8th grade graduation
I was invited to speak at the Mother Seton Academy graduation for 8th grade Friday evening.
It was a wonderful event, in St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Fells Point, one of the oldest parishes in Baltimore. Seventeen boys and girls graduated, in shiny blue caps and gowns, and several took part in a brief pageant on the altar to exclaim their faith. One wispy girl, Joyce Henry, danced barefoot, holding a ceramic jar of burning incense, to the popular Marvin Sapp gospel song ("Never would have made it") for the processional, and I imagined a ghostly congregation of bygone Irish-Catholic men, immigrants most of them, with handlebar moustaches and derby hats, looking down from the high ceiling above the altar and the statue of a dark-skinned Jesus, a bit befuddled, arms akimbo, trying to understand the scripture reading in Spanish. Of course, St. Patrick's now serves a predominantly Hispanic population, and such is life, and such is America. Faith, spoken or sung in any language, any accent, echoes through the ages.
It was a wonderful event, in St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Fells Point, one of the oldest parishes in Baltimore. Seventeen boys and girls graduated, in shiny blue caps and gowns, and several took part in a brief pageant on the altar to exclaim their faith. One wispy girl, Joyce Henry, danced barefoot, holding a ceramic jar of burning incense, to the popular Marvin Sapp gospel song ("Never would have made it") for the processional, and I imagined a ghostly congregation of bygone Irish-Catholic men, immigrants most of them, with handlebar moustaches and derby hats, looking down from the high ceiling above the altar and the statue of a dark-skinned Jesus, a bit befuddled, arms akimbo, trying to understand the scripture reading in Spanish. Of course, St. Patrick's now serves a predominantly Hispanic population, and such is life, and such is America. Faith, spoken or sung in any language, any accent, echoes through the ages.
