Daily Office: Friday
¶ Matins: Oops!
¶ Tierce: We haven’t been very clear on the synagogue front. When I took the picture, above, I was under the impression that Benedict XVI would be visiting the Central Synagogue, on Lexington Avenue in Midtown. Then, rather less pardonably, I confused the Park East Synagogue (née Congregation Zichron Ephraim), on 67th Street (between Lex and Third), with the Park Avenue Synagogue (Congregation Agudat Yesharim), on 87th Street near Madison Avenue.
¶ Vespers: How time flies, when you’re standing on the roof waiting for the Pope to drive by. It’s really not an event for the camera, even if you’re standing up close. As remote as we are from the endless processions of the Middle Ages, even the very streamlined pomp of the modern motorcade imposes a certain intimacy upon onlookers.
Oremus…
§ Tierce.The Pope will be visiting the Park East Synagogue.
But I wasn’t wrong about his coming much closer to home.
One of our neighbors is a member of the St Joseph’s parish; she sends her daughter to the school. As such, she was eligible for tickets to this afternoon’s Mass (at six). When she heard that she and her daughter would have to show up four hours earlier, and stay in their seats (no bathroom breaks!), she decided not to go. I don’t know whether the restrictions are in fact so severe, but they make a good story, especially for anyone who went to parochial school in the old days.
§ Vespers. I really did half-expect to be shot at by marksman on the lookout for snipers. That must have been the point of all that Catholic grade-school discipline: to make me feel that, simply by opening a door clearly marked “Roof Area Closed,”* and stepping out onto the tarpaper, I’d invited divine retribution in the form of a prophylactic bullet.
* The sign is always there.