Sunday, May 29th. Cultural Activity 3.
Finally it's Sunday! Sundays are my favorite days because they're the least stressful and busy for the most part. Church was good today, we had our group meeting and went home as usual. We headed back to Paris for Mass at ST. Roche, M. Erickson's favorite church for mass, which counts as a cultural activity. The church is lovely. Jessica, Haley, Natalie, Maddie, McKenna and I all went together. Mass was held in the chapel in the back of the church. They ring a bell to announce mass. I was pretty lost most of the time, if i'm being honest. It was in french of course. It was different for sure. Beautiful though. They sing/chant hymns have a sermon, sing/chant again, have a moment where you wish peace and goodness to your neighbors, pay offerings, have sacrament, sing/chant again and have a prayer at the beginning and end. Sacrament was really interesting. I won't pretend to know what it all meant, but it was very symbolic and cool to be a part of. The incense was interesting. Filled the room. I'm going to study what all they did means, so I can put things together, cause I can guess on some of it, but others, not so much. I only got about a quarter of the sermon because I couldn't focus on it and the pastor used words that I didn't know. I found out that I have a very short attention span, or maybe a better way to put it is that I get distracted easily. I was focusing on the sermon when I got distracted by thinking about what it would have been like to be attending mass hundreds of years ago or to be attending as royalty, I'd bring myself back to the sermon, one thought lead to another and before I knew it the pastor was saying Amen. I am ashamed to admit this, but it's true. I asked the others about what he talked about afterwards though, He talked about Abraham paying tithes to Melchizedek, and him giving Abraham a blessing and why that is when Melchizedek was a pagan priest and Abraham a Christian. He said, "Can you imagine paying a tenth of all you own? Abraham was rich, so that was a lot." Interesting. indeed. All of us were thinking, " Ya we know. That's what we do." It's interesting to compare religious beliefs. It was a cool first mass. :) I imagine it was more authentic not being able to understand half of it, since it originally was done in Latin.
A funny Thing Happened While Ashley Was Writing Her Blog(Yes, that's a theater reference):
It's about eleven pm and McKenna and I decided that we wanted hot chocolate, so she put milk in the water heater thing and left the room for a few minutes. When she came back and went to check on it, it overflowed and spilled milk everywhere behind the bar killing the electricity in the basement. We cleaned up the mess. I texted our host mother telling her what happened and asking where the fuse box was. She came downstairs and fixed the problem. She didn't seem upset or anything, so I think we're good. McKenna is pretty upset about it. It's one of those moments when you're not sure whether to laugh or to cry. I choose to laugh, but i'm not sure McKenna has chosen one yet. We still got our hot chocolate though. It was good ladies and gents. It's gonna be a late night though because now I need to do laundry to wash the towels we used to clean the milk. Don't want that stinking up the place. Life is fun you guys.
This isn't the best picture, but this chapel is quite nice. You can see the crucified Christ through the arch behind the nativity scene surrounded by angels singing.
This is St. Roche. It's right by le Louvre and Angalines. In 1209, millers abd bakers first built a church dedicated to their patron saint, St. Honore. In 1217, sailors working at the port of the river Seine built a chapel dedicated to their patron saint Nicholas, the patron of the bargemen. In the sixteenth century, the tile workers and the gardeners erected a chapel dedicated to St. Suzanne. Then the king, noblemen, servants and gardners at the Louvre wanted the church St Roche to be built. Louis XIV laid the first stone in 1653. Corneille, Moliere, Le Notre, Admiral de Grasse, Bossuet, Abbe de l'Epee, Vauban, Diderot and /manzoni either prayed here or are buried here in the peace of the Lord. Like all churches in Paris, this one had a tough time during the revolution, but is now quite beautiful.
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