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Bitter Trials: Altar Flowers for the Feast of the Sacred Heart


If you are not familiar with Evelyn Waugh's correspondence with Cardinal Heenan, I recommend it during this social and ecclesiastical crisis.  It provides insight into what those of traditional Catholic persuasion were thinking when the Latin Mass was wrenched away from them.  Waugh also expresses what life is like for him without the Mass which he loved so dearly- a bitter, bitter trial.  I have always felt that Waugh might have been a kindred spirit.  After reading his personal correspondence, I am certain. 

Our good curé, got the word from the chancery that he would be transferred July 1.  This was a shock, especially after months of quarantine.  Sixty to a hundred congregants,  a schola cantorum, an army of servers vying to be thurifer.  We had been cancelled.  The closest reliable Traditional Latin Mass is a four-hour drive of windy coastal roads.  "What now?" we asked.

Arrangements for the final Missa Cantata on the Feast of the Sacred Heart.
Father said his final Mass early Monday morning.  My little altar server sprang out of bed, threw on his black clothing and bounded into the car.  
"Spera en Deo, quóniam adhuc confitébor illi: salutáre vultus mei, et Deus meus."  He knelt and prayed the responses next to Father.  He rang the bells and held the paten.  Our last Low Mass.   Our last Latin Mass.  Closing.

Twenty years in theatre taught me this routine.  On closing night after the audience leaves, the house manager shuts the doors, shouts "house is empty," and out of the wings appear the stagehands.  "Strike" begins.  The stage is skillfully dismantled, the costumes are rolled away on racks and the props are stored for uncertain future use.

At the end of Mass, we sniffled through a verse of "O Sanctissima" as Father and my little server recessed out of the sanctuary.  "Divine theatre strike" had begun.  Optimistic of the next big opening, we packed up the paten, the cruets, the bells and the Missale Romanum in storage tubs.  Priest vestments zipped away in garment bags and a mountain of server cassocks lay across the back seat of the car.  I nestled the large altar Crucifix in a soft blanket in the trunk.
"What now?" you ask.  "Spera en Deo." 







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