We are an eccentric crew here at the 7PM Sunday night Mass.

It’s the proverbial last call in town for those hell-bent on fulfilling their Sunday Obligation and freshly home from a weekend of camping, our toddler in bed and my wife pulling babysitting duty, I am here too.

Another passenger in the Ark.

Or, another oarsmen to row this damn thing.

When James Joyce coined the phrase “here comes everybody” to describe the Catholic Church he must’ve been thinking about this because here we are: the doctors and lawyers and professors; the students and single parents and humble homemakers.

Widows, orphans, and tax collectors. The whole lot of us.

It’s crystalline moments like these that remind, of all the other reasons, why I love being Catholic. We are anything but homogenous. And, on a Sunday night at 7PM, gosh we’re just so honest about it.

I kneel and pray and say the responses I can’t help but take it all in; take us all in because it’s beautiful—because as much as the crucifix hanging above the tabernacle is a picture of Christ, remarkably, so is this.

His beautiful body.

Like the heavily tattooed Dad who shuffled in with his kids, collapsing into the pew with a sigh and a weight on his shoulders I can’t imagine. Huffing and puffing and struggling against struggle to keep his two young children awake, and engaged.

He beautifully explains what the responsory psalm means; he so gently carries his sleeping daughter, draped over his shoulder, up to receive Communion.

And the middle-aged mother with her teenage son, the former, who rushes to fix a chapel veil over her hair as the Mass begins and the latter, who signs with such enthusiasm that it drives something deep inside me to sing louder still.

Or, this.

The Carmelite Nuns, in their long black monk-like habits, thick knotted ropes tied around their impossibly thin waists—and bare feet.

And when I look over, somewhere in the middle of the Mass, I swear to God one of them was floating four inches off the ground.

I had to look twice and I’m sure I was wrong but there, for a second, my heart caught in my throat and I thought, “If anybody could do it…”

This is the thick of things, and these are my people.

The brother and sister altar servers. Him, the older brother, who’s clearly proud to be taking his younger sister under his wing. Who whispers quick explanations and then stands back to smile when she gets something right; laughs softly, and lovingly, when she doesn’t.

When she stands there proudly in front of the priest holding her book open to the wrong page he tenderly turns it without saying a word.

And the way she, the younger sister, looks up to him so admirably as he rings the altar bells during the Consecration. And how she gently and quietly puts them away again when he’s finished, without saying a word.

Then there’s the lector. A physically handicapped woman who couldn’t have stood more than four and a half feet tall; getting around on a pair of canes that connect to her arms like braces. Who drew more than a few collective gasps when she effortlessly bounded up the sanctuary stairs to the pulpit, pulled out a small stool hidden beneath, and then hopped on on that too.

Her faith radiating from her face. Her smile, as if Jesus had just whispered in her ear, “Get up and walk,” so she ran.

Just to show Him she could.

And the cantor, an older European man whose accent is so thick we have trouble repeating the responsory psalm and we’re grateful that he’s indicated which page to follow along on. Whose extraordinary passion and focus on the task at hand can only be describe as laser-like, guided-missile precision; and is only overshadowed by his equally passionate physical gesticulations.

Arms constantly threatening to detach themselves from the rest of him.

Delivering what looks like the best performance of his life, likely offered every Sunday.

And who, somehow, like the tide that raises all ships, causes us to be swept up in his passion all the same.

And suddenly we’re all gesticulating, or levitating, or singing like no reasonably disaffected teenager has any business singing.

We’re this motley crew; the body of Christ.

In this whole thing together and, honestly, I wouldn’t cast my lot in with anybody else.

This is why I love the Sunday, 7PM Mass.

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