Finding the Choir in FSSP-Lyon

(This is part of a series of posts about a pilgrimage.)

EING A CANTRIX AFFECTS how you look at things. I was confused when Holy Mass started in the Collégiale Saint-Just where the local FSSP parish celebrates weekly Masses and I couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from. For twenty years I sang in the front of a Novus Ordo parish despite wanting to sing in the back. I couldn’t quite explain it back then, because I didn’t have the vocabulary or formation to explain it to the pastor at the time. So the choir loft remained empty. But this Collegiate Church where the Fraternity in Lyon, France has the Traditional Latin Mass didn’t seem to have a choir loft above us. And for a few moments, my ears couldn’t find the source of the sound.

Then I found it.

They were in the front of the Church!

And just like I had been: on the right side!

So it was the same, but it was also completely different. The way the Church in Lyon was set up meant that while the sound and the choir and the conductor were all in front, they were hidden away from the people.

I have a very useful image to show you. The singers sing in the right aisle (in blue) and they are not visible to most of the people sitting in the Nave (in violet).

The very useful key to the floor plan lists the nave as a 16^th century construction and the chancel where the choir sang as a 17^th century structure. So maybe their choir had an entire century of not being where they’d eventually end up.

Maybe like us in a tent back home, they too had to work with what they got. This stood out to me when I finally found the place where they were singing from, because maybe we’re all works in progress. We all work with what we’re given.

Their location made them visually invisible, but they were audible. The sound could travel around the columns to fill the entire Church! And what a sound they had! Lest you grow tired of me saying it, the acoustics in stone Churches are amazing!

Here is something they sang, a French hymn. Latin chants with vernacular hymns and vernacular readings. Even across the world in a vernacular we didn’t understand, the Latin and the Mass made us feel at home.

There was another “choir” that caught my attention in Lyon. The space marked in red is their architectural Choir area, and it haschoir-stalls! My son is an altar server and he sometimes sits “in choir.” We understood that this mean “in the sanctuary”, but the layout of this Church makes it clear that “in choir” is really its own unique Church architecture.

Here, it was the choir area for what was once the “collegiate” . But today, the many altar servers sat in the choir-stalls!

An entire army of little men dressed in red and black and white!

“Sitting in choir” and altar serving is a gift for my son. He has the experience of watching the action of the priests up close as they offer Mass. But here in Lyon, the boys sit in delicately carved wooden seats, with a craftsmanship that has lasted centuries.

He didn’t say anything, but I know my little boy was itching to go give it a try.

This is another example of how the liturgy builds a building, and the building builds the Church. Is anyone surprised that vocations may come out of a parish like this?

Once again, I will continue to share with the hope that you visit these wonderful Parishes of the Fraternity while you’re visiting these cities. If you’d like to know more about Lyon, the Roman ruins, the parking (!), the bookstore in the plaza across the river, or what hills will destroy your calves for the rest of the week, please send me a message. I will update this blog post if any answers are useful.