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Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

ROAMIN' CATHOLIC
April 2005

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ASCENSION, TIERRASANTA

Ascension parish, located at the corner of Clairemont Mesa Boulevard and Via Valarta, serves the community of Tierrasanta. Bishop Maher founded the parish in 1980, with Monsignor Neil Dolan as founding pastor. A multipurpose building was erected on the property in November 1985.

The beige brick and red tile-roofed building is entirely secular in appearance, resembling a business park. Next door stands Tierrasanta Lutheran Church which, while modern in design, is clearly identified as a Christian house of worship by its tall steeple topped with a Celtic sun-cross.

Ascension's chapel seats 230 on cushioned two-seater benches with removable kneelers. The crucifix is out of the sanctuary in a side alcove with votive candles. The colored plate-glass stations of the cross display figures with grotesquely angular features; imagine a comic book drawn by Pablo Picasso and you've got it. There is no statue or image of Our Blessed Lady anywhere in this chapel. A portable wooden table-altar rests atop a tri-level platform. The presider's chair is stationed to the left. On the rear wall hang seasonal banners; violet with passion symbols for Lent. I could not find the tabernacle before Mass. I thought, "This doesn't feel to me like a Roman Catholic parish church, but like a liturgical Protestant church.

I attended the 11:00 a.m. Mass here on March 13, the fifth Sunday in Lent. Sunday supply-priest Monsignor Lloyd Bourgeois celebrated. A trio provided the contemporary service music: a woman lead singer/pianist and two male back-up singers, one playing rhythm guitar. By the time Mass began the chapel was nearly full with a mostly white congregation.

The band took off with an upbeat performance of John Becker's Lead Me Lord, a paraphrase of the Beatitudes. The lead singer, an auburn-haired woman named Carolina belted out the song with a professional studio-quality voice. Meanwhile the sanctuary party processed: a short pre-teen altar girl carried a processional crucifix identical to that of Pope John Paul's. She was followed by a taller altar girl, a man in slacks and polo shirt carrying the gold-cased gospel book, and white-haired Monsignor Lloyd in a magenta chasuble with overlaid violet stole.

After the Sign of the Cross and greeting Monsignor Lloyd led a trope Kyrie. The tropes were supplicant, not penitential.

The lector was not the man who had processed with the Gospel, for a very good reason: the assigned reader was an elderly gentleman who used a walker. He read from a lectern at the foot of the altar.

In the first reading, from Ezekiel, God promised his people, "I will open the graves and make you rise from them; I will put my Spirit in you and you will live." The singer then rendered Psalm 130 with the refrain: "With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption." She delivered this in a mellow and moody style with rippling arpeggios. I closed my eyes and it reminded me of music you hear on radio station K-PRAISE. The second reading, from Saint Paul to the Romans, stated, "He who raised Christ from the dead will bring your mortal bodies to life also through his Spirit living in you." There followed a very "spirited" Gospel Acclamation. Then Monsignor Lloyd proclaimed the Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus, from the 11th chapter of Saint John.

Monsignor introduced his homily with the observation that the Four Gospels have differences because each Evangelist has a distinct purpose in his writing. Saint John's purpose is set forth clearly: "These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in his name." He then went back to the second chapter of Saint John and recounted the Lord's first miracle at Cana in Galilee as a sign that Jesus wishes to meet our needs and relieve our distresses. Among all our needs the greatest is deliverance from the sorrow of death. Then he reiterated the account of the raising of Lazarus. He gave special application to the way that the Lord's word to Martha — "I am the resurrection and the life..." — relieves the distress and sorrow of death. He mentioned that the hope of the resurrection would be the comfort at an upcoming funeral to a family that recently lost their mother. He concluded by inviting us to believe this truth more firmly and take consolation from it.

After Mass I asked the usher who handed me a bulletin if there was a Blessed Sacrament chapel, and where it was. She told me and I went. As soon as I entered, there swept over me the unmistakable peace that I always feel when entering a Catholic church: the feeling I had missed in the "place of assembly." There was Our Lord in the tabernacle, and beside him, Ascension parish's only statue of Our Blessed Mother. I knelt down and prayed, "At least your image is in the one place where you would most want to remain."

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