It was like Toshi Day but in Church!
This is officially the oddest Easter I've ever gone through.
Good Friday I spent at a church nearby. Charismatic Catholic. Yes, trust me the irony of that has been pointed out to me. Anyway. Usually, this service is done one of two ways: Readings or Pageant. Now, instant catechism time. Readings are traditional, where a line of lectors read each Station of the Cross with the appropriate prayers. Pageant is Charismatic, where kids (usually, or some overzealous adults) reenact each station. This latter part is a bit traumatizing considering the nature of the subject. So my mother asks, 'I wonder how they'll do it.' I say, 'Probably pageant. I mean it's that or reading. How many ways can you possibly do it?' Insert the segment in the show I like to call, 'My Fault For Asking!' As soon as I say this, black-robed young girls, led by one older woman (coincidentally in my mother's Jazzercise class appropriately deemed, 'The Cult.') come out. And do their own 15 minute reenactment. Through interpretive dance. No, I'm not kidding. So sometimes they were the cross. Sometimes they were Mary. Sometimes they were the Holy Spirit. Sometimes they were mourners. List goes on. Anyway, it's over in fifteen. So I think. Or am hoping because I'm balled up on the pew, shaking with my hands in front of me, looking moved instead of holding my breath because if I let any out, I'm going to burst out into hysterical laughter. It's not over. Not by a long-fucking-shot. Now the Lectors come. And the dancers are back. Lectors read. They preach (which they shouldn't because they are not priests). Then the dancers reenact/interpretive dance. Fourteen stations. Including the nailing and the scourging. Yes. It's insane. You know that scene at the end of Ghost where the shadows rip out of the floor and drag Jerk Face through the floor? Yes. It was like that.
Let me digress for one moment to talk about Christmas in which the same girls were dancing as angels which during Christmas is a little more reasonable, had it not been for the candles they were carrying that passed by their flowy white robes a few times too often that we expected a fire to break out.
Now, that brings us to Easter mass. In which we flee the hell out of this city to take my dad's aunt to mass. Now, the last time we went to mass that I recall, it was a Good Friday sermon that lasted for 3 hours (Asian Catholics do not fuck around) and even that was preferable to Cirque de Catholicism. But we lucked out. It was only an hour service if that. And after one illegal parking job (according to said Aunt, it's not a Fire lane on Sundays. You're talking about people who will sooner park in a Fire Lane than a Priest's parking space.), we were finally at Church. And there was madness in the Liturgies. Most of all was the Priest's thing he does after the Gospel, was his line of, "Easter is like an Episode of Batman. Where your faith is the victim, battered and attacked and only when you're near to giving up does your Hero swoop down from the sky."
I am not kidding. This crazy metaphor lasted for the rest of mass.
So remember people. Jesus is Batman. And I feel like a bad, bad Catholic for laughing at all of this.
Good Friday I spent at a church nearby. Charismatic Catholic. Yes, trust me the irony of that has been pointed out to me. Anyway. Usually, this service is done one of two ways: Readings or Pageant. Now, instant catechism time. Readings are traditional, where a line of lectors read each Station of the Cross with the appropriate prayers. Pageant is Charismatic, where kids (usually, or some overzealous adults) reenact each station. This latter part is a bit traumatizing considering the nature of the subject. So my mother asks, 'I wonder how they'll do it.' I say, 'Probably pageant. I mean it's that or reading. How many ways can you possibly do it?' Insert the segment in the show I like to call, 'My Fault For Asking!' As soon as I say this, black-robed young girls, led by one older woman (coincidentally in my mother's Jazzercise class appropriately deemed, 'The Cult.') come out. And do their own 15 minute reenactment. Through interpretive dance. No, I'm not kidding. So sometimes they were the cross. Sometimes they were Mary. Sometimes they were the Holy Spirit. Sometimes they were mourners. List goes on. Anyway, it's over in fifteen. So I think. Or am hoping because I'm balled up on the pew, shaking with my hands in front of me, looking moved instead of holding my breath because if I let any out, I'm going to burst out into hysterical laughter. It's not over. Not by a long-fucking-shot. Now the Lectors come. And the dancers are back. Lectors read. They preach (which they shouldn't because they are not priests). Then the dancers reenact/interpretive dance. Fourteen stations. Including the nailing and the scourging. Yes. It's insane. You know that scene at the end of Ghost where the shadows rip out of the floor and drag Jerk Face through the floor? Yes. It was like that.
Let me digress for one moment to talk about Christmas in which the same girls were dancing as angels which during Christmas is a little more reasonable, had it not been for the candles they were carrying that passed by their flowy white robes a few times too often that we expected a fire to break out.
Now, that brings us to Easter mass. In which we flee the hell out of this city to take my dad's aunt to mass. Now, the last time we went to mass that I recall, it was a Good Friday sermon that lasted for 3 hours (Asian Catholics do not fuck around) and even that was preferable to Cirque de Catholicism. But we lucked out. It was only an hour service if that. And after one illegal parking job (according to said Aunt, it's not a Fire lane on Sundays. You're talking about people who will sooner park in a Fire Lane than a Priest's parking space.), we were finally at Church. And there was madness in the Liturgies. Most of all was the Priest's thing he does after the Gospel, was his line of, "Easter is like an Episode of Batman. Where your faith is the victim, battered and attacked and only when you're near to giving up does your Hero swoop down from the sky."
I am not kidding. This crazy metaphor lasted for the rest of mass.
So remember people. Jesus is Batman. And I feel like a bad, bad Catholic for laughing at all of this.