Happy Thanksgiving: “Either You Go to Church Because You’re Nice or You Go and It Makes You Nice but Either Way It’s Good.”

Peggy Noonan reminisces about her Great-aunt Jane Jane taking her to Mass as a child. 'They had bells and candles and smoke and shadows and they sang.'

From Rorate Cæli

Traditional Mass at a side Rosary Altar,
St. Vincent Ferrer* (New York City)*

"Words of thanks to someone I knew well as a child:

"I had an old great-aunt. She was my grandfather’s sister. Her name was Mary Jane Byrne but we called her Jane Jane. When I first encountered her, in the 1950s, I was a little child and she was ancient—about 60.

"She lived in New York and went to a local parish, St. Vincent Ferrer. When I was little she told me it was the pennies of immigrants that made that great church. I asked why they did that. She said, 'To show love for God. And to show the Protestants we’re here, and we have real estate too.'

...

"If we were together on a Sunday, she [great-aunt Jane Jane] took me to Mass. I loved it. They had bells and candles and smoke and shadows and they sang. The church changed that a bit over the years, but we lost a lot when we lost the showbiz. Because, of course, it wasn’t only showbiz. To a child’s eyes, my eyes, it looked as if either you go to church because you’re nice or you go and it makes you nice but either way it’s good. 

 "Jane Jane carried Mass cards and rosary beads—the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Blessed Mother, the saints. She’d put the cards on a mirror, hang the rosary beads on a bedstead. I look back and think, wherever she went she was creating an altar. To this day when I am in the home of newcomers to America, when I see cards, statues and Jesus candles, I think: I’m home." 

 From Peggy Noonan's Thanksgiving column for The Wall Street Journal

* Image source: Liturgical Arts journal