This Thursday, May 13, is the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord, a holy day of obligation. The following churches will offer the traditional Mass. Please notify us if you know of a Mass in the area that is not on our schedule.

Connecticut

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, CT, 8 am low Mass, 7 pm Solemn Mass featuring Missa Ascendens Christus (Tomás Luís de Victoria).

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Oratory, Bridgeport, CT, 7:45 am low Mass, 6 pm Missa Cantata.

St. Pius X Church, Fairfield, CT, 7 pm, Solemn Mass. The pastor Fr. Kachuba is the celebrant.

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, CT, 8 am, 6 pm.

St Joseph Church, Danbury, CT, 6 pm.

St. Stanislaus, New Haven, CT, 5:30 pm

Sacred Heart Church, Georgetown, CT will have a Missa Cantata for the Vigil of the Ascension on Wednesday, May 12 at 6:00 p.m.

St. Martha’s, Enfield, Ct. vigil Mass 7 p.m. on Wednesday May 12; Missa Cantata at 7 pm on Ascension Day.

New York

Church of the Holy Innocents, New York, NY, 8 am and 6 pm.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel,, New York, NY, 7 am low Mass, 7:45 am low Mass, 7 pm Missa Cantata, 8 pm candlelight rosary and procession. Confessions will be heard before and after Mass.

St. Josaphat Church, Bayside (Queens), NY, 7 am, 7:30 pm.

Notre Dame Church, New Hyde Park, NY. (Long Island), 7:30 pm Solemn Mass

St. Paul the Apostle, Yonkers, NY, 12 noon.

Immaculate Conception, Sleepy Hollow, NY, 7 pm.

St. Joseph Church, Middletown, NY, , 5 pm, Missa Cantata.

Sacred Heart Church, Esopus, NY, 11 am low Mass.

Holy Trinity Church, Poughkeepsie, NY, 7 pm Missa Cantata.

St. Mary Church, Ellenville, NY, 7 pm

New Jersey

Our Lady of Sorrows, 75 Claremont Ave, Jersey City, 5 pm.

St. Anthony of Padua Oratory, 1360 Pleasant Valley Way, West Orange, NJ, 9:00am and 7:00pm

Our Lady of Fatima Chapel, 32 West Franklin Ave, Pequannock, NJ, 7:00am, 9:00am, 12:00pm, 7:00pm

St. Anthony of Padua Church, 103 Gould Ave, North Caldwell, NJ, (SSPX), 10:00am and 7:30pm

By Stefano Chiappalone

A society that is incapable of lyricism can only build edifices that are ascetic.  But a letter written by the author of The Little Prince offers a starting point to reawaken that lost spiritual sense from which sprang abbeys and cathedrals in the light of the nexus between music and architecture.

I was eight or nine years old when I had an experience that could be described in that surreal tone of some of the stories written by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936). In a small square-shaped room of ascetic whiteness, furnished only with two dark armchairs placed in an ordered way, a gentleman wearing a full cape-like garment was making gestures and movements that indicated solemnity on a small table covered with a tablecloth.  These movements and gestures and this gentleman were actually the only recognizable things in that strange place that, with the stubbornness typical of a child, I refused to acknowledge had anything to do with “church.”   In fact, I refused to link what I saw with “church.” That was my first and “primordial” encounter with the modern manner of building houses of worship.  That clinical frigidity was light years away from the three little angels of stucco who watched over me in the village where I was born, peeking through the clouds of incense on the high altar of that beautiful church. From those days as a little boy, I have never changed my basic ideas about beauty.

From that time—hopefully with greater awareness– I have never stopped asking myself why some churches of recent construction seem incapable of being described as “churches.”  Is it a simple passage from one style to another, as has happened in the past?  But Romanesque, Gothic and  Baroque–including that country Baroque of the small churches in towns and villages—are styles that are diverse, but all share in a sacrality that does not seem to be shared by the  “grey new style.”  And if we want to trot out the categories of “beautiful” and “ugly,” excluding all of the spins of words with which the commissioners praise “the magnificent and progressive future” of the new style of religious buildings, is it not possible to at least say that these buildings do not respond adequately to that thirst for the sacred, to that desire for that “elsewhere” that allows even the soul of a secular person to step across the threshold of a world that is “other” than the world of the every-day?

In asking this question that will never have a final answer, I found an inspired starting point, a pointer and a beginning of reflection on this question in a letter, dating to July 1943, from the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), the author of The Little Prince, who was prematurely lost in a tragic aviation incident.  This letter is so important in that it is a sort of testament—a reflection on the present time.  Speaking about the hollowness of a generation in which “every lyricism sounds ridiculous and men refuse to be awakened to any sort of a spiritual life,”  the author writes 1):  “General, there is only one problem in this world. One alone.  To restore to men spiritual meaning amidst a time when spiritual yearnings seem to be absent. To shower down on them something that resembles Gregorian chant.  If I had faith,” continues Saint-Exupéry, “it is absolutely certain that, after this epoch of ‘work that is necessary and unrewarding,’ I would do nothing else than to let everyone know about Solesmes.” His reference here is to the famous French abbey that in the 19^th century became the heart of the rebirth of Gregorian chant.

The wish of Saint-Exupéry and his mention of Solesmes makes me call to mind that deep connection through which “…architecture and music are heralds, intimately connected with each other, of the spiritual expression of their times,” as affirmed by the German thinker Hans Graf Huyn (1930-2011).  Huyn then offers a little florilegium on this point, among which is a letter written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) in which the latter says:  “I found a page among my papers….in which I define architecture as frozen music.”

If architecture arises from spiritual foundations, although these foundations are ultimately invisible, one can understand something about them also in the “soundtrack” of a society.  The “white mantle of churches” that was interwoven over medieval Europe was germinated thanks to the showers of Gregorian chant.

In contrast to this, a society that is incapable of lyricism “…is capable of raising large industrial buildings but not of building either a palace or a temple,”  a quote from the Colombian aphorist Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994).  And it is improbable that something comparable to vaults and cupolas would arise when sounds of nature and liturgical hymns (that is to say, that which contributes to the contemplative dimension of a society) are suffocated by the drumbeats of artificial noise and the rhythms of a world where reality is defined by staring at images on an electronic screen. It just so happens that this “crisis” of modern buildings meant for worship goes hand in hand with the abandonment in practice of great sacred music.  During liturgical celebrations there rarely “showers down” on men “something that resembles Gregorian chant” or polyphony or what in general allows something of heaven to shine forth.  What predominates are tunes from a wide diversity of sources, little ditties often strummed, pale imitations of pop music—all this that a professional musician like Riccardo Muti does not hesitate to call “strumming along in church.”

If architecture is “frozen music,” one cannot forget that the marble and stone of the splendid times in the past were kneaded with many Kyries, Glorias and antiphons that resonated in those places.  But, looking at our own time, what cathedral can ever rise on the notes of the infamously well-known “Alleluia of the light bulbs”? 2)

A translation by Fr. Richard Cipolla of Su quali note sorgono le chiese moderne? By Stefano Chiappalone in Alleanza Cattolica 04/21/2021 (3)

1. In a letter addressed to a General “X.” 
2.  Alleluia delle Lampadine
3. SOURCE

CANCELLED

UPDATE: We are informed that the Archdiocese has cancelled this hearing.

A beautiful shrine honoring Our Lady at the Oratory of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Bridgeport, CT. The statue was crowned yesterday before the 10:15 Mass.