On Thursday I visited the NDGS campus to return a book, look around and go to Mass, since, as part of student life, there is a Mass for students 7:00 – 7:30 PM Tuesday and Thursday. I arrived ten minutes early and entered the tiny chapel thinking I’d sit in the back and ease into what was to be my very first non-holy-day-of-obligation Mass ever.

The small chapel was too small and too well lit to slink in unnoticed. Immediately the priest, Father Andrew (or Father Paul), greeted me and asked if I would do the reading, offering a big blue opened book for me to examine. I tried to duck it but his command of English added to his perplexed response to my shyness. I was a student there right? Yes, well, so, ok, sure why not.

He ordered me to sit in the front which was about 2 paces from the door. The chapel supported about 16-20 kneelers in a narrow white room; an altar stood at the front practically the width of the room itself. I knelt, prayed, fidgeted. At about one minute before the hour I was still the only one in the chapel and I figured I’d be the only one participating that wet, rainy evening.

I am constantly amazed at the ability of Catholics to defy Normal (Gaussian) probability distribution functions when it comes to arriving at church. In any other earthly process, some people would show early, most arriving at the appointed time followed by a balanced number of stragglers to create the famous “bell shaped” curve scientist rely on. No, the Catholic function is more like a Rayleigh distribution with extremely narrow standard deviation up to the very, very start. Seconds before the hour the chapel was suddenly full with about nine other students, ALL of them sitting in the rows behind me.

This was a very bad arrangement. I was alone in front unable mimic the still slightly unfamiliar posturing required at various points of the Mass made more precarious by the unusual situation that all my familiarity is the Latin Mass. No worries, since I had with me a handy-dandy laminated card with all the English responses. “Hiding” in the front row with a laminated card must have seemed ridiculous among these hardcore, seasoned, veteran, orthodox Catholics. I might as well have been in a papal conclave, that is, with a laminated card for Dummies.

Soon it was my turn to read scripture, a passage from Malachi. I think I did OK. But the Psalm? Probably needed to give others a chance to learn the responsorial once or twice –do you think? Good news: no one set fire to me. I realized another gaff when the sign of peace was offered. I turned to get up from a knelling position to offer peace realizing that everyone else was already standing. You know, I was getting this vibe….

Then Communion, which I’ve started to receive in hand. I promised myself that I would always take Communion by mouth in the traditional way not realizing that my extreme nervousness in going up to receive  tenses me up so much I can barely stick my tongue out. Add to that a foreign hand coming toward my face creates a recoiling reflex that I can’t quite control. It was so bad I started closing my eyes after saying Amen. At some point I simply decided that someone was going to get hurt and I might as well take it by hand—not so orthodox but permitted, at least for now.

It wasn’t long before I heard these merciful words, “This mass ended”

Deo gratias.