Church #128 - St. Martha, East Providence

I came here this morning through the rain for 9am Memorial Day Mass. I owe a huge thank you to Fr. Marcello, the priest who celebrated the Mass, for showing me around afterward and telling me a little bit about the place. He's a priest in residence here, serving as a chaplain at Rhode Island Hospital while he finishes a Canon Law degree from the University of Louvain.

The church forms a large, simple rectangular shape with a high ceiling. It was built in the 1950s, and since then the choir loft has been taken down. There's a huge window in the back that gives a strong red glow to the entryway, which contains lots of statues with kneelers and prayer candles. The stained glass is large but mostly plain white. There's an additional altar for the priests' use in the back sacristy area, which used to be part of the sanctuary before it was walled off after Vatican II.

Church #127 - St. Brigid, Johnston

This is a fairly small parish in Johnston, just down the street from St. Rocco. With its relatively small size comes a feeling of community that isn't always as palpable at larger parishes. It has three weekend Masses, and weekday Masses that I wasn't aware of until I saw the bulletin. My favorite detail in the bulletin is a parish prayer line - a lady that you can call with prayer intentions whenever you need to.

The church is highlighted by a huge window of Jesus as the Good Shepherd above the altar, which unfortunately didn't come out very well in the pictures I took. The tabernacle is off to one side of the altar area. A statue of St. Brigid, one of the patron saints of Ireland and part of the cadre of early Irish saints, is on the other side.

Church #126 - Sts. Rose and Clement, Warwick

This is a great parish by all appearances, and I'd be more than happy to call it home if I lived in the Warwick area. There were a lot of people at the 7am weekday Mass I went to - a good mix of retirees and people on their way to work, and even a couple of kids. I was very impressed with the priest, who gave a great homily. You can tell that the parish has a lot going on, and the bulletin shows a large array of activities and organizations. There's a parish school called St. Rose of Lima and even a gift shop that's open during the day.

The church is enormous, as is almost everything inside of it - the ceiling, the balcony, the altar area. It's modern, but not in an ugly way at all. The Stations of the Cross are fantastic - big, wide paintings that have a lot going on and give you a lot to think about. I wish I'd taken more time to go around and look at them all.

Church #125 - St. Michael Ukrainian, Woonsocket

This was easily one of the most moving, spiritually profound Mass experiences I've ever had, and I'm very grateful to the priest here for giving me the opportunity. I came here for a 9am Friday morning Mass a couple of weeks ago, and found that there was nobody else in the congregation. I didn't explicitly ask the priest to go ahead with the Mass anyway, but he did. I'm guessing that the Mass is normally in Ukrainian but he did it in English for my benefit, giving me a Missal to follow along with. The Missal is pretty easy to follow, with English on one page and Ukrainian on the other.

Having a Mass said explicitly for you really forces you to pay attention and reflect on what's happening and being said. This is especially true of the Mass of St. John Chrysostom, which this parish uses. In this liturgy the "choir" has a lot more responses than I'm used to, and it really kept me on my toes. The priest would say the responses in my place on the occasions where I lost track. The words to the Mass are beautiful, and I found myself really praying them in a deeper way that I normally do.

The Mass was a lot longer than usual for a weekday, including an amazingly long reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The priest faces away from the congregation for almost all of the Liturgy besides the Gospel, and the Body and Blood are given together during Communion using a spoon. The priest told me his name after Mass but I didn't catch it; I am going to keep praying for him a lot, and I am endlessly grateful to him for ministering to me in such a beautiful way.

This church is small but absolutely packed with icons, to the point that you can't really process them all. There is a screen in front of the altar and tabernacle which is kept closed when Mass isn't happening, with several doors in it that are used at different times during the Liturgy. There's additional artwork around the edges of the church, including a little shrine that appears to depict Jesus being laid to rest in the tomb.

St. Michael shares a parish with a Ukrainian church in Fall River, and they broadcast the Sunday liturgy live online at www.stmichaelsri.org. I showed up here at the wrong time on a weekday last summer and found one of the doors unlocked, so I got to see and explore it in advance. I don't know if this is normal, but I'd definitely try to check it out if you're ever in Woonsocket.

Church #124 - St. George Maronite, Cranston

I'd been looking forward to coming here and seeing the Maronite liturgy for a long time, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who's curious about it. The Mass is beautiful, and the community very warm and welcoming. There's a palpable closeness to the community here; everyone knows everyone else, and the pastor has an awesome relationship with his congregation. The parish has a 5:30am (!) daily Mass; if I'm feeling motivated enough I might try to go to it this summer, just to see who actually goes to a 5:30 Mass and what it's like.

The church itself has a standard, classic layout. I expected a lot more icons, but that's probably just stereotyping after seeing other Eastern churches. The community has been in this building for about ten years now, after they lost their church and hall in Pawtucket to a fire. They've bought a plot of land on Twin River Rd. in Lincoln to serve as a future site, but I have no idea how far along they are toward actually building anything.

The Mass only lasted an hour, something else that I didn't quite expect from an Eastern liturgy. The priest and deacon do a lot of chanting and singing, and they are accompanied by a fantastic group of female singers up in the choir loft. The missals the church provides make it very easy to follow what the priest and congregation say, and they do a good job of explaining a lot of the symbolism in the things the priest does. The Mass concluded with a long hymn to Mary sung by the women in the balcony.

Church #123 - St. Edward, Providence

I've driven by this church hundreds of times, since I use Branch Ave. every time I need to get on the highway. I also know this church for its food pantry, which I've seen in operation before on Wednesdays. I known I've been inside of the pantry at some point in the past, though I can't for the life of me remember when and why.

I'd been looking forward to seeing the inside for a long time, since I could tell that it was a big old church, and you can see the nice stained glass from the outside. I certainly wasn't disappointed. I came here for the 9am English Mass on Sunday, which happened to be the same weekend as the parish's May breakfast. The community consists of the English Mass and two weekend Spanish Masses, and both parts of the community came together for brunch between the 9:00 and the 11:30.

The tabernacle in the church is off to one side, with angels on either side. There's an elevated lectern, and what appears from below to be a huge balcony area. One of the walls has a big painting of one of the St. Edwards. There are two of them, and they're both English kings, but I'm going to guess St. Edward the Confessor based on his posture in the picture. The Stations of the Cross are statues which stand free of the wall, and there's a resurrected Christ above the altar. A few other great statues are spread around the church as well.