First, a confession: I’m not Catholic. I’ve had little exposure to the grand traditions of one of Christianity’s largest sects, barring a month-long stretch where my mom thought she could get a better deal on tuition at our local Catholic middle school if my brother and I started attending mass. Turns out, tuition was too expensive anyway and we stayed in public school.
So I can only defend Christmas mass as an outsider. But my girlfriend comes from a long line of proud Cincinnati Catholics, and last year I went to the service with her family at the Church of the Immaculata in Mount Adams.
The church was built on one of Cincinnati’s highest points in 1859 by Archbishop John Purcell after a near-death experience in a storm at sea prompted him to make a deal with God. Apparently God sees all, including the eventual value of land in Mount Adams. The location overlooking downtown is incredible and the holy one got a great deal.
Like the church’s origins, its appearance is epic and severe. On that cloudy day, its angular grey stone face blended with the sky as a quiet throng of congregants filed up its steps.
The gloom gave way to warmth and light when we went in, however. An organist perched on a balcony over the entryway played waves of music so colorful, substantial and intricate they felt like part of the building’s ornate interior.
As the service began in earnest, the priest held forth in a somber sing-song cadence before throwing it to the audience, intoning phrases to which the congregation responded as one.
I had braced myself for a long evening. Initially, I thought we were at midnight mass — one element of Catholicism I’ve heard of — until it was kindly pointed out that it was still light outside and that services don’t last seven and a half hours. That was a relief. We were at the 4:30 p.m. service.
As my pew-mates were squeezing past to take communion, I thought about their grandparents and great grandparents sitting in the same building, hearing the same music and seeing the same light filtering through the stained glass. I watched congregants greet neighbors they see every day and the long-lost family they see once a year, connecting with each other and with history.
At the time, I was back in Cincinnati on break from a miserable year in Washington, D.C. Sitting in that warmth and light, I felt like a part of this city in a unique way. For 155 years, people have walked out of the shared warmth of the Church of the Immaculata into cold December air to be greeted by that incredible view of Cincinnati.
I don’t know much about holy things. But, to me, the connections you find at a Christmas mass are the kind that make a place — a neighborhood, a city — so sacred.
HOLY CROSS-IMMACULATA holds Christmas mass at 4:30 p.m. Dec. 24, midnight Dec. 24 and 10 a.m. Dec. 25. More info: 2011.hciparish.org.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2014.
