Holy Thursday

I spent this Easter here in New Orleans. I was thinking of going to the Bahamas but at the end the trip did not work out the way I thought it would. Some friends of mine came all the way from Honduras and I stayed to attend them and to show them around. In Honduras most of the people are very religious, or at least pretend to be. I have never missed a going to church on Easter. We were walking in the quarter and my friends asked me where we could go to church on Thursday and at what time. So I made them walk with me to the St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter and we looked up the schedule outside St. Louis Cathedral to see if there were any masses going on at that time. We were fortunate to catch the Holy Thursday mass. I coincidently saw about 5 or 6 people from Loyola there with their families. This was a very different mass unlike what I was accustomed in Honduras. At the beginning the Bishop entered with the rest of the priests with several people dressed very elegantly following them. At the beginning I didn’t know who they where but later I found out what they were doing in mass. After all these people entered the choir began chanting from a balcony above the main entrance, where the pipe organ

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I thought it was a new experience for me this mass and I think you leave mass thinking about what Jesus did in order to save us. Then the Bishop began a reading about how Jesus washed the feet of the people attending one of his last meals, I am not sure if it was the exact last meal but one of those. Louis Cathedral New Orleans, LA

After all these happened finally mass began and then mass was fairly the same mass I am used to, the normal mass with a few special reading regarding Easter and Jesus. They were facing the people and I thought they were going to be baptized or receive confirmation or something of that sort. He was stating that even though he was Son of God he was now a human like everybody else and everybody was equal so there are no hierarchies or people above each other. Afterwards they finished mass with the Eucharist and the communion and several chants performed by the choir.

Choir in New Orleans

This was the first time I saw this practice of washing the feet because in Honduras it is not very common. I think that if I have the opportunity to assist to any other mass in Easter or in Christmas Eve or new years I would like to go again to St. Then the other priests helped them dry them with towels. Holy Thursday mass was very long it lasted almost an hour and a half and was a bit unusual and a new experience for me but it was worth it seeing other types of mass practices. After we said the Holy Father and gave peace to each other. Afterwards we went back home and talked about the mass and all concluded that we liked it very much and that maybe in Honduras it would be better if this sort of things would be made to make people more involved in mass.

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