Skip to main content

Sursum Corda: Gold and White Altar Flowers

Our new home!  After a month of praying, fasting and negotiating, the Traditional Latin Mass has found and new and gracious home.  And what better place in our rural community than this small parish in an historic town known for its architectual quaintness? They welcomed us with open arms and hearts.  Deo gratias.  

Restoration has been underway for some time:  the altar rail perhaps stowed away in a forgotten closet, the ambo hovering in the back corner of the nave with yellow caution tape.  A diamond in the rough.  Here is a glimpse of the past...
Dedicated in 1896
In preparation for the first Traditional Latin Mass held in the church in half a century, I placed four arrangements of gold and white on the altar shelf.  
They seemed completely insignificant compared with the vibrant colors surrounding the reredos.  In this church, bold colors and lines will be appropriate to draw focus toward the tabernacle.  I look forward to experimenting!
Thanks to three traditional priests with missionary hearts, we will continue to have the Mass of all ages in our community. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Roses for Our Lady: Altar Flowers for the Nativity of the BVM

Altar flowers for the Traditional Latin Mass Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.   Roses, Queen Anne's lace, green poms and crocosmia greens.
3 comments
Read more

Processional Litter & Flowers for the Feast of the Assumption

This year for the Feast of the Assumption, the pastor of our little country parish asked if I would help create a processional litter for the statue of Our Lady.    He had the great idea of repurposing an old table!  It seemed Our Lady was smiling down on me that day when I walked into the thrift store and there it was for twenty dollars: a perfect square, three foot, solid oak table. A few months ago, my kind friend, mentor, and owner of Altarations Paraments in Oregon sent me a box loaded with remnants of liturgical fabric.  I added a white skirt around the bottom to hide the table legs and a carpenter attached brackets for the removable oak rods.  I was a bit nervous about creating the arrangements for the litter. They needed to be as light as possible and secured to the litter to withstand being jostled about in the procession.   I found four plastic oval platters at the dollar store, added a block of wet foam, taped it in place and created the arr...
2 comments
Read more

Hydrangeas, Roses & Holly: Altar Flowers for Christmas

                      Unfortunately, this is the best picture I could get of the arrangements for the Latin Mass on Christmas Day.   However, it may serve as inspiration for what can be done in the most unlikely of spaces.   The architecture of the church is typical postmodern, with no vestiges of the past.  The crucifix was added and the tabernacle put in its rightful place only within the last d ecade.  Who would have thought that the Latin Mass would be making its debut here in our isolated, rural community when there are a handful of beautiful, century-old churches perfectly designed for the purpose not far away! The proliferation of fake poinsettias already present in the church set me in motion to find other examples of possibilities for the traditional altar.  My search led me to the liturgy guy's post Does this 1944 Christmas Eve Mass Look Anything Like Yours?   I was inspired by the...
7 comments
Read more