JW10631:
A Spanish island?
Which Spanish island?
Were there missals?
If your parents did not stay the entire service, and it seems that they have little or no understandingof Spanish, then there is no way to determine if the service was La Santa Misa en español.
Believe it or not, the Mass in Spanish is celebrated in Pittsburgh. My esposa, who is from Colombia, and I have attended Mass there several times.
Mass always starts late and ends even later. Such is the way of Latin life.
I have been to Mass in Spain (many, many years ago), in Dominican Republic, in Puerto Rico, and in Venezuela, and I have never experienced any difficulty in determing whether it was, in fact, Mass, or where in the celebration the priest has reached.
I have been (still am) in Venezuela since last Monday (May 16th). I usually go to daily Mass, and, to my delight, I discovered that the local parish church is 5 minutes walk from my hotel, and that it has Mass each evening at 6.00 pm. I was able to attend the daily Masses on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I also went to the 5.30 Mass on Saturday evening. Well, this Mass was truly Latin - it started at 6.10 pm!! Actually, that was because they were waiting for the arrival of what appeared to me to be a bishop, although they refered to Monsignor.
I always take my Missal with me - these days, I have a Daily Roman Missal - so that I can follow along. There is no way that I will not know what part of Mass is being celebrated between that Missal and simple observation.
But, even if I did not have my Missal, and I had even less knowledge of Spanish than I have (and that is minimal), I believe I would be able to tell where in the celebration we were. You can usually recognize the confetior, the Gloria, the readings, the Gospel, at least the Holy, Holy, Holy, if not the Preface, and, of course, the Consecration. After that, it is impossible to miss the Amen, the Our Father, and the sign of peace.
Although foreign languages can be confusing, the Mass is truly univeral, and with careful attention, it should be possible to figure out what is going on.
It is always interesting to see the local cultural differences - some I like, some I do not. Here in Venezuela, the noise in the church before and after Mass is horrendous! It is, to me, like before the cinema show!! But apparantly it is when and where everyone who knows others greet and catch up.
Some hold hands at the Our Father, but no one seems to push anyone to do so. (So, this seems to have spread throughout the world??!!)
At the sign of peace, there is much embracing, even of total strangers, and even of women by strange men!! They also walk all over the church to embrace and/or kiss everyone they want to, and this continues to some extent during the Lamb of God.
I’ve noticed that, in the parish I am visiting, although there are kneelers, those who kneel are in the minority. Most seem to stand for the entire Eucharistic Prayer, while those who kneel stand up after the response to the “Mystery of Faith.”
Perhaps half of those at Mass do not receive Communion, and about half of those who do receive on the tongue.
On Sunday, while one priest celebrated Mass the other was kept busy in the confessional. He came to the altar in time to distribute Communion. There were no EMHCs - I have not seen one there at all, although there was rather a large congregation at the Friday, Saturday and Sunday Masses.
None of the above is meant as criticism, just my observations from the past week. The priests who serve this parish are young men (two of them) and appear to be enthusiastic and, from what I have gleaned with my smattering of Spanish, are doing their utmost to catechize the faithful.
It always comforts me that, no matter where you are, the Mass is always the same, in spite of any liturgical abuses that may happen - more often than not, in my local diocese…
and it lasted longer than the Traditional Latin Mass and there was no Communion (although they had to leave after over an hour because my father was not feeling well that day) so maybe Communion was offered later.
