Being a deacon for the mass is not very difficult. Usually.
Unless one is tasked with preaching, it is not hard to do the things a deacon does at mass. For "saying the black and doing the red", all that is required is basic locomotion, a middle-school level of literacy, and a minimal degree of comfort with speaking in public. If we take an expansive definition of "mass" to stretch from the time one pulls into the parking lot before the service begins until the time one exits back onto the street after it ends (or after one leaves church, which may not be at the end), then we could add to the list of qualifications that of not being positively allergic to one-on-one conversation. To be sure, there is a spiritual dimension to the diaconate, and that is the journey of a lifetime. But any of us could execute the mechanics of serving at mass after some brief training, e.g. "When the Gospel Acclamation starts, stand up, turn to the priest to be blessed, then grab the Book of the Gospels, march over to the ambo, and read the Gospel." There is a bit more to it than that, but not much.
Among the deacon's duties is to read the Prayers of the Faithful. The spiritual basis for this is that the deacon is living and ministering among the people in the community, and so he brings back into communal worship the community's prayers. At our parish, that beautiful spiritual ideal is somewhat undercut by the fact that the prayers have been scripted ahead of time by someone else (I am never quite sure by whom, as we have a large parish staff, and I think the assignment rotates around a bit). Still, without fail, the text is typed up and clipped into a binder, the color of whose cover is coordinated with the liturgical season, and placed in the cubbyhole of the ambo. All I need to do is walk over to the ambo at the appointed time, open the binder to the correct page, and read aloud what is printed there. A 12 year old could do it. The parish leadership has striven to make the operation idiot-proof.
That is not to say that even that simple task doesn't have its hidden snares. Sometimes the script contains typos, or words inadvertently have been omitted, which can leave the reader (me) sounding rather foolish when trying to simultaneously process what is written and recite it aloud. And in the course of praying the Prayers of the Faithful, we pray for - by name - parishioners who are ill, those who have died, and those for whom the mass is being offered. That is three lists of parishioner names that must be recited. Anyone who has tried to recite a list of Catholic names knows that it is not for the faint of heart. One immediately sees the advantage of belonging to a WASP church, where presumably one is presented with lists of Joneses, Greens, Thomases, Hopkinses and other English-friendly surnames. But this being a Catholic parish, the names are a formidable array of ethnicities, with vowels dangling from the ends and many consonants packed into the middle. Usually I can handle the Hispanic names, thanks to my undistinguished four years of high school Spanish, and generally I can fake my way through the Italian names, having lived among many people of Italian and Sicilian descent during my high school years. The German names are a degree more difficult; it's not always intuitive that "Hoeffler" is pronounced "hefler". And as for the Polish and other Slavic names, they frequently defeat me. Our anonymous script preparers endeavor to assist by providing phonetic pronunciations of some of the names, but I am never certain those are any better than my guesses, and sometimes there is no pronunciation assistance provided for names that cry out for them, while at other times they are provided for names for which I don't need any help.
Mispronouncing the names isn't only a matter of my sounding foolish; as it happens, I happen to believe there can be some spiritual benefit in my occasionally making a public fool of myself, if it fosters humility. But these names belong to persons, living or dead, whose circumstances are sources of anguish and grief for people in the pews. In a number of cases, parishioners have dragged along other family members to hear their loved one's name recited at mass. My blowing that big moment for them is not always well-received.
So on the whole, I consider any instance of my making it through the Prayers of the Faithful without stumbling over more than one or two names to be a success. It happens at least half the time.
But this past weekend, my traversal of the Prayers at our late morning mass was a train wreck. And I really can't explain why. It wasn't unfamiliarity: I had previously served at a mass that weekend, so I had already recited the prayers once before, without a major incident. This time, though, I don't think I made it to "... we pray to the Lord" on a single prayer without tripping over this word, stumbling over that one, adding a word that wasn't in the script which completely changed the syntax of the sentence, skipping a word that turned out to be the key to the whole intention, and generally offering up a porridge of nonsense.
