Just a few days ago, I attended our baccalaureate mass: a ceremonial tradition that the Catholic school I study offers to the graduating class, their families, and friends. Aside from being a ceremony, it’s also a sort of thanksgiving to the Lord, for the blessings bestowed upon the graduates and their loved ones. But as much as both sides of my family are faithful Catholics, who, after getting me enrolled in a school centered on our religious beliefs, I’ve realized over time that I’m far from being as devout as they are. Still, I linger throughout the mass, listening to the Homily, prayers, and the concluding rites.
What I noticed from going to Friday masses at our school, and Sunday masses at our local church is that there is so much emphasis on giving thanks: to the Lord, the goers sitting beside you on the pews; to your relatives, and those important to you. It’s present at the Word of Thanks itself, given at the very end of the mass. It’s at the heart of the songs and hymns sung by the choir, like Thanks Be to God, Give Thanks, and How Great Thou Art. Listening and humming along to these songs remind me just how much gratitude can be a core of virtue - as what the presiding priest said during the mass - and love. How we can be grateful, I think, for the gift of existence, to attend in this world and say “love you” and “thank you” in words and actions. To witness, as Rosemerry Trommer writes, the “spring— / spring in everything.” And it continues:
Spring in the way
that we greet each other. Spring in the way the golden eagle
takes to the thermals and spirals up to where
we can barely see the great span of its wings.Spring in the words we have known
since our births. Like glory. Like celebrate.
like flowering. What is it in us that longs to unfurl,to expand, to open up and leap out—
something feral, unnamable, something
so fierce it can push through the crust of the soil,something so vulnerable it can freeze and overnight
disappear. Thank you for this return to exactly
where we are, this greening, this bright roarof the river rising, this swooping
of swallows, this leafing of lettuce,
this now, this yes, this here.
This poem felt to me like inhaling once again that appreciation nestled in every gratitude, and exhaling it in one line of a “thank you.” Not once did the entire 10 stanzas of this piece mention who the speaker is referring to, but perhaps that does not reduce or diminish the value of those two words at all. Perhaps it merely seeks to take in the “wind and rain and sun and the scent / of old-fashioned lilacs.” Of the “yellow morsels hiding in the field grass, / the ones we can only see when we are already / on our knees.” To breathe in all of these through our senses and exclaim, to no one in particular, our recognition of it, again and again, in case we forget to say it enough.
That day was like that as well. In truth, there were only a few of us at the mass, only the readers, including me; the altar servers; our teachers; a select number of parents; and the priest. At that wide expanse of our chapel, only less than a hundred voices, so few compared to the pre-pandemic years, sang and were heard by each other. But still, we lift our hands and utter words of thanks: to those we cherish and hold dear, to our future, and to the things greater than all of us.
A lily for you,
Czar
please be seated for the word of thanks
czar, this is so wonderful ;-; the way you shine a light on celebrating mass, how everyone comes to say thanks, to celebrate life and being alive together... it really is beautiful and such a simple anchoring thing to do :"( been feeling overwhelmed w things and this couldn't have come at a more needed time, the poem and your writing. pressures of life can make u feel like so much is missing and that there is so much to do!! but simply pausing and looking at the abundance around u... there is so much to thank and be grateful for ;-; "How we can be grateful, I think, for the gift of existence, to attend in this world and say “love you” and “thank you” in words and actions." thank you for this <3
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