(This is part of a series of posts about a pilgrimage.)
E WERE HOME: ten thousand kilometers away. The steps up Église Saint-Michel de Vaucelles, in a gritty kind of neighborhood, do not prepare you for what is inside. We were deliberate to include visits to local FSSP parishes as a big part of our summer pilgrimage. We were regular pilgrims and tourists praying on our journey, but we sought out places where our children could see the same Tradition we live at home.
This was our first Sunday Mass with the Fraternity in Caen, France. It was heavenly!
I have to explain that for the last few years, we have attended Sunday Mass in a tent! We are parishioners at St. Vitus, the FSSP-Los Angeles parish, and we now have a building! Hurray! But we were in a tent since 2020.
This experience has really shaped our ears and our other senses. Being inside this building in Caen, it was so obvious that the liturgy had designed this building.
This is what it looked like after our Prayers at the End of Mass.
Exploring the space, we saw this notice on a pillar. Asperges, Kyrale, Credo, Salve Regina. Latin sure does something to unite us, even if the readings and some of the hymns were in French. Some choir member or the choirmaster dutifully took the time to write this all out. Modern whiteboard up on an ancient pillar! (No powerpoint screen!) French accents! Latin! The Feast of the Sacred Heart!
Sorry Mr. Ostrowski, this was not the Saint John de Brébeuf Hymnal. The French vernacular is quite alive in this place! Everyone sang!
Now, being in the St Vitus choir ten years and having sung all of the music that Mr. Ostrowski has posted for all these years, I was pleasantly surprised that there was a full choir singing chant and polyphony. You can imagine the acoustics!
But imagine how much more for this member of a choir who was delegated to a storage room in the back of the Church, who had to use microphones to get the sound to a tent without walls! So it was quite refreshing to hear such sacred music sung where it’s supposed to be sung.
This is how the local municipal government website rejoices in its Church building:
A 12th century Romanesque tower, a 15th century choir, a 16th century nave, not to mention the classical façade built at the end of the 18th century: Saint-Michel-de-Vaucelles truly appears as a synthesis of the different periods of religious art. Perched on a hill, it peacefully dominates the right bank of the Orne. The visitor is greeted by a statue of the Archangel Michael, represented as a Roman legionary slaying the dragon. (link)
Century building upon century.
This was the high altar.
This was the high altar!!
I can’t emphasize enough what it felt like to be in this old building for a High Mass. This did not look like the original altar, for all it’s beauty and history, I wonder if this Church suffered a “renovation”, so one day that official description above may need to add: “21st century altar”. For all it’s ancient beauty and history, the altar looked just like the one that our very own St. Vitus priests built with their own hands under our tent.
But it was everything. The stained-glass to stare at during Mass. The sound that leaves the sides of our tent back home, echoes back to us. The sound that had to pass from the microphones through speakers can now come directly down from the choir loft. The sound of the gospel read from the pulpit above us! The priest had to ascend those stairs! We had never seen that before! Go find it in the second picture on the right side!
I was to have this experience over and over again, but mostly when the music was purposefully chant and purposefully polyphony.
(Because in Europe, there were folk-guitars too.)
This was a side altar!
Our lives have been enriched by our visit to France. I had a really hard time keeping this short. I don’t know how my life as a cantor and choir member really fits into these pages. Mr. Ostrowski encourages my blog posts, but I am really humbled by the other contributors whose lives are musical excellence.
Sometimes I think, “Jeff, I just sing!”
I will continue to share, but if anyone would like to know more about Caen, traveling, parking (!), trains, or bathrooms, please feel free to send me a message. (seekenchantaspire@gmail.com) I will update this blog post if any answers are useful.
Again, if you’re ever in Normandy for travel, Holy Mass here will enrich your spiritual life.