Whenever I am doing something in public which is not going well, I start silently berating myself, along the lines of, "Pull yourself together, man!" (It is a mark of how far I have to go spiritually that my first instinct isn't a silent "Holy Spirit, please help!"). So when I came to the lists of names to be read aloud, I was determined at least to get them right. And I did.
Except I didn't. I was fine (I think) on the names of the deceased, and the names of those who are ill. But for the mass intentions, there is a different list of names for every mass. And somehow, I read the wrong list of names. I read the names for the 9:30 mass, but I was at the 11:30 mass. So when I completed that prayer (flawlessly, yet completely wrong), our pastor was forced to intervene: "... and we also pray for ...", followed by about six other names.
Being a deacon of the mass is not very difficult. But in that moment, I wasn't equal to it. Lord, please continue to puncture the bubble of my pride so that I become better at relying on you, even in simple things.
Jim, I feel for you. Sometimes the mind disengages, and all efforts to reengage in panic flounder on the panic. The names in the Prayers of the Faithful should be printed with phonetics if there is any doubt, and the reader should go over them before Mass. Trouble is, the book is on the altar between Masses, not in the sacristy.
ReplyDeleteOur deacons don't read them. At my Mass, we have two lectors, one for English and one for Spanish, but they still seem to make hash out of more names that it should be necessary to make hash of. I cringe every time. One of our priests at daily Mass was baffled by the name McAuliffe, a family which was here for years and whose son was tragically killed. There were a lot of Masses for the boy, but during the week his last name kept coming out "Magluff." That should never happen.
Our parish has never read specific names. They're in the bulletin under "Those who long to be delivered from sickness and pain." I had them take my name off there. Only way my sickness and pain ends is in death, and I'm not ready to have the Church Ladies praying for my demise quite yet ...
DeleteWhen we don't have a deacon at the mass, a cantor reads the intercessions, including the names.
DeleteI try to review all of the texts of the day before mass, but for some reason we didn't get a script emailed out to us last weekend - someone in the office must have been on vacation. And then, when I arrived, the copy of the script that usually would be in the sacristy had been commandeered by the pianist, because there was no script for her at the piano. So I did the first mass "cold" - but as I say, it went fine. It was the second one that just sort of went kablooey.
I slept for about three hours that afternoon; maybe it was sleep deprivation.
I find Catholics, once you get past the Church Ladies, very forgiving of screw-ups, sometimes even having a laugh over them. Our old priest made some gaffe one time. He made an announcement after Mass about it and said, "It still counts!" Everyone applauded.
DeleteMy problem is that I pronounce polish and german names rather correctly and people who know the individuals say "who?" Proper pronunciation of my name is koe-potch. But I answer to koe-pazz and koe-packs. My own default pronunciation is koe-pazz. Pet peeve: getting asked if my name was shortened because it doesn't have a "ski" at the end. Not all polish names end so. My name means "dig". My ancestors were farmers. My mother's maiden name was "Znorowski" which means nothing in polish.
ReplyDeleteI always do koe-pazz in my head, Stanley. If it's good enough for you that's good enough for me. I's going to get a lot harder in the next generation to handle first names; every parent seems to think he or she is a poet when it comes to naming children.
DeleteDang, I've been saying "Koe-Pass" in my head all these years. Now you look completely different in my mind :-)
DeleteHaha. Perhaps the "z" sound makes me look more Hispanic, Jim.
DeleteTom, I have a second cousin whose five children all have monosyllabic names. Is it possible to abstract a nickname from a monosyllabic name? I don't think it is. Wait. Maybe. At my first workplace, if you had a monosyllabic last name like "Young", you became "Youngey". I loved my first workplace.
I once heard an NPR or similar radio discussion, the gist of which is that the bestowal of nicknames reveals a certain poverty of the collective imagination compared to yesteryear. Sports figures are given nicknames no more imaginative than what Stanley notes: putting an "ie." or an "er" at the end of someone's last name. Thus Mark Grace was known as "Gracie"; Patrick Kane is "Kaner". Some are a smidgen better: Jonathan Toews (pronounced "Taves") is known as "Taser", and Corey Crawford is "Crow". But that's only a little better. "Gabby" or "Dizzy" or "Oil Can" seems beyond the reach of what people can come up with. The suggestion was that the language itself has become a good deal flabbier - certainly more so than in Elizabethan times, when Shakespeare was coining new words with abandon.
