Loosing My Religion Special Edition: Our Mother of Sorrows

Our Mother of Sorrows 

This was my 34th different Catholic church this year. My goal is to visit all 57 Archdiocese of Louisville Catholic churches...and that's starting to look like a thing that could happen. I've visited some churches that I hope never to set foot in again (coughSaintWilliamcough)...and others which I dearly loved (St. Martin of Tours, St. Louis Bertrand, St. Joseph, St. James). Today I visited Our Mother of Sorrows, and it was such a remarkable experience that I thought I would highlight it in an entry apart from my regular and ongoing Loosing My Religion posting.

I've probably driven past this church several hundred times, since I used to live in Germantown and attended U of L for my Master's Degree, but I didn't even know that it was a Catholic church until this morning. It looked a bit downtrodden from the outside, but once inside...well. It kind of took my breath away.

It wasn't as ornate as my favorite churches, but it was most assuredly beautiful to look at. Marble walls all around, niches with statues and places to pray like this

on either side of the church, and statues. The service also began with the distinct scent of incense in the air. It's been awhile since I have had that pleasure. The music was provided by piano and a little bit of flute, but there was a choir, and I thought that they were pretty good. 

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So points for 2, 4, 5 there...and the congregation was pretty awesome, too, so 8 and 9 there. But the priest...oh, my. This might have been the best sermon I've ever heard. The priest was a young black man, and he was on fire. He started slow. Greeted the congregation with a "Howdy" which they echoed back to him. He then started talking about his Thanksgiving dinner, and how he had eaten with some college friends, one of whom told him that one of the other diners was related to one of the people who had been shot and killed at the Louisville Kroger (less than four miles from my front door) in a hate crime. And this Sunday was The Feast of Christ the King, and the priest...oh, I just looked him up to see what his name was, since it seemed like it was past time to stop calling him The Priest, and just found out that he is Fr. Christopher Rhodes, and that he is the same priest I liked so much at Saint Elizabeth of Hungary way back on January 28th. His look has changed considerably since then! Anyway, Father Chris then launched into a series of statements about how there were times when he had doubts as to whether Christ was the King of this world...and he named various troubles in the world, including hate crimes, of course, but also talking about the clergy who were guilty of sexual abuse, the bishops who covered up that abuse. He really seemed to be seething, and I was wondering how the mostly white congregation was handling it. When he got to the end, I found out. They burst into applause, and then someone shouted, "Thank you, Father." Wow. Incredible moment. And just a minute or two later a child was brought up to be baptized, and Father Chris shifted gears like Mario Andretti going into a hard turn and was gentle and convivial. After the baptism was completed, Father Chris crouched down in front of the child and began to clap his hands and sing, "This little light of mine," and the congregation joined in.

That is what church is for, man. And I definitely want some more of this kind of thing.

P.S. I got so excited about that sermon that I forgot to do my final rating. Well, the church was "only" 80 years old, but I'm going to give it 1 anyway...and obviously it gets the 6 and 7...which puts Our Mother of Sorrows at  8 . Yep. Pretty much as good as it gets.