I have the ability to go to daily Mass at work.  Eleven-thirty rolls around and students, staff and faculty at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts step out of their offices or classrooms, dorm rooms or study lounge, and head to the centre of campus.  The Chapel at the college is nestled in a red barn building with a crisp white trim surrounded by maples and oaks as if to say “Yes! Robert Frost spoke of me”.  This building also serves as the student study lounge, cafeteria and kitchen, offices, and woodshop.  Amid the hubbub of activity stepping into the chapel one would expect an island of solace, dignified wooden pews, terracotta stations, the works of our Artist-in-Residence and Iconographer David Clayton, and air with hints of incense, floor wax and dappled sunlight.  Reality, in fact, is very much like this, with one slight exception.

The other day, while having a conversation with a prospective student, she mentioned that she had really enjoyed Friday’s Mass celebrated in the Extraordinary Form, but was surprised at one point because it sounded like someone was walking around above the chapel.  I smiled and replied that it was probably someone in the woodshop.  I then realized that this was something out of the ordinary in most people’s minds.  A freshman at the college had recently observed how she loved to hear the busy people and community around her, and that it was a reminder she was in the very epicenter, the heart of that community. 

You hear the Chef chatting, the pots being washed, a door slamming, someone walking in the woodshop, distant laughter, a familiar voice.  This could be viewed as negative, but then one hears that familiar voice or laugh right before the “Our Father” or during the Offertory, and is not distracted but rather uplifted.  The heart rejoices for that laughter, for that friend who has been brought into your life, for those old familiar things that one in a small community holds dear.  At this moment you realize that even silence is not soundless.  That the heart of our little college campus is beating strong.  The heart of the community is surrounded by the life of the community. Each person streams from the chapel doors, down to lunch, back to classrooms, offices and dorm rooms, the newly oxygenated blood being pumped back out into the community:  a constant cycle of rejuvenation, an imitation of natural order and beauty. 

“Not only am I lucky to be able to attend daily Mass, is it my job as a little platelet, as a part of the whole.  My job to be drawn to the very heart, and then sent out myself rejuvenated, to rejuvenate the community.  We are all called to this, in communities big or small.