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.