{"id":720,"date":"2011-04-15T03:55:23","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T09:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/?p=720"},"modified":"2020-04-03T08:26:41","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T14:26:41","slug":"holy-mother-of-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/?p=720","title":{"rendered":"Holy Mother Of Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As I recall the event, it happened when I was around 11 years old, and had been an altar boy at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church for almost 5 years. Because of my experience with serving mass, I typically got the primo assignments; The High Palm Sunday Mass at 11:30am  qualified as one of the bigger ones. This mass was epic. It lasted for a day and a half. Ok, it was more like two hours, but it felt much longer. All of the parishioners, dressed to the nines, came to get their palms prior to having their Palm Sunday dinner.<\/p>\n

The problem with this mass is that there is a lot of standing. Typically, in a mass, you stand, sit, stand, sit, stand, kneel ~ well, you get the picture. I think when the priests developed the format for a mass, they wanted to make sure there was a lot of movement so that no one would fall asleep. Unfortunately, the same thought wasn\u2019t put into the marathon Palm Sunday Mass.<\/p>\n

This particular Sunday, my mother and sister were part of the congregation, along with a couple of other relatives. I remember this day well. The church was warmer than usual for a spring day; not so hot that you were sweating, just a comfortable warmth.  It was about forty-five minutes into the mass and we were going through all the steps – candles, incense, readings – all leading up to the longest gospel of the year. John Zirpolo, a younger kid in the neighborhood, was serving mass alongside me that day.  (We have since discussed what occurred that day a couple of times as adults over dinner.)<\/p>\n

Father Norbert (who I believe was the priest who said mass that day) took the podium and began the gospel. I started to zone out to his monotone words, and the scent of the incense, coupled with the warmth of the church, formed a trinity of comfort, and a symphony of flickering eyelids soon began. Father Norbert was about two-thirds of the way through the gospel when a deafening SLAM echoed through the church. The sound reverberated throughout the pews. One of the altar boys hit the floor like a ton of bricks. SLAM.<\/p>\n

Ok, so I have a flair for the dramatic and my timing is unrivalled. But this was no prank or played-out stunt. The length of the gospel combined with the heat and boredom lulled me to sleep while I was standing, and I toppled over, slamming onto the floor of the altar. No Joke. Out cold. I was in a bit of a daze and the mass was put on hold while I was taken into the sacristy. I didn\u2019t see it or hear it, but my landing flat on my back in the middle of Palm Sunday Mass wasn\u2019t as dramatic as what happened while I was out cold on the floor.<\/p>\n

Apparently, at the sight of her son dropping on the altar, my mother ran full speed up the center aisle of the church screaming, \u201cJESUS CHRIST, OH JESUS, MY SON ~ OH JESUS, MARY & JOSEPH.\u201d Quite the sight anywhere ~ never mind in a church. I guess it was quite hysterical, although you can understand the only thought running through my mother\u2019s mind was that I could be dead. I wish there were smart phones back then, because I would have loved to have seen that video. That had to be some funny stuff, and I missed it. I know it wasn\u2019t funny to my mom, and no one in the church actually laughed, but come on, classic comedy material.<\/p>\n

I have no lesson here. No nugget of wisdom to share. Just sometimes the funniest things happen in the oddest places. For those of you who celebrate it ~ Happy Palm Sunday, and by the way, don\u2019t fall asleep at mass (unless it\u2019s on video).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I recall the event, it happened when I was around 11 years old, and had been an altar boy at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church for almost 5 years. Because of my experience with serving mass, I typically got the primo assignments; The High Palm Sunday Mass at 11:30am  qualified as one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[191],"tags":[55,65,66,63,64,62],"class_list":["post-720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-be-present","tag-creating-memorable-moments","tag-east-boston","tag-easter","tag-family-memories","tag-our-lady-of-mount-carmel-church","tag-palm-sunday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1993,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions\/1993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/louimbriano.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}