DeleteBaseball nicknames peaked during my father's era when literally everybody had a nickname. He was "Doc," although he was a doctor of nothing; there were embarrassing moments when it was asked if there was a doctor in the house. A Doc, yes; a doctor, no. His lifelong friends included Stiffy, Delirious, Flap, Siddley and Nosenhoj.The last was a failed effort to pronounce "Johnson" backwards.
DeleteI doubt there were many ballplayers in the 30s who went without a nickname. As late as 1947, the Cardinals infield consisted of The Man, Red, Slats and Whitey.
Somewhat off-topic, but I used to find a lot of fulfillment in lectoring, and said a little prayer to St. Hilda beforehand to allow the Holy Word to speak through my voice for the comfort and edification of God's people blah blah. A copy of the Prayers of the Faithful was always kept in the vestry so lectors could practice it ahead of time.
ReplyDeleteThe lector was a nun or monk in the early English double monasteries who read some spiritually improving work in the refectory--hagiographies, sermons, meditations, etc.--while everyone was eating. Food for the body and soul. It helped maintain silence and order, also. It was expected that the lector would read with sufficient volume, clarity, and expression to keep everybody interested, but not present the readings as personal performances.
Many Anglo-Saxon and Irish hagiographies are written in exciting little episodes that seem specifically written to be read in a refectory.
Lectoring was considered a holy calling, especially where many listeners would have been illiterate. Lectors were given lunch after everyone else was done, and many got an extra glass of wine to keep their voices in shape.
Anyway, I liked being part of that tradition.
Jean, I love that insight. I am told that the tradition you allude to here is still kept alive in some religious order houses. There is even an official liturgical book with approved hagiographies for the saints of the day. I can't remember what it is called, but I recall some 10-15 years ago, the Vatican issued a new "typical edition" of it.
DeleteI would love it if people would read aloud to groups during meals. It's got to be an improvement over having every individual huddled over their cell phones.
Maybe they're reading hagiography on their phones. Har.
DeleteRaber says his co-workers give him the evil eye if he talks to them when they are looking at their phones. He overheard one of them complain about him being "disruptive" in the lunchroom. He eats alone in his car listening to the radio now.
Jean, that bit about your husband eating alone in the car - that's the saddest thing I've heard in a long time. It's symptomatic of something. People think they don't need social bonds anymore. I think it's a reason people don't feel compelled to go to church anymore: too social with people they wouldn't otherwise choose to hang with.
DeleteRe-reading that last comment - just want to clarify that I'm being critical of Raber's co-workers, not Raber.
DeleteOh, no, I understood. It is sad for him. A lot of the guys his age have retired, so the lunchroom camaraderie is very different now.
DeleteI was in a floating noon-hour pitch game at work that went on for 23 years. It was something that people could do while eating a sandwich and kept them from arguing about politics or something else, and gave them some social connection. But I have heard through the grapevine that none of the younger people who replaced those of us who retired want to continue it. They all eat at their desks glued to their smart phone.
DeleteKatherine - I take it that pitch is a card game?
DeleteYes, pitch is a card game. We were playing the ten point variety. There are any number of permutations of the game. Some other people were playing "sheep's head" which I understand is a German card game. Way too complicated for me, guess I'm not German enough.
DeleteJim, I can sympathize with you about the ethnic names. We have a lot of Polish ones, also some German and Czech. My husband has been deaconing long enough that he has most of them down. But with some of them, some family members pronounce them the old way and some Anglicize them. For instance the name "Zywiec" is correctly pronounced "Zhivietz". But some of them pronounce it "Zy-wick".
ReplyDeleteI've only read at Mass a couple of times, once at a wedding and once for a diaconal ordination (not my husband's). Both times people said they couldn't hear me. But they can hear me when I'm singing in the choir. Go figure. Anyway lectoring is not something I feel called to do.