Bells Tolling at Midday Mass

Midday Mass at Holy Cross: 1130 to 1230 hours
I rarely go to church at this timing, tied down as I am to my choir duties in the late afternoon, but today I have to be back in camp by 1900 hours, a timing which is killing my nerves. There was a retreat today and I skipped it, then I skipped choir too, and I went to midday Mass on my own.

Today I'm in the congregation's pews, not the choir's. I am by myself; there's hardly anyone that I know or even know the face of here. The choir is different; the singer who looks a bit like Canadian Inuit actress Lucy Tulugarjuk is on duty at this time. I am sitting near to the middle aisle, through which the entrance procession will pass.

I look at the wooden Holy Cross cross that would lead the procession, mounted on a wooden staff. The cross shape was formed by a rectangle with quadrants gouged out of the four corners. A golden crucifix adorned its center. Golden spikes (rays of light) adorned its periphery. I look at the altar boy who was bearing it; he wears a silly goofy grin and I wonder if at any time in its life the cross was ever dropped. Oh, did the golden rays ever bend! I wonder.

I wonder not for long, because the bells start tolling. Holy Cross doesn't seem to have a belltower, nor do we seem to have bellringers like they do in Saint Joseph next to Assumption English School, but it sounds authentic enough through the PA system or whatever. They were deep, sombre bongs; there were brighly chiming dings and dongs.

The tolling of the bells bent the fabric of spacetime within the church, throughout the hall up to but not really including the choir's computer terminal at the corner: that I know through experience. The noise of the crowd peeped through the gaps between bong and bong, O the sounds that paled all others in the church before Masstime. I remember my Confirmation day the pealing bells made everything in the church much more obvious, like what watercolour does to a line drawing:

bong the fella sitting next to me, 30 years my senior and my Confirmation godbrother,
bong a looming plumpness, a sad brooding face
bong a few pretty girls (confirmants) passing my pew and
bong sporadically bunching up and taking pictures the way guys will only do during school prom
bong I notice Ernest Teng three pews to the front
bong the choir sits in wait, the violinist gets his violin ready
bong the congregational noise goes right up to 1130 hours

I always feel a bit sad when the bells dither off.
Eventually the Gloria plays. My church has been using the Marty Haugen version for two years and some; I really hope they change to a better one.

Today's First Reading is from the book of Job chapter 3:

Is not man's life on earth nothing more than pressed service,
his time no better than hired drudgery?
Like the slave, sighting for the shade,
or the workman with no thought but his wages,
months of delusion I have assigned to me,
nothing for my own but nights of grief.
Lying in bed I wonder, 'When will it be day?'
Risen I think, 'How slowly evening comes!'
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls.
Swifter than a weaver's shuttle my days have passed,
and vanished, leaving no hope behind.
Remember that my life is but a breath,
and my eyes will never again see joy.