Paula Huston - One Ordinary Sunday: A Meditation on the Mystery of the Mass

To say I loved this book would be an understatement. Paula Huston caught me up in her writing about the ordinary in Ordinary Time and sun-laced the quotidian again and again and again with that sense of kairos . What she has done is record in a single summer Sunday Mass what millions of Catholics have experienced many times over, using storied language that captures the sacred transfiguring the gray, foggy everyday of our ordinary lives. Her worries are our worries, her doubts our doubts, her convictions our convictions beautifully rendered and surprised by joy. I want to share what Huston has given us with as many people as I can. Bless her for writing this book and sharing an ordinary Sunday Mass whichlike da Vincis The Last Supper manages to capture the divine amidst the turmoil and confusion of Christs breaking of the bread on the night he was betrayed, when he gave himself, as he continues to give himself and as only God can.

Paul Mariani

Biographer, poet, and author of

Thirty Days: On Retreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius

Paula Huston has written an unusual form of autobiography: a story of her soul, narrated while she and her family are in attendance at an ordinary Sunday Mass.

Rev. Thomas Matus, O.S.B. Cam.

Author of The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers

Paula Huston does for us in the twenty-first century what Ambrose and Cyril did for Christians in the fourth. She wants us to know that an extraordinary thing happens at Mass on every ordinary Sunday. To her task of opening up the mysteries she brings a novelists sense of drama and descriptive power as well as a converts sense of discovery and wonder. She has made something beautiful for God and for us. This book will do much good.

Mike Aquilina

Author of The Mass of the Early Christians

I loved this book. Avoiding the dull abstractions and overly philosophical notions of catechisms, Paula Huston educates the reader about the feel, history, and graces of the Mass and provides fascinating details about the purpose and meaning of its actions and symbols. One Ordinary Sunday will be illuminating not just for regular parishioners but for those who stand outside the Church and wonder what those Catholics are up to.

Ron Hansen

Author of Mariette in Ecstasy

The English translation of the Psalm Response from Lectionary for Mass 1969, 1981, 1997, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation (ICEL); excerpts from the English translation of The Roman Missal 2010, ICEL. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from the Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States of America, second typical edition 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No portion of this text may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Except where otherwise noted, scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, DC, and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

____________________________________

2016 by Paula Huston

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written permission from Ave Maria Press, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556.

Founded in 1865, Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the United States Province of Holy Cross.

www.avemariapress.com

Paperback: ISBN-13 978-1-59471-595-2

E-book: ISBN-13 978-1-59471-596-9

Cover image Luce Splendente Fr. Arthur Poulin, www.fatherarthurpoulin.org.

Cover and text design by Katherine J. Ross

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Huston, Paula.

Title: One ordinary Sunday : a meditation on the mystery of the mass / Paula

Huston.

Description: Notre Dame : Ave Maria Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical

references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015037728| ISBN 9781594715952 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781594715969

(e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Mass--Celebration.

Classification: LCC BX2230.3 .H87 2016 | DDC 264/.02036--dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037728

To Father Kenneth James Brown, with gratitude and love.

Contents

Preface

As usual, we are in the car and heading for Mass by seven oclock in the morning. I love early Mass, and I love our parish church, and I honestly and truly love the little town in which we live, but on this particular morning, something seems a bit off. For one thing, Im so used to having our grandkids with usthose bright-eyed children who lived with us for the past four years but have recently moved to another townthat this brand new day already seems drained of life. My husband, Mike, and I crunch down the gravel road beside the olive orchard to the aluminum gate at the front of our property, silently thinking our separate thoughts. I clamber out of the car, signaling our two Labrador retrievers to stay while I swing open the gate. Buddy, driven by puppyish enthusiasm, lunges for the dog cookie in my fingers, managing to give me a good, hard nip. And though I dont do itI know better than to punch a puppy in the nosefor a moment I have to struggle with myself.

Though I havent told a soul, for months Ive been battling a vague gray something, a mixture of anger, self-pity, and secret sorrow. And everything that goes wrongeven Buddys innocent transgressionconfirms the general out-of-sync-ness of the world. I have a hard time falling asleep at night and an even harder time waking up. I eat too much or not enough. I understand there are reasons for this pallwithin the past year and a half I have lost three key people in my life and my youngest sister has just been diagnosed with cancerbut whatevers eating at me these days is somehow bigger and more difficult to define than simple grief. Ive burned through all my natural energy, and I cant quite get myself moving again.

I gaze out the window as we drive to church. The closer we get to the ocean, the thicker the fog. June gloom, we call it, though in the past few years, its been hanging on till nearly September. Yet I have to admit it: fog or not, we live in a beautiful place.

In Spanish, Arroyo Grande the name of our village on the central coast of Californiameans either large stream, wide riverbed, or (according to longtime local wisdom) big gulch, a designation that doesnt do justice to the rolling hills and twisted oaks and dramatic cliffs and white sand beaches that characterize this area. Originally populated by the Chumash, the valley was separated into two large Mexican ranchos in the 1840s, which were soon subdivided for settlement. By the early 1900s, Arroyo Grandes rich riverbed soil was already famous for its monumental output of fruits and vegetables. By the 1920s, Japanese farmers had turned it into a center for premier strawberry-growing besides. When newcomers arrived, they tended to stay.