The Archdiocese of Washington announced on Thursday that the 46,000 people attending Mass at Nationals Park will be receiving gift bags. The contents?
A printed copy of the Mass program; a copy of the Magnificat magazine; and a Vatican flag.
The 5,600 people sitting on the field (mostly clergy, nuns, and monks) will receive some additional goodies, including a poncho (in case of rain), a Pope Benedict XVI prayer card, and a bottle of water and granola bar-like snack. This is because access to concessions will be limited for those on the field. The snacks, the Archdiocesan press release says, were donated by Nathan Miller, owner of BK Miller, and the water was donated by Coca Cola. The bags were stuffed by volunteers, many of them members of the Knights of Columbus and archdiocesan seminarians.
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One hour fast before communion. Kneeling from start of Canon to the (Great) Amen. Centralized Tabernacle in the apse (or reredos). No more flakey pop music (Yes to chant and hymns). No more politically correct translations of the Bible or hymns (Leave the word of God alone; leave alone those beautiful hymns). No more tinkering with the Liturgy (Follow the rubrics!). Yes to communion rails (About time people started showing some respect to the Eucharistic Lord). Yes to kneelers. Yes to icons and beautiful furnishings in general (No to banal appointments and shoddy vestments). That’s to start.
Ok…that is about the most idiotic thing I have ever heard of. First of all “access to concessions will be limited for those on the field” since when are there concessions during mass? The last time I heard of food during church was when my mom was when mom was a methodist for about 6 months,(I got dragged along but I was five so I didn’t really have much of a choice)and second of all if you are taking the time to go to this extra special mass then can’t you eat at home or is the human stomach so terribly small that you can’t stand to miss your mid-morning snack?
Isn’t there supposed to be three hour fast before recieving the Blessed Sacrament?
Or will this event not be the Holy Sacrifice?
We only have a one hour here!
Any time you have an exciting outdoor event, you are going to have a lot of people finding out rather abruptly that they should have eaten breakfast or remembered to drink more water.
However, if somebody discovers this in the middle of the hugely long pre-Mass greeting festivities, they can probably still meet the normal one hour fasting regulations.
If you’re in the middle of Mass and about to faint, now you can just decide not to have Communion and go eat something. The paramedics don’t want to be bothered with you if there’s a granola bar in the house.
Of course, if you just eat a huuuuuge breakfast at five AM or something, you’ll be in no danger unless the weather gets very hot very fast. But wear a hat, drink water every hour, and bring sunscreen, people; and don’t stress out the poor paramedics over something preventable.
Please join us in this novena for Pope Benedict’s trip to and from the United States. This novena starts on the Sunday before he arrives.
O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, did prepare a worthy dwelling place for Your Son, we beseech You that, as by the foreseen death of this, Your Son, You did preserve Her from all stain, so too You would permit us, purified through Her intercession, to come unto You. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.
O Most gracious Virgin Mary, Holy Mother of Jesus Christ, our Hope, intercede with Him for us, that He may grant our beloved Pope Benedict XVI a safe and fruitful visit to our country. O Patroness of the United States of America, we feel animated with confidence that Your prayers on our behalf will be graciously heard before the throne of God. O Glorious Mother of God, in memory of your joyous Immaculate Conception, hear our prayers and obtain for us our petitions. Amen
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be…
Methinks that redundancy was unintended.
How long before those turn up on eBay?
You pretty much have to chow-down nachos during mass to break the 1-hour fast. As for concessions, the sooner Fr. Feelgood installs a cafe at St. Diversity, the sooner we can quit pretending we are Catholics and admit that most American Catholic Churches are de facto Protestant.
In short: Bring back the 3 hour fast.
I got my Benedict XVI prayer card in with my ticket, so people in the stands have those too.
“since when are there concessions?”
Since you have to arrive to be in your seat at least an hour and a half before Mass, having travelled on the Metro probably an hour to get there (which considers eating and drinking illegal and worth arresting you for), and then there are *no* water bottles or food allowed through the stadium gates. Since outdoor events like this can, as Maureen points out, stress out paramedics with fainting people. I remember in Denver at World Youth Day when they wouldn’t let us take our own water bottles into Mile High Stadium, but people were fainting right and left from dehydration. I’m hoping this isn’t similar….
I was at WYD in Denver, have been an EMT, and I have seen an alter boy do a face plant into the flowers at a regular Christmas Mass. (Excitement and no breakfast will do that do you.)
The medical arguments for providing _something_ to eat are spot on given the extremely long waiting involved and the varying levels of health among the participants. (The Mass itself is likely to go for >2hours.)
Of course, you shouldn’t recieve if you ate, but it is a wise move on the part of organizers and should cut back on the number of people requiring medical assistance.
