Monday, July 22, 2013

A Catholic Experience (Warning: Religious Content)


Salaam wa aleikum!

So this Saturday, I went to Mass. That’s right, despite the fact that Morocco is a predominately Islamic country, there is a Catholic church right in the middle of the new city.

YAY!

Siera and I both really wanted to hit up Mass at some point during our stay in Morocco (and Siera will have plenty more opportunities, as she will be staying the entire year), and I remembered that Anne Marie had said during orientation that there was a Catholic service at 6:00 on Saturdays. So Siera and I headed out around 5:30 and caught a cab to the church (apparently all you have to tell the cab driver in ‘door of the church’ in Arabic and he totally knows where to go. That probably has something to do with the fact that there’s only one church in the entire city.)

 Hint: The cross means a church.

 A pretty little courtyard.

Where the priests and nuns live.

Yep, this is the church.

So we arrived at 5:40, went into the church, and sat down in the pews. There was this one Moroccan guy sitting there and an older gentlemen setting everything up for Mass. And so we waited. And waited. And waited (see where I’m going with this). There was a lot of waiting. It passed 6:00 and only one other gentleman had come in (who was also old). However, we were able to entertain ourselves by looking at the missals. 

Which were in French.  

(Spoiler alert: I don’t know French.)

Eventually people did indeed start coming in and introducing themselves to us. In French…and neither Siera nor I know French. They were all also up there in age. And I really mean up there. The Moroccan guy was probably closest to us in age and I’d put him in his mid-40’s.

But they were all super nice. The church community is (obviously) very small, consisting almost completely of old French people that have retired to Meknes. All the congregants knew the priest (Pietro (he’s Italian)) very well and the environment was really relaxed. Father Pietro went out of his way to make our experience awesome, including giving us English bibles and marking the readings for us so that we could follow along. (And he knew English. Which was a relief.)

Above and beyond, man.

So we opened with a French hymn (obviously), but I knew the tune from English Mass, so I just followed along and bastardized quite a bit of French as I did so. (Seriously, the poor women in front of us must have been cringing.)

Honestly, the Mass was the same, which is an awesome feeling. The fact that I am connected to my fellow Catholics through the Mass is never more apparent than when I’m actually in a foreign country, participating in Mass in a foreign language, but still knowing exactly what is happening. We all know the Sign of Peace, everyone shakes each others’ hands, we all say ‘Amen.’ We were welcomed without reservation. And that’s beautiful.

Some things never change.

Sorry, bit of a rant there. Anyway, when receiving the Body, the priest actually switched to English for us, which I thought was super nice. (Seriously, this priest was boss.)

After Mass, we actually talked with the only other young person there (after all the old people had wished us well and said goodbye), and young Italian woman named Nicoletta. She’s only in Meknes for two weeks, but she’s volunteering at the church because she met Pietro through a volunteer organization last summer. She is super nice and spoke English, which was great (mainly because I can’t manage to make Italian come out of my mouth right now. Everything’s in Arabic). So yeah, we chatted with her for a bit and then Father Pietro invited us to stay for dinner. Unfortunately, it was maybe fifteen minutes ‘till Iftar so we had to decline, but we did make plans for next Saturday. Get excited for that blog post.

So yeah, that was definitely a great experience and I’m already looking forward to next weekend. Talk to you all then!

Interesting Story of the Day:
  • So after Mass, we walked outside and were talking with Nicoletta when we noticed this older gentleman walking around in a dress and women’s shoes. It took a second for it to actually sink in, and then we noticed that Father Pietro was about the shave him? I don’t know, there was cross-dressing happening at the church after Mass and I have no idea why. So yeah. That happened.


Ma’a salaama!

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