Santa Misa

There are three churches near us: (A) Esclavas del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, "Slaves of the Sacred Heart of Jesus;" (B) Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia, "Our Lady of Mercy (Not Misery as someone originally thought); and (C) San Juan Bautista, "Saint John the Baptist."

Which of these three did we choose?

(A) Slaves of the Sacred Heart! Not because of the cool name, but because of the awesome music.

Uruguay is famous in Latin America for its relatively weak Church vis a vis the State and society. A comic from 1904, which I am struggling to find my copy of, comparing Uruguayan and Argentine culture had two figures, one a priest and the other a politician. In Argentina the priest was big, strong, and assured, while the politician looked like a skinny beggar. In the Uruguayan frame, it was the opposite. Current statistics hold that only 66% of Uruguayans are Roman Catholic, 31% are non-religious or "other." For those reasons I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there are three churches near our apartment.

I digress.

Each of the churches had their favorable attributes. Our Lady of Mercy is small and quaint, with a warm, rose-tinted interior. St. John the Baptist is big and beautiful, and has a friendlier-sounding name, but Slaves of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is where the music is. It doesn´t hurt that the homilies are good, either.

Music at the 7 p.m. mass is led by Agustina and another young woman (who´s name currently escapes me). Both play guitar really well and sing two part harmony. I joined the choir for the first time last Sunday and it was fun. We get together to go over the music only a half-hour before mass, which in my case is just too little to really rehearse and warm up. At St. Mark´s we had hour long practices during the week which really prepared us for singing and playing together. Music there was also led by the best choir director on the West Coast, in my humble opinion; and yes I have been to St. Monica´s.

The music at SSHJ has a wide and interesting range. The mass parts are somewhat gauchesque (rural or pampean), and Agustina has a tendency to pronounce words like an Andalucian, which means some consonants and word endings are missing. The responsorial psalm is spoken, although at one mass we had the pleasure of listening to a novitiate chant it. Other songs are distinct, but because it´s only been a few weeks, there hasn´t been any repetition to speak of except for the closing song "Estamos Vivos" (We are alive). It has a late 1950´s, early 1960´s feel with a "la, la la la la la, la la la la la-ah" at the end of the verses and an echo on some words of the refrain.

Another interesting tidbit is that the music is not written out so the choir, and I assume the congregation, just knows how it is supposed to sound. Okay, so there is a type of scoring, but it would take me month or so to get used to it. It reads like the "Sound of Music." Songs are written in the keys of "Do," "Re," "Mi," "Fa," "Sol," "La," "Ti" with Major and Minor variations as well. But there are no notes to speak of, at least not that I have had the priviledge of seeing.

I hope to take some audio/video of the songs to share in the next few weeks. If anyone is interested send me an email.