In TO it’s three hours unless, one has a dispensation (very young, old, ill, pregnant, on medication that is required to be taken with food, or physical necessity) in which case, an hour’s fast is to be attempted. Water is permitted at any time.
As for the “gift bags” They are very sensible and needed. Mass Programs will act as a missal, The Magazine can be something to read and discuss for the three hours you spend waiting because you get there early, and the papal flag to wave when the Pontiff arrives.
Just to throw this out there. The procession is one and a half hours. The Mass starts at 10am BUT the procession starts at 8:30am. So there will be a lot of waiting. Also, we can’t bring in food from the outside. I think it is wise to think of the needs of the people. God bless.
Puff, the Magic Dragon, you wrote this, referring (I think) to the fast before receiving Holy Communion:
“In TO it’s three hours”.
What do you mean by, “TO”? I look at a list of over 200 meanings for a “TO” abbreviation, and I could not determine what you mean. (I’m upset at you for assuming that we would know!)
This blog is about Catholicism. The one-hour fast before reception of Holy Communion has existed in Catholicism since the mitigation (from three hours) by Pope Paul VI almost 45 years ago.
The Code of Canon Law says that, for Catholics, the fast is one hour. The keeping of any longer fast is voluntary. If anyone is being FORCED to keep a fast longer than one hour, he/she is not attending Mass at a Catholic church.
TO must be Toronto. I guess they are strict up there in Canada. But when in somebody else’s diocese, you’re supposed to follow the local ordinary’s rules, which in this case is one hour.
Nobody is forcing the granola bar into anybody’s mouth. (Until they faint, anyway.) 🙂
Apparently, the concessions stands will be open before Mass, but not during Mass. But anybody sitting out on the field stays out on the field — security decrees it. (Not to mention a certain lack of access from field to bleachers.) One hopes the field people have access to bathrooms. But it certainly seems that proper prior pre-planning is going to be very important for the attendees!
I know from a few World Youth Day trips and Masses that there is a lot of waiting done at Papal Masses. I also know living in NJ planing to “camp out” all morning on the 19th so I can just see the pope mobile drive past me, that I need to be in New York City nice and early and better be packing my own food because I won’t be able to move from my spot. Granted that’s not Mass, but it’s only a granola bar and water that they are giving and no one is forcing you to eat it.
If people are like me, you may just run out the door without eating anything and suddenly realize when you get to the stadium that you need something to eat, the people in the stands will have access to the concession stands, those on the field will literally be sitting where they play baseball and there is no way to get up to the bottom level where the concession stand would be. Not only that, if most of those on the field are professed Religious they have that whole vow of poverty thing, which forces their hand when it comes to “spending money” for such things as food. 😉
Why are the religious and clery sitting so close to the pope? What about the laity?
Since when did the fast before reception of the Blessed Sacrament change from three hours down to one?
One hour is pathetic for a healthy man!
The 12 hour Great Fast would be difficult for an evening Mass, but still very possible.
But one measily hour, for our Lord?
That means someone could scarf a burrito during the Epistle or even the Offertory!
Very reverent.
A couple thoughts in response to some comments from a kid who doesn’t actually know anything:
This is not your average 45-minute-long, show-up-five-minutes-before, slide-into-the-back-pew mass.
My sister (10 years old) is singing at this mass and I will be accompanying her, so I’ve heard the schedule about 30 bazillion times. We have to be at the stadium at 6:45 a.m., and I hear everyone else is supposed to arrive by 8:30 (which is when the the “Liturgical Procession” begins). Mass doesn’t begin until 10 and will be about 2 hours long.
Nationals Stadium’s capacity is over 40,000, and I don’t think that includes the field seats. There will be children, elderly, and chronically ill present who will not be able to go from 8 to 2 without something in their systems.
I think our religious have earned the privilege of sitting a little closer to the Holy Father than the laity. I would sit on briers before I took a field seat from a sister.
And that’s my two cents.
I should make it clear: I am the kid who doesn’t actually know anything, not any of those who left comments before me.
Yes the lead-up to the mass will be quite long and you will not be allowed in after 8:15 according to the Secret Service. I have been advised to get on the green line of the DC metro no later than 6:30 due to the extremely heavy volume of passengers which is expected. To give you an idea, the gates open at 5:30. Breakfast concessions will be available from 6:00 to the start of mass, lunch concessions will open at 12:00. The mass has an allotted time of 2 hours, but is expected to be shorter. By the way, if I remember correctly, the one hour fast is universal law under the 1983 code of cannon law.
Hey, I used to go to BK Miller to buy beer! The Millers are big in Clinton, MD, and Thomas V. Mike Miller is the President of the Maryland Senate. When I was a wee kid, we used to see him at Mass every Sunday.
Of course, these days, he’s a typical liberal Democrat, so I don’t know whether he still goes to Mass…
Senator Miller goes to Mass every week, generally in Calvert County.
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