Spanish Mass: Corpus Christi, Cuerpo de Cristo

My Gaeilge speaking grandmother's family was permanently at war with the village priest.  Who knows when and how it started.   My Aunt Kathleen was the smartest girl in the village.  By the time she was old enough, the feud became so spiteful the priest denied her a scholarship to go to college.   When Uncle Ned joined the Irish Republican Army and the Easter Rebellion,  the priest denied my great-grandfather Michael absolution for refusing to turn Ned in to the British.   Michael didn't know where Ned was, but he'd be damned before he'd tell the priest that.
"You're damned, Michael Lafferty!"
"See you in Hell, Priest!"

First Communion: ad maiorem Dei gloriam

Still, the family said the rosary every day.   For the rest of her life my grandmother kept the tradition.   When we asked her why she prayed so much, she said:  "Every act of your life is a prayer."   We never figured out what that had to do with lying in bed in the late afternoon working through the beads, repeating the prayers of the Rosary over and over again:

The Sign of the Cross
The Apostle's Creed
Three Hail Marys
Glory be to the Father
The First through Fifth Mysteries, each:  1 Our Father, 10 Hail Marys  and 1 Glory be to the Father.

My son's the one who drags us to mass every Sunday.  He never met his Gaeilge speaking ancestors, the remnants of an ancient culture that once encompassed western Europe from Spain to the British Isles and reached as far as Italy and Turkey.  The Emperor Marcus Aurelius died on March 17 at a Celtic village on the Danube that became Vienna.   Maybe many my son takes after his Hispanic-Italian grandmother who goes to mass everyday when she can.

Sometimes we ended up going to the late Spanish mass to meet his devotional demands.  My mother would have invoked Regan's Roman Catholic rules, the Travelers' Dispensation and skipped mass on a Sunday when the boy's baseball tournament ran late.  My son wouldn't hear of it.  Faced with his baseball game on Saturday afternoon and an airplane flight on Sunday morning, we had to find a Saturday Vigil Mass to satisfy his requirements.  The last Vigil Mass in Phoenix was a Spanish mass at Most Holy Trinity Church at 7 pm.  

I was mildly taken aback when the deacon said the "Body of Christ"  to me when I received Holy Communion.  It was a Spanish mass why would I want or need him to speak English.  I grew up with the Latin mass.  A Spanish mass is more comfortable for me than an English one.  I can't stand the insipid folk-rock songs they sing at the English mass.   Regardless of whether someone says "Corpus Christi" or "Cuerpo de Cristo",  I know what it means... but there are few alive today who know that "Comhlacht ar Críost" is a better way to say it.

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Saint Francis Xavier has a 1 pm Spanish mass that is also convenient.  Like when my son's baseball schedule takes up the rest of the weekend.  Its 1 pm mass is the only one I've seen where people move into the central aisle during the "Our Father" so that they can hold hands with people in the adjacent row of pews.