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.
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.
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