Today I attended Mass at our basilica for All Saints Day.
It was beautiful.
We had the organ of course and the Kaiserswerth Schola were singing.
We also had our bishop, two priests and nineteen altar servers. As they processed in the choristers performed Gergorian chant and I must admit that it made me all goose-bumpy.
All prayers, and responses, the Credo, Agnus Dei, Sanctus etc. were in Latin although a couple of the hymns were in German, which was nice.
One of our hymns was written by Freidrich von Spee, our local Jesuit lad from the 16th century who was instrumental in, among other things, ending the burning of old people as witches . . .
There was plenty of incense and I paid special attention to the altar server who's job it was to hold the crozier - that always seemed to be my job when I served at Mass and we crozier holders like to stick together!
Our Bishop is a short chap who wears dark glasses most of the time but he is also one of those who talk very loudly and then very softly, accompanied by a lot of arm waving - as a result I could not follow a lot of the sermon - my German being rather poor -although I know he was talking a lot about our Saint Suidbertus. He also was doing a lot of exhortation with arms raised above his head...
I lit candles for my father and grandmother and AGA's mother and I said a prayer for my fellow bloggers too.
All in all it was a wonderful celebration and the organist got so carried away at the end that we had an almost Handelian ending to the recessional which made everyone clap as it came to an end while everyone was in the midst of leaving.
So that was my All Saints Day. I hope yours was just as nice
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