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Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, or: “Lady Day.” It marks nine months before Christmas, and commemorates the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mary in Nazareth. For many years it was the beginning of the new year in England and Ireland, since they regarded anno domini, the “year of our lord,” as begining with Christ’s conception as opposed to his literal birth. “Lady Day” is also a nickname for Billie Holiday.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Annunciation
MassTimes.org, which is less and less updated as time goes by, indicated that Sacred Heart has a mass at 9 AM on Saturdays. After hurrying through my morning routine today, I walked down. The church is a distance of less than two blocks from my apartment, and is situated between the Navy Yard, the BQE, and a fenced-in gravel enclosure.
This is a picture of Sacred Heart I took last autumn.
I found the gate open and the door to the narthex open, but the basins were empty and so was the church. I spent several minutes looking through the rounded, porthole like doors to the nave, and saw that it too was empty. But the inside of the church had a dull bluish-gray light to it. It’s a cloudy day, so the sunlight was diffused and scattered somewhat evenly among the stained-glass windows. After awhile, I decided to enter and perhaps to sit for awhile. I stepped inside; the church was much more imposing on the interior than on the outside. The outside was red brick and seemed to have taken the same nicked and weary feel as the rest of the Navy Yard. On the inside, the statues were dusted and pearly white.
I was about halfway toward the sanctuary, when a man entered the room up front.
I introduced myself to him, and asked if there was a Saturday mass. He explained that there was not, that the church was open to provide access to a clothing drive, but he gave me an updated schedule. We spoke for a few minutes about adjacent parishes, most of which I was somewhat familiar with. The man’s name was Father Gildea, and he told me that there’s a severe shortage of priests in the area. We walked outside, and he pointed out the enclosure across the street. We talked about how the neighborhood is in a time of rapid change. The enclosure, he said, used to be a barracks associated with the Navy Yard, but that it had been sold to the city, demolished, and now would be used to build additional housing.
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