Jesus Mass by The Experience of Worship Project

I attended a Jesus Mass, in Latin according to the late Medieval Use of Salisbury at Salisbury Cathedral on 6th October.  It was organised as part of the The Experience of Worship in Late Medieval Cathedral and Parish Church research project at Bangor University.

They asked us to provide thoughts on the service and so I thought that I would share my here too.

While not a regular worshipper at cathedral I have on a number of occasions while staying for courses at Sarum college between to early morning Eucharist in the Trinty Chapel - it is a space that I am familiar with and which I love (for me it is Salisbury Cathedral - I think I have only once been to a service at the cathedral anywhere else but the trinity chapel) and there were a number of familiar faces in the congregation.  What this did was make it very easy to encounter the mass as worship - it was in a space I have worshipped in before and I was with people I had worshipped with before.

Before the service as we were all sat around the edge the space felt quiet empty, but the moment we were told to stand up we spread out and filled the space and I think that you were perhaps more aware of the other members of the congregation than you are safely separated from one another by rows of chairs.

There were a few people who moved around but most, including myself, seemed to stay put - I guess this is partly because the service was a one off and held our attention in a way that at the time an ordinary daily mass wouldn't. If it was your daily fare you would have been able to wonder off for a bit knowing how long to be away and yet still get back in time for the consecration or the peace etc.

There were a few bits of the service that I recognised from the choral use of Latin texts in contemporary services but mostly I had no idea what the actual words mean - however except in a couple of places I was able to follow the structure from the order in the booklet and so while not being able to tie down particular words knew what that bit of the service was about.

It was interesting that for the most part the focus was on the singers not the altar or priest - and in most cases when the priest said/sung anything it was in dialogue with the singers - so overall it was much less priest-centric than I expected.

It was also a lot more understated than I expected even for a Low Mass - there were no more and perhaps less ritual actions than in a contemporary Eucharist.

The silent Canon was interesting - given that I didn't really understand the words being sung I had to concentrate was hard to pick out the different parts of the service - but this part which had no sound at all stood in clear contrast so I knew 'this bit is significant'.

The peace was interesting - I felt very self-conscious - what kind of kiss do you give it? Should it be a kiss like that on the cheek of maiden aunt or on the lips of girlfriend or what? Also I was aware of how new the Pax was - it lacked the patina than they must have got from a thousand kisses.  This was also true of the Pyx - as it was brought in the bit of brain that always trys to put you off thought - "oh look a little Christmas cake" it was so crisp and white. 

Kneeling for such a long period was no more uncomfortable than sitting for the same period on the average church pew, (and many pews seem to have been built to cripple anyone above 5foot who trys to kneel in them so it was more comfortable than I often find myself when kneeling for shorter periods in church)

I kissed the ground in last gospel almost on instinct on the cue of the singers doing the same - without any context for why we were doing it at that moment - but it seemed a meaningful action and I wasn't worried that I didn't know what the meaning was.