Expect September to be full of possibility

It was a warm September day more than 20 years ago, and I was late for my first day on the job. (I hadn’t lived in Twin Cities long enough to fully grasp the difference between I-35E and I-35W.) I didn’t have a key yet and had to ring the bell. The parish secretary answered the door, and she seemed to know who I was. She showed me around the building—a converted rectory—and eventually showed me to my office on the second floor. A real office with a window, a door that closed, and a typewriter on the desk. (Back in those days, personal computers were still too expensive for most church workers.)

She left me there, with instructions on how to use the intercom if I needed anything. I sat down on the armless swivel chair and stared at the wall. I remember two dominant feelings: creeping panic and a sense of unlimited possibility.

The panic eased with time, but the sense that anything is possible never has. Sure, it wanes and waxes, but it seems like every September there is renewed expectation and hope. Perhaps that comes from those early days in the parish. Our parish, like most, was a little drowsy in the summer. But come September, everyone was back from vacation, rested, and ready to go.

One of the first things I did to those unsuspecting-but-well-rested souls was start a liturgy committee. I’m afraid I conducted it a bit like a graduate course, showing off my new master’s degree and my book learning. They were a tolerant bunch of folks though, and together we read the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Environment and Art in Catholic Worship, and Music in Catholic Worship. It was only the third or fourth time I’d read the liturgy documents. It was the first time for most of them. We had a couple of English teachers on the committee who the bemoaned the grammar and sentence structure, especially of the Constitution. But no one failed to get excited by the promise those texts held. Ours was a Vatican II parish. The Council had only closed 15 years earlier, and everyone on the committee knew what liturgy was like before. While they weren’t ready to endorse every trend and fad coming down the pike, they were heart and soul committed to the primary aim of the Council: the full, conscious, and active participation of the people.

Well, that was a long time ago. Some say those days are over, the reform has been completed, and perhaps we should think about returning to some of the practices from before. I don’t know. It doesn’t sound right to me.

The last liturgy committee I served on was just a few years ago. I was a parish volunteer, not the staff liaison. At my first meeting with them, I was the only one who grew up speaking English. I’m pretty sure I was the only one who had read the liturgy documents. But we didn’t talk about that. We didn’t talk about Vatican II. And we really didn’t do much planning. We did talk a lot about what we loved about liturgy.

We also told stories about the best liturgies we’d ever participated in. And every story was about the participation of the folks. In every story, the people were heart and soul fully involved the priestly action of doing the liturgy. We all agreed we wanted more of that.

When he opened the Second Vatican Council, Blessed Pope John XXIII said, “The human family is on the threshold of a new era.” Maybe I’ve got too many “Septembers” under my belt, but it still feels to me like we are only on the threshold. Unlimited possibility lies ahead of us. Why would we ever think of going back?