My son David made his first communion in Rome, and the camera caught his eyes widened in wondering awe. A way of recovering that pristine awareness is to imagine that the Mass we are about to attend is the last that will be offered for a century or that it has been a century since people have had an opportunity to go to Mass, to hear the measured words spoken by the priest, to bow at the words of consecration. But that is not how it is. The Mass is being said everywhere, always, somewhere right now, thousands of times a day all over the world, day after day. One need only show up.
Daily communion becomes a quotidian event.
Like many Protestant Americans, Henry James felt free to visit Catholic churches in Europe. James's The Altar of the Dead is remarkable for what it shows of his knowledge, as well as his ignorance, of Catholicism. But it fascinated him. Paul Fusell sees in James the perfect specimen of the American Protestant, attracted and repelled by the old religion. The Br ntes were similarly drawn to the churches of Brussels.