When in Rome....

Disclaimer: Church attended not exactly as pictured.

This weekend, while visiting our son at college, we decided to attend mass at a local urban church. Because it was starting at 12:00 noon, we had plenty of time to enjoy a lazy Sunday morning and still arrive in time for worship. As we were unfamiliar with the area, we handed the keys to our son and he managed to find the church with the aid of his internal GPS. I was feeling good about not skipping out on mass, as it would have been easy to talk myself into missing "just this once." But we wanted to set a good example for our 12 year old son, by conveying to him the importance of regular church attendance. Besides, we just wanted to be there.

Approaching the church, we read the sign listing the various mass times. Sure enough, there was indeed, a 12:00 mass. But to our great surprise, it was a Spanish mass! This means the entire service would be recited and sung in Spanish! Of course, this would not have been a problem for us, if we were even remotely acquainted with the language. My own exposure to it was limited to counting to ten; uno, dos, tres....well, you get the pathetic idea. Our oldest son would have been a lot of help, as he has four years of college Spanish under his belt and is getting quite fluent in the language. Unfortunately, he wasn't with us, so we were on our own.

We decided to forge ahead anyway, we reasoned we would still be there to pray and receive Holy Communion, and as for the rest, well...we'd just wing it. You know, we'd do what they do. Walking into the church, we realized something that we'd not factored into our decision.

We were in the minority.

Now please do not misunderstand the above statement, for it is not meant to be racially or culturally motivated. However, there was no denying the uncomfortable feeling we had as we walked up the aisle and made our way into a pew a few rows from the altar. All around us, Spanish-speaking congregants were awaiting the start of mass, and we felt as though we stuck out like handful of vanilla wafers in a bag of Oreo cookies. That comparison doesn't even begin to describe the "out of place" feelings we were experiencing at that moment. If you've ever visited another church while on vacation, you know the feeling of being in unfamiliar terrain, so to speak. It is not your "home" and as we are creatures of habit, we become uncomfortable with the unfamiliar. Well imagine those uneasy feelings and add in the fact that everyone around you is speaking a different language.

Talk about intimidating.

It struck me immediately, as well as my husband and my older son, how it must feel for minorities. As we'd never really been in such a situation before, we found ourselves lost in our own reflections of having the situation reversed. We had more than one curious look from the church-goers, but not one of those extra glances looked unkind. Indeed, we felt as though we were welcome, and were handed hymnal books printed in both Spanish and English. This was a welcome relief for us; we'd be able to follow along a little bit after all!

So even though the priest spoke a great deal of Spanish during his homily, or sermon, he also mixed in some English as well, which was a welcome surprise for us. I've always wanted to be bi-lingual, and was finding myself a bit envious of those who could follow him in both languages.

It ended up being a good experience, even though we felt squirmy (is that a word?) I certainly feel I have a greater appreciation for what minorities, no matter what the group, experience on a daily basis. 

In the Catholic church, we have a tradition of exchanging the "Sign of Peace", first with hugs to our family members, followed by handshakes to fellow parishioners. I realized at that moment the language barrier was removed in the mutual eye contact and the embracing of hands.



No words were necessary to convey this sense of fellowship and the realization that no matter what the language, we all sons and daughters of God. 


Something I'd like them to keep in mind when they hear me butcher their beautiful Spanish language!