St. Mary of the Angels
A disorganised account:
At the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, the spiritual center of the area comprising the town of Bukit Batok and the surrounding communes. Duration: 0815 to 1210. Purpose: Fundraising, publicity for CSS Orientation camp (Also exploration)
0815 was when Mandarin mass was on-going. No-one from CSS was there yet.
The pedestrian entrance leads up a small slope from Bukit Batok Avenue 6. There is no sign at the pedestrian entrance. I passed by the church 10^n times without realising it was there.
The road entrance is on the other side of the church. It is always jammed in between masses, although I have not had a really good look.
The chapel is visible from the pedestrian entrance. It is a smallish box-shaped building graced only with a huge metal cross. Inside, the monstruand is in the middle of the square room, with cushioned seats at the four sides. There is a stack of books beside the door.
La place devant l'église, c'est un endroit joli. Si on passe l'entrée, on voit un jardin à gauche, l'église à droit, et beaucoup des fontaines partout. The space outside the prayer hall was paved with cobblestones. Cute, but not ideal for driving.
Isaac: Not that we're allowed to, of course.
Si on traverse la place et descend les escaliers, Il y a un columbarium... Cet endroit est très silencieux. It was either Cheryl or Brian or both who asked me afterwards if I had seen that place. I had, but not too far in. It was always fascinating to see such places in churches; since Holy Cross doesn't have one, it always occurred to me as a novelty.
The ground floor had the canteen and a thrift store.
Dwayne: Have you tried from the canteen? The food there is quite famous.
Never mind that, the food fair upstairs was enough to keep the gob busy.
The thrift store is another novelty of a place. It held an abundance of old clothes and books. It was no rag store; the items were donated and then sold for charity. Among the items:
Textbooks, comics, pulp fiction, books on the Catholic faith
Clothes
Last-century toys and board games.
Old shoes, relatively-unworn boots from recently-uncaged NSFs
Glassware
Crucifixes, decorative icons
The place was sadly not well tended-to, and housed a stubborn musty stench. Piles of a mixture of assorted stuff were left around the place when I was there, but I hope that was only temporary.
The mass attended: 9am (with children's mass)
The kids flocked off after entrance antiphon to a place downstairs, which if I remember the place correctly was a hall opposite the columbarium.
The prayer hall was revamped 5 years back, by Brian's account, by an architect among the parishioners.
Seats are carved out of the pews individually, as are the hassocks. When the time comes for them to be deployed, it was a different kind of cacophony from the other churches.
Missals are absent. In their place are copies of the hymnal Breaking Bread.
The choir sits facing the door.
The cry rooms are away from the edges of the hall. Seats for latecomers are provided at the space between them and the walls. It was where "children are always running".
When I mentioned "beaucoup des fontaines", there were two, one of which was the baptismal font in the middle of the hall.
The capacity did not seem large. On special times of the year where more people came, they arranged seats outside in the space in front of the hall, and latecomers watched a telecast of what went on inside, and were left to the mercy of the elements.
The giant crucifix above the altar is the exact inverse of a protestant cross. Namely, it has a Jesus but there is no cross. The crucifix appears to have been knocked together crudely because it had a lot of holes on every limb. It is supported from the ceiling with three cables. On the ceiling of the prayer hall are lights arranged to form the shape of a cross, as if to compensate for the absence.
Brian: Our crucifix had a cross last time, but that was dropped because it was too heavy.
Cette église a un chat. Il s'appelle Angelo, et il est le plus rond de chats du monde. Nous pensons qu'il est comme Garfield exactement. He also rolls over when you try to scratch him.
The activity took place intermittently between masses, and fared not as productively as hoped.
At the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, the spiritual center of the area comprising the town of Bukit Batok and the surrounding communes. Duration: 0815 to 1210. Purpose: Fundraising, publicity for CSS Orientation camp (Also exploration)
0815 was when Mandarin mass was on-going. No-one from CSS was there yet.
The pedestrian entrance leads up a small slope from Bukit Batok Avenue 6. There is no sign at the pedestrian entrance. I passed by the church 10^n times without realising it was there.
The road entrance is on the other side of the church. It is always jammed in between masses, although I have not had a really good look.
The chapel is visible from the pedestrian entrance. It is a smallish box-shaped building graced only with a huge metal cross. Inside, the monstruand is in the middle of the square room, with cushioned seats at the four sides. There is a stack of books beside the door.
La place devant l'église, c'est un endroit joli. Si on passe l'entrée, on voit un jardin à gauche, l'église à droit, et beaucoup des fontaines partout. The space outside the prayer hall was paved with cobblestones. Cute, but not ideal for driving.
Isaac: Not that we're allowed to, of course.
Si on traverse la place et descend les escaliers, Il y a un columbarium... Cet endroit est très silencieux. It was either Cheryl or Brian or both who asked me afterwards if I had seen that place. I had, but not too far in. It was always fascinating to see such places in churches; since Holy Cross doesn't have one, it always occurred to me as a novelty.
The ground floor had the canteen and a thrift store.
Dwayne: Have you tried from the canteen? The food there is quite famous.
Never mind that, the food fair upstairs was enough to keep the gob busy.
The thrift store is another novelty of a place. It held an abundance of old clothes and books. It was no rag store; the items were donated and then sold for charity. Among the items:
Textbooks, comics, pulp fiction, books on the Catholic faith
Clothes
Last-century toys and board games.
Old shoes, relatively-unworn boots from recently-uncaged NSFs
Glassware
Crucifixes, decorative icons
The place was sadly not well tended-to, and housed a stubborn musty stench. Piles of a mixture of assorted stuff were left around the place when I was there, but I hope that was only temporary.
The mass attended: 9am (with children's mass)
The kids flocked off after entrance antiphon to a place downstairs, which if I remember the place correctly was a hall opposite the columbarium.
The prayer hall was revamped 5 years back, by Brian's account, by an architect among the parishioners.
Seats are carved out of the pews individually, as are the hassocks. When the time comes for them to be deployed, it was a different kind of cacophony from the other churches.
Missals are absent. In their place are copies of the hymnal Breaking Bread.
The choir sits facing the door.
The cry rooms are away from the edges of the hall. Seats for latecomers are provided at the space between them and the walls. It was where "children are always running".
When I mentioned "beaucoup des fontaines", there were two, one of which was the baptismal font in the middle of the hall.
The capacity did not seem large. On special times of the year where more people came, they arranged seats outside in the space in front of the hall, and latecomers watched a telecast of what went on inside, and were left to the mercy of the elements.
The giant crucifix above the altar is the exact inverse of a protestant cross. Namely, it has a Jesus but there is no cross. The crucifix appears to have been knocked together crudely because it had a lot of holes on every limb. It is supported from the ceiling with three cables. On the ceiling of the prayer hall are lights arranged to form the shape of a cross, as if to compensate for the absence.
Brian: Our crucifix had a cross last time, but that was dropped because it was too heavy.
Cette église a un chat. Il s'appelle Angelo, et il est le plus rond de chats du monde. Nous pensons qu'il est comme Garfield exactement. He also rolls over when you try to scratch him.
The activity took place intermittently between masses, and fared not as productively as hoped.
posted by Istvan Paul at
9:23 PM
