Mass in a Circle

I went to a small men's college in Minnesota with the idea of becoming a priest, St. John's University. As many of you have heard me say, I met girls and that changed my mind (St. Ben's was an all-women's college 4 miles away where I met my wife). I did go through the first two years of pre-divinity in a dormitory setting with about 60 of us assembled in one room for study and in another room for sleeping. No worry about if you were going to get along with your roommate(s) when you got to college. You had 60 of them. We were encouraged to attend Mass each day and act as altar servers for priest who said their private Mass in small cubicles in the basement of the Church. We called them the catacombs. If no server was there, the priest celebrated his Mass by himself. Don’t think that happens anymore.

I was fairly faithful in helping out at least for the first year. The second year I slacked off and pretty much only went to Mass on Sundays. In my third year I moved into a normal dormitory with a roommate. We also had a faculty resident, a priest (who happened to be the president of the college), on our floor who was normally there in the evening. After a period of time, even the Sunday Mass was a challenge to make. We only had 20 people on our floor and on Sunday evening he would go around and ask who had gone to Church that day. Of course, most of had not so he said, let’s go down to my room for Mass. He would take a loaf of Johnnie Bread (good monastery bread), pull out a bottle of wine from his wine rack and we would sit around in a circle and celebrate Mass. For the homily, the priest would give a short reflection and them we would all add our thoughts. It made me think of how it might have been for the early Christians.

As we come to the end of the Easter Season with Pentecost this weekend, I think of the Holy Spirit and how powerful He (in Hebrew and Aramaic the term Spirit is feminine) is in the life of the Church. I especially think of the early Church and am always amazed with how fast it spread. During this Easter Season we have been reading from Acts and the story of the early Christians (followers of Christ were first called Christians in Antioch.) The Easter Season is the only time the first reading on Sundays is taken from the New Testament (Acts). During the rest of the year the First Reading is taken from the Old Testament.

The Holy Spirit was unmistakably evident in the life of the early Church. He is mentioned over fifty times in Acts (including the selection of the first deacons). In the readings for Pentecost we hear how about how the disciples were all gathered in a room with the doors lock for fear of the Jews, “And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.”(Act 2:1-4). Jesus had promised that the Paraclete, the Helper, the Advocate, the Teacher, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, would come and remind them of all he said and what they were to say. Now the whole world was able to understand them.

They spread out to the known world to proclaim the Good News of Jesus. They gathered in small homes and the people “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship and to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42 & 46). I can imagine it could have been much like the breaking of the bread in our faculty resident’s room, sitting around in a circle, celebrating the Eucharist, and being moved by the Holy Spirit to be inspired by the words of Jesus. May the Holy Spirit always inspire us to follow the example of Christ.