While I am writing this I am in the choir loft of the St Louis Cathedral. My background for writing is Franz Joseph Hayden’s Mass with a string orchestra and vibrant choir. The Cathedral choir and orchestra prepare for Pentecost Mass on Sunday. It is Wednesday. Dreaux, director of music for the Cathedral, stops over to my post on a folding chair to greet me “hello, I’m Dreux. Welcome!” I take notice and love this about New Orleans - people are approachable and approach each other so readily. Here is simplicity and humility - a genuine-ness that has no compare. One of my sisters in religion, Sr Julia Mary, is singing in the choir. I entered our congregation from our St Paul Bookcenter in Metairie on Veterans Blvd. The center, in Metairie since 1969, was touched by Katrina in 2005 but not flooded. We were able to open the doors just one month after the city re-opened.
If the people of South Louisiana suffer hurricanes it is not because they may rebuild it is because they can rebuild. Not many people can come back together to rebuild a legendary place – a city that time and again should not have been but still is. This is our history and legacy through generations. I prayed about this from the Cathedral loft.
It is a joy to sit here in the music while writing. This loft, very much like the back alleys of New Orleans, hides a lot that the front and inside don’t show - valuable old wood and peeling paint pulling back to reveal an original ceiling. Lights placed strategically show off the wonderful paintings in the central church. Loft stained glass windows run colors over the floor and balcony – azalea color, wisteria winding. Down below the chandelier the paint is fresh with gold trim. The stained glass in the main church reveals saints and Jesus stories living and walking about the aisles. Our Lady of Prompt Succor holds up the Savior promising to connect heaven with earth through the globe embraced. The loft supports chair, choir, orchestra – a hidden heavenly agenda of promises to come – a place of rest, music, singing angels.
I take it all in: the State Flag – a Pelican feeding her young, the Cathedral centered in Jackson Square looking over the mighty water of life and destruction on her front porch. I called mom and dad from here so they could listen to the music. Dad has been praying for healing from cancer. I felt that we were all three in the church, this Cathedral that has always embraced me.
Entering through her arms at the front door I got a hug perfumed by warm bees-wax candles. A walking incense bearer through the aisles I greeted all the saints bowing reverently to this communion and more profoundly to the communion at the altar: Eucharistic, ageless- wonder. The altar is within a canopy of walls – the small city motto: faith hope and charity – stand as statues inviting visitors to understand where they are and who they can be.
My dad was in the hospital for three days while I was visiting Pensacola. He continually wanted to return to the “church of his home” – surrounded by those who woke him with the incense of roasted coffee; morning awakened by those who wanted to join him in a communion of meals and prayers. When my parents’ house on Pensacola Beach was lost in Hurricane Ivan what remained was the heart of a Sacred Heart statue. The statue was from a convent in Louisiana – the convent of the Good Shepherd Sisters. The Cathedral baldachin’s Sacred Heart here pulses over the congregation surrounded by the words “Behold the Lamb of God.” My dad daily prays Psalm 23 “The Lord is my Shepherd” while going through a terminal illness. We have scripture from the Song of Songs written on the clear case that holds the Sacred Heart at home: “Deep waters cannot quench love.”
I used to wonder what was in the loft during my many times of prayer in the St Louis Cathedral. I would stare up there from my pew hoping to catch a glance of something unseen – something that was meant to be hidden from the eyes directed toward beauty. Now I know – it is the place that beckons not because of beauty but because of revelation. The loft has revealed to me that beauty is held up by ancient wood and pillars, layers of paint, lights strategically placed, folding chairs allowing visitors to feel welcome, wondrous music, vibratos of color through glass, string orchestras, and people like me writing it all down in a journal being greeted by people like Dreaux.
People bearing burdens are the loft of our Cathedral – hidden – unfinished – mysterious – shining lights to reveal fresh paint and gilded paintings. They are music in the loft – orchestras close to the heavens. We may stare up at the loft and wonder – what is hidden there that allows all this beauty to continue?
I no longer wonder.
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