Posted by
AudiR10TDI on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 4:23:37 PM
TORONTO (May 5, 2008) -- I wonder if anybody even knows anymore how to be quiet.
May is not a good month for quiet at our church, as it's the month when the kiddies make their First Communion. The kiddies are beautifully dressed as little brides and grooms (better than a lot of same, actually, as there are neither plunging necklines nor slit skirts to be seen) and beautifully and solemnly behaved. It's the families that cannot sit still and be quiet. Yes, I know a lot of these families haven't been inside a church since their own First Communion or possibly since their baptisms, but hey, everybody knows that when you come to church, you sit quietly and pay close attention.
Um, no, actually it seems they don't. The entire row in front of me was taken up by an Italian family (three boys, teenaged girl, three adult women, one man who was apparently there in the role of photographer) whose voices grew louder and louder as the time for mass approached, until finally they were so loud that the church bells were completely drowned out. That was when I asked if they could possibly please be quieter. They dropped it enough so that the ring tones from two rows back could now be heard, which wasn't much improvement.
What happened to the whole notion of sitting quietly in church and contemplating the Divine Mysteries? For that matter, what happened to the idea of considering that other people (Whaat? There are other people in here????) might have come to church to pray, and staying outside until the mass began if you came to exchange recipes, talk over last night's hockey game, and get in a fight with your sister?
Thank God we have a priest from Newark who is plain spoken and firm, who took five minutes before the homily to tell these people not to take photographs during mass and for Heaven's Sake not to come up to the altar and take pictures and rearrange their darlings into a more photogenic group. (Several men left at this point, their usefulness and interest in the proceedings ended.) Photo ops would be staged after Mass, and then anything would be fine. But absolutely no behaving as if you were at a football match while others were trying to pray.
It is a darned shame that people over the age of 8 should have to be told this in the first place; it is even sorrier that once they have been told to be quiet by an authority figure, they continue to yammer on and on, and allow their kids to punctuate the prayer of the church with constant staccato "Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom" so desperate are they to go stand out in the hall and get started on the cookies that even the Eucharist can't command their attention and if they're not happy, why should anybody else be?
Oh, I can't blame the kids so much; obviously their parents cannot shut up for a nanosecond and where were the kids supposed to learn?
I'm just making a plea that the next time you are in a venue where your own Mama would have told you to be quiet, think of Jesus speaking to the storm rocking their boat. "Peace," he said. "Be still." Could you stop talking long enough to see if He might be saying the same thing to you?