We celebrated First Communion at our parish yesterday.  It also being the celebration of the Ascension in our diocese (we won't go there), it was a pretty interesting Mass.  To make it even more exciting, our music director/organist was not sure how much of the Mass he would make it for.  His "day job" is as the principal of two small Catholic schools that belong to other parishes, and they also were having First Communion, and he needed to be there.  Their ceremony was earlier in the morning, but with pictures etc. he wasn't sure if he'd make it back for our Mass.  So we had a substitute organist in place (she had played for the earlier Mass already), and she accompanied our rehearsal before Mass, which I was in charge of in the music director's absence.  We also were missing several of our choir members for various reasons, so I was a bit concerned with the results of our rehearsal.  As it turned out, the music director showed up around the time of the Gloria, so things were a little more normal after that.

Downstairs, things weren't any less exciting.  Our pastor had had foot surgery during the previous week, and apparently it was worse than he had expected it to be.  He was not able to process in with the First Communicants, but rather hobbled from the sacristry across the sanctuary to his chair.  The choir had been prepared to sing Horst Buchholz's Vidi Aquam but it quickly became obvious that a sprinkling rite was not going to be possible.  Father had to give his homily from a seated position, on a stool down by the kiddies.  (He usually preaches from the pulpit, but for First Communion he does go down near the children.) 

The part I was most anticipating was chanting the Communio, Data est mihi.  Although I had practiced with three other people, only one showed up in time to practice it with me, so it was she and I singing the refrain, and I did the verses.  It was all fine until the 2nd verse, when I messed up a bit, then I kind of invented my own tones for the Gloria Patri.  I doubt if anyone downstairs noticed.

And if all this busyness was not enough, I was also attempting to get some decent video or at least sound to put on our parish's website.  My husband and I are just about ready to launch a blog for the parish, which we plan to use heavily to show current happenings at the parish.  I taped the whole Mass very carefully, but the result was not great.  I had hoped to at least get the chant recorded well, but first of all the lousy acoustics in our church made it a pretty bla recording, and secondly I had messed up the verse etc., so I won't be using that recording for anything.

However, the one good thing that came of it was an audio recording of our pastor's First Communion homily.  (We did decide to go with audio only because I don't think he would be thrilled with us putting video online of him preaching from a stool with a foot cast on.)  The homily was great.  And really, the Mass was all very nice. You can relax at St. Peter's knowing liturgical abuses are very few and far between, prevented whenever possible.  The music... well, one thing about recordings, they don't lie.  Our choir is not as great as we may think we are.  It gives me pause to consider what I could suggest we do to improve (starting with remodeling the choir loft so we can stand in such a way that we can hear and see each other). 

Best feature of the day... my nephew/godson received his First Communion.  So it was good to be part of it.