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Views from the Choir Loft

Lovely, If Unfamiliar

Fr. David Friel · February 10, 2013

This blog originally appeared as an article in The Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition (Vol. 21, No. 4, Christmas 2012).

HEY WERE BLESSED MONTHS. I remember them with great fondness, and, even now, I am mesmerized by my experiences during that serendipitous span. Their formative value could surely never have been foreseen. I was a young, American adult living in a backwater German village, about two hours from the nearest Hauptbahnhof. Having been raised in the Delaware Valley, I spoke a rather tawdry brand of Philadelphian English. My education had included four years of elementary school Spanish, four years of high school German, and a couple semesters of college Koine Greek. All of that served in no wise to prepare me for the task of dwelling in Deutschland.

Frankfurt was easy to navigate. There were many cognates in the signage, and I remembered a handful of useful phrases from high school. Most of the time, it was easy enough to ask a question in my native tongue anyway. That sense of security was short-lived, however, since I soon drove into the lovely, if unfamiliar, Teutonic countryside.

The village where I was living had been founded in AD 591. (From the looks of the thatched roofs, I actually wondered if some could be original!) The sparse inhabitants were plain, hearty people—mostly farmers and smiths. They were schooled only by their families and neighbors and by the land, so English was about as useful as a porcelain hammer. Nor were my meager German language skills of any value, since I quickly discovered their manner of speaking to be far less textbook German than my peculiar brand of speaking is standard English.

In those first weeks, I was relentlessly reminded that I was not at home. It was utterly impossible for me to forget—even temporarily—that I had been transported to live in another world. The situation was uncomfortable, disconcerting, and a bit frightening. I was apprehensive at first, and things quickly devolved. I was decidedly alone. Only two options seemed viable for survival: either give up and go home, or put out into the deep. The transatlantic flight wasn’t cheap, so I chose the latter.

I started frequenting the few stores in the village in search of linguistic practice. I would greet every man, woman, or child I encountered in the hopes of expanding my vocabulary. I went to get my hair cut twice a month instead of once, simply in search of dialogue.

I found that I had to listen not only to their voices, but to the sum total of their aural, physical, and emotional communication. Their posture, gestures, and features became essential tools of interpretation for me. My sensitivities naturally grew heightened, so as not to miss the smallest verbal or non-verbal cue. By doing so, I began to be able to understand them. In time, I even became capable of basic responses.

Even as my facility grew, though, the sense of other-worldliness never left. It was ever-present to my mind and heart that I was not in my native home, and yet this foreign place gave me the curious impression of not being truly foreign. It presented itself, rather, as simply another type of home. This was at once an inscrutable conundrum and a delightful state of affairs.

Upon landing in Frankfurt, I had been twenty-two and confident. Upon returning to the USA, I was still twenty-two but fire-tried. I had experienced the grand confrontation of disparate cultures. It didn’t kill me; in fact, it made me stronger. The struggle stretched me. I became, paradoxically, more communicative.

Language became, for me, a glorious vehicle by which to encounter another person. It became a channel not only for communication, but also for communion. Every villager I met made me more and more acutely aware of the tremendous mystery of the human person. I became insatiable, and their mystery began to be revealed. In unexpected ways, the nature and meaning of life and personhood were discovered to me through the simple stock of that ancient hamlet.

None of this would ever have happened, of course, if I had stayed in the comfort of my home or even the terminal at Philadelphia International. If it were not for the struggle, I would never have known the benefit. I would never have learned that another type of home exists. It required putting out into the deep.

They were, indeed, blessed months. They demanded humility and charity; they fostered subtlety and vulnerability; they inspired patience and love.

And that’s how I came to love Latin liturgy.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles, Featured Last Updated: December 6, 2020

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About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel is a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and serves as Director of Liturgy at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary. —(Read full biography).

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    “Yahweh” in church songs?
    My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Music List” • Pentecost Sunday
    Some have expressed interest in perusing the ORDER OF MUSIC I prepared for Pentecost Sunday (8 June 2025). If such a thing interests you, feel free to download it as a PDF file. Because our choir is on break this week, the music is relatively simple.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Truly Great Processional” • (Pipe Organ)
    I stumbled upon this live recording of a PROCESSIONAL I played on the pipe organ in 2002. It’s an excerpt from a much longer composition by Sebastian Bach. In those days, there weren’t sophisticated recording devices allowing one “fix” wrong notes. (Perhaps they existed, but we didn’t have machines like that.) So it was necessary to play the entire piece from beginning to end. If you’re a church organist, feel free to download the PDF score. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until some joker uses “artificial intelligence” to play music at church … but there’s something so satisfying about playing an organ in real life.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

Random Quote

“We have baptized about 240 this year … All the labors of a million persons—would they not be worthwhile if they gained one single soul for Jesus Christ?”

— Father Isaac Jogues, writing to his mother

Recent Posts

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