I was really tired Sunday morning, so we decided to go to a later mass than usual. A new church has opened up near our home so we were thinking of checking out the 11:30 mass there. Dave had stopped by there a couple weeks ago to pick up a bulletin so we could find out the mass times, and he said it was a pretty nice, modern church.

As usual, we were late (Dave enjoys being 'the late family', which is the nickname that his family had at their church). We parked in the lot and I noticed that there were a lot of really nice cars in the lot, Mercedes, Land Rovers, BMW's, etc. Very different from the other church that we go to, which is a mishmash of average cars since there's a lot of working class immigrants that go there (we live in a predominantly Mexican suburb).

As we were walking towards the church, we noticed that people walking in were pretty dressed up. Women were wearing skirts and men were wearing nice pants and long winter jackets. I was starting to feel out of place in my khaki's and Sketchers. Dave commented on this, too. Our usual church attire consists of jeans, sneakers and whatever clean, respectable shirts we can find.

We walked inside, and something didn't seem right. Mass was just about to begin. I looked around, and as I had noticed earlier, everyone was dressed up. However, that wasn't the usual thing. Dave and I were the only Asians in there. Not only that, but we were the only non-Middle Eastern people there.

"Are you sure that this is a Catholic church?" Dave asked, noticing the same thing.

"I dunno, there's a crucifix up there, and the stained glass has saints on it." I responded.

We remained there, looking around us, bewildered. Then mass began. And they started singing. And it wasn't English. And I swear that I heard the word 'Allah'. The chanting went on, and I was thinking of getting out of there. Dave looked at me and said, 'Let's get out of here!" I nodded and we quickly exited.

Where were we? Was it a Catholic church? Why the chanting? Why didn't the priest come in with a cross like they usually do? Is this a Catholic church just for well dressed middle eastern people who drive really nice cars?

So many questions unanswered.

We ended up going to the 12 o'clock mass at our regular church, which is the Spanish mass. We're usually the only non-Hispanic people at the mass, but at least 40% of the time I can figure out what's going on because I took Spanish in school. It's pretty fun for me, too, because it's like going to Spanish class. The priest will often say something in Spanish, then translate it in English. But sometimes, he'll change the English translation. The Spanish version is usually a lot more interesting:

English: Come to our holiday church party, and bring your family and a dish to share. It will be a great way to meet your fellow parishoners and have a good time.

Spanish: Come to the holiday church party, and bring our family, your aunts and uncles, your nieces and nephews, bring everyone! Bring some tasty food for all of us to share. We'll have a great time and dance, sing and eat, late into the night to celebrate Christmastime!

My Spanish gets better every week!

Next time, we're going back to the weird church to check out the 9:30 mass, to see if it's still not-so-ordinary. I'll let you know what happens!

Posted by Yano at December 19, 2005 09:49 AM

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