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| St. Jude |
St. Jude is the patron
saint of desperate cases, so he is an appropriate patron for St. Jude’s Chapel
in downtown Dallas. Squeezed between commercial buildings on Main Street, the
little chapel looks like a desperate case--a down-at-the-heels interloper among
the dazzling skyscrapers of urban Dallas. Although it is located across the
street from Neiman-Marcus’s flagship store, St. Jude’s is the antithesis of all
that Neiman-Marcus represents. Neiman-Marcus symbolizes elegance, refinement
and affluence, while St. Jude’s Chapel’s storefront facade and bright
mosaic-tile décor are decidedly unfashionable and a bit scruffy.
And that is why St.
Jude’s Chapel is my favorite Catholic Church.
I like the fact that I must enter and exit through the gift shop, which
is stocked with holy cards, inexpensive statues of the saints, and St. Jude
musk-scented air fresheners that I can buy and hang on the rearview mirror of
my car. I like the fact that the chapel has substituted moist sponges for holy
water in the fonts at the entrance doors. And I like the fact that someone has
thoughtfully placed big bottles of hand sanitizer next to the sponges.
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| Dorothy Day |
Dorothy Day wrote that
she was attracted to the Catholic Church as a young woman because it was the
Church of the poor. “It was the Irish of New England, the Italians, the
Hungarians, the Lithuanians, the Poles, it was the great mass of the poor, the
workers, who were the Catholics in this country,” she wrote, “and this fact in
itself drew me to the Church” (Day, 1952, p. 107). Surely Dorothy would feel at
home in this eccentric little chapel where Catholic working people and the poor
come to worship.
During the time I lived
near St. Jude’s Chapel, it had no regular pastor, and an elderly priest came
out of retirement to celebrate daily Mass.
I am sorry to say I have forgotten his name. I recall he had a distinctive
way of concluding the general confession. “May almighty God have mercy on us,
forgive us for our sins, and bring us to . . .” and then he would pause expectantly
and say “What?” to the congregation. And we would dutifully complete his
sentence by chanting, “Everlasting life.”
“That’s right,” the old
priest always replied. “I guarantee it.”
*****
St. Jude’s Chapel is
located at 1521 Main Street, Dallas, Texas 75201. The chapel provides daily
Mass at 11:40 AM on Mondays through Fridays and two Masses on Sundays--9:30 AM
and 11:30 AM. A novena to St. Jude always follows the Mass. For more information, visit the chapel’s web
site at http://stjudechapel.net/
References
Day, D. (1952). The long loneliness. New York: Harper.
Champlin, J. M. (1986). The mystery and meaning of the Mass. New
York: Crossroads Publishing Company.
