco, the temps were in the mid-50s.
The Very Marian Advent Service at the beautiful Star of the Sea Church was the best one yet in a several-year-long series of lessons and carols-type services that Archbishop Cordileone has been leading during Advent since 2019. A big shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe was still set up there from the 14th, her feast day.
The service offered plenty of wonderful old Advent music, most notable for me was Tomas Victoria’s “O Magnum Mysterium.” I love the words about the great mystery and the great sacrament when the animals saw the birth of the Lord. Repeated from last year’s premiere of newly commissioned music, there was Mark Nowakowski’s setting of Chesterton’s Carol, and Mina Pariseau’s setting of my poem “Our Lady Expectant.”
And there were the two newly commissioned pieces: “Our Lady’s Lullaby” and “While All the Earth in Darkness Sleeps.”
Besides the fine setting of Fr. Longnecker's text in “Our Lady’s Lullaby” by young composer and music director, William Fritz, Frank La Rocca's setting of a poem “While All the Earth in Darkness Sleeps,” by James Matthew Wilson, inspired by the titles of Our Lady from the Orthodox Akathist hymn, was lovely to listen to. Both the poem and the music were unusually accessible to my untrained ear and seemed perfectly suited to each other.
At the dinner that followed at the Archbishop's residence, I asked Frank La Rocca if Stuart and I could sit near him. He said yes, and he got up and held my chair while I sat down, an unexpected courteous gesture. We'd already had a great conversation with artist Justyn Zolli during the reception. Frank spoke about how some parts of the poem seemingly composed themselves, while others were so difficult that he told his wife Lucia that he might as well quit trying to compose any more. He knew the day would come, and there it was. He was finished.
He and James Matthew Wilson had had several conversations about how to set those words.
But he was stuck. He couldn't think of how to do it. And then, suddenly, he did.
One downside to the service was this. I know I'm supposed to suffer slights patiently, but I was not patient when I saw that my name had been left off the program. Fr. Longnecker was acknowledged as the writer of the piece of music composed from his text. But I was not. And during the service, when the archbishop acknowledged the creators and musicians at the service, he didn't mention me.
But Stewart had my back, loyally if a little bit gauchely. At the dinner, when Archbishop Cordileone was standing at another table and he was done thanking the creators, Stewart injected, “And Roseanne!” The archbishop paused and repeated in a friendly tone, “And Roseanne!” And everyone clapped.
Today I thanked Stewart again and he joked, “I’m happy he didn’t excommunicate me.”
Frank gave me a great bear hug and kiss when Stewart and I were getting ready to leave. He said, goodbye until the next time. I said, until your next triumph! Then he said, I hope not that long!
I realized after we left I hadn’t taken any photos. I’d missed my chance to get another photo with the archbishop this year. But I stopped on the way out, shook his hand, and thanked him for his hospitality. And, I added, “We should have all been applauding you!” He demurred and gestured toward the people he’d been thanking and toward Maggie Gallagher who makes the whole institute run. I love love love being part of the Benedict XVI Institute’s work. I’ve been a huge fan from its beginning. They are doing some great things.
One of the great things Maggie announced is that the Mass of the Americas, which the archbishop commissioned from Frank La Rocca and which premiered on December 8, 2018, continues to be performed at more and more Masses in many churches in the US and other countries. The most exciting thing is that Mass of the Americas will be performed at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City at a Mass to be celebrated by Archbishop Cordileone next October 7, Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary!
Outside we saw Fr. Longnecker standing on the corner waiting for an Uber. He was on the way to the airport to catch a flight home. We told him we’d pray for him, and we did. After every decade of the rosary we prayed in the car, Stewart prayed to St. Rafael, who is the patron saint of travelers, for Fr. Longnecker’s trip back to South Carolina where he lives with his wife and four children. Don’t be surprised. I forgot to mention he’s a convert to Catholicism and a former Anglican priest.
We grabbed a swag bag on our way out. My favorite gift from the bag is an Our Lady of Guadalupe Christmas tree ornament.
That certainly was a day that keeps on giving!