Last Sunday (24 February) I visited Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Jacksonville, FL. Mrs. Y and I were in town for the Young Survival Coalition conference, and IC was the closest parish to the hotel, and they offer an 8:00 AM Extraordinary Form Mass.

Thanks to you all here at the Forum, I got in touch with some people from the parish, and offered to come and lend my voice to the singing. Looking forward to the liturgy, I spent some time learning the propers. As it turned out, the propers were not sung; it was a Low Mass.

The music was nothing like what I expected: instead of the chanted introit, there was a hymn in English: By the Blood that Flowed from Thee from the old St. Basil Hymnal. During the collection the ensemble sang Adoramus te Christe from the New St. Gregory Hymnal. Since they already had tenor and bass covered, I sang alto on that number.

At Communion, a gentleman sang Jesus, Jesus, Come to Me (also from the New St. Gregory Hymnal) as a solo; he had a very sweet voice. After the choir had communed, the ensemble sang Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All from the Adoremus Hymnal. It was not much fun juggling the stack of hymnals, my (useless, as it turns out) Liber Usualis and the pamphlet guide to the Tridentine Mass they had put in my hands; it made me glad we use a printed music bulletin at my parish.

At the end of the liturgy, the entire congregation sang Take Up Your Cross, the Savior Said from the pulp missalette/hymnal. I believe they were using Word and Song from World Library Publications. The text was paired with the tune BRESLAU, a combination I had not encountered before; but after some research on Oremus, I see that it is one of the more popular tunes for this text. In my parish it has most often been sung to O WALY WALY, but next time we sing it I think I will change to BRESLAU. That melody suits the character of the text much better.

The director and the other choir members were very kind, and they welcomed me graciously, esp. considering they didn’t know me from Adam’s housecat. The church itself, by the way, was quite beautiful inside, and they are rehabbing all the stained-glass windows to the tune of about half a million dollars.

I’m not sorry I learned the propers; it was good practice, and the word-painting on Passer invenit sibi domum is beautiful; but (call me shallow!) I would certainly have preferred a sung Mass over the one at which I assisted. Maybe I'll get that opportunity one of these days, but in the meantime I have enough to do to get the music for the Novus Ordo where it should be. On the whole, this experience with the EF will not cause me to agitate for it in my parish. There is nothing wrong with the Novus Ordo when it is done reverently and according to the rubrics rather than as a piece of performance art.