The Oddity of Weekday Mass

My morning takes place firmly in the twenty-first century.

A cell phone alarm wakes me up. I eat Special K cereal for breakfast. I commute to work on the metro and spend the morning on the computer, using Word, Chrome and Entourage.

Then noon time rolls around.

Down the busy street I go and wait for the light to change so I can cross at the intersection. Around the corner and cross the street again. This time I shamelessly jaywalk because I'm running late, and there are no cars coming.

Up the steps and into the vast, dark, marble-paneled hall. Kneel for a moment to the tiny gold box in the corner. Step into the pew just in time for the first reading.

I'm only there for half an hour.  In that time, I hear ancient Hebrew texts, telling stories of a hot, sandy, rocky land many thousands of miles away, and of the people who lived in them millenia ago. Nothing like my cold, windy urban jungle.

I see enacted before me the Sacrifice at Calvary. In a stunning instance of time travel, I am present at the side of Mary and St. John, witnessing His bloody and painful death in an unbloody and peaceful form. It's enough to take my breath away.

I eat His flesh, living and real. I drink His blood, a strangely vampirical act, yet mystically sacred. How is it possible that I have become a Tabernacle for His living body? Walking back to my pew, kneeling quietly to pray, I carry Him inside of me. There is another soul present in my body, like a mother bearing an unborn child. Two people reside within my one flesh, Him and I. Would that He would reside there always.

And then - it's over. I go outside and walk back to work, waiting for the traffic light like any normal modern woman. They don't know, the people passing by me on the sidewalk, that I'm not just me. That He is with me too. That I have spent time at Calvary today. That I have paid a visit across an endless space and time to a certain Friday afternoon in 33 A.D.

What a funny thing it is to be a Catholic.