Almost Perfect

Quiet sanctity.

The wood of the dais under the pew creaked when I knelt and when I genuflected. Warm darkness punctuated only by the flicker of electric candles and the whitewash of small lights well above the first pew. The ceiling of St. Mary's on 5th and H floated nearly five stories above the church floor; vaulted and supported by beautiful faux-marble columns. She was quiet this Sunday morning, yet hid something from me—something she wanted me to know, for a reason I'm not sure I yet understand or fathom.

I sat back in the pew, relishing the antiquity and beauty of this small church. Places like this are few and far between where I'm from. San Xavier Del Bac outside Tucson comes to mind as the closest of kin, and even then she's a completely different style of church. This one, not far from the nation’s capitol, didn't demand respect, and yet she draws it from you within moments of entering through her big wooden doors into the vestibule.

The minutes passed without anyone else entering the church. I knew I was early, but this seemed a little bizarre. Rather than quell my curiosity I chose to sit in solace and absorb the atmosphere.

For the first fifteen minutes or so a pipe organ played, giving the otherwise hushed church an almost eerie quality. The music didn't stop abruptly, rather echoed to a fade. Still no Sunday morning worshippers entered. My clock was fast, that had to be the answer. No big deal, sitting in this place was reverential and allowed me to reflect and talk to God in my own way.

"Excuse me, sir—" An unexpected voice from the rear of the church. I turned around to see if it was meant for someone else.

"Could you hold this ladder steady for me?"

Again the wood creaked under my step as I exited the pew, still enveloped in relative darkness. "Sure," I replied.

"Thanks. This clock is a little high up and I don't want to risk having someone come through the door and knock it over while I'm on the highest step." An unremarkable clock hung above the entrance to the church proper from the vestibule. "Everyone will show up twenty minutes late for mass today because they forgot to set their clocks back." That explained my lengthy solitude; more likely a factor of Divine serendipity than random circumstance that I should be so early on this particular morning. This gentleman apparently worked around the church, so he likely knew something of its history.

"How much of this church is original." I asked as he climbed down the ladder.

Don smiled. "I really wish you hadn't asked that." Nice move, Nicklaus. "I tend to get carried away when I talk about it, but we have some time before Mass starts."

The next forty-five minutes were spent immersed in the lore and history of this little church in Washington DC's Chinatown. He spoke of its humble beginning as a tiny church, the block walls of which still can be seen in the basement. The current incarnation of the church was built partly with the rubble from the old one. He told of priests long since gone—one who had the small crosses above the Stations of the Cross taken down, which Don subsequently put back up upon that priests departure; another who was so disliked by staff and some parishioners that one was overheard saying "the only thing he's ever picked up were a fork and a roll of toilet paper." That priest departed, involuntarily, leaving the small church $130,000 in debt. Don hadn't been paid for almost two years for the work he'd done restoring St. Mary's beautiful pipe organ. He'd since become something of the parish caretaker and was given permission to play the instrument whenever he liked. Now he's the church's musical director.

He spoke of two statues on either side of the altar, standing angels practically towering over the altar and those who stood before it. Don struck a deal with another church for two other smaller statues of kneeling angels, much more proportionate to the altar. He told me about the smaller pews on either side of the church which were covered up during the Great Depression, and of tiny electrical sockets still hidden amidst the nooks and crannies of the heavenward ceiling. Seems when they were installed in the 1920's they still relied on gas lamps, but had the electrical ones installed for the newly available electricity. They just didn't trust electricity yet. From his description the effect of having so many tiny bulbs lit in the ceiling only added to the church's mystical appeal.

He showed me some wonderful tile work on the altar which one priest had drilled a hole through and covered with plywood for a microphone stand. "I couldn't wait to get that thing removed," he said. We then proceeded through a door to the right of the altar, down into the basement. Directly underneath the altar was an old coffin lift. He explained how this type of lift was used to raise the coffin from the basement to the altar for viewing, and I thought he mentioned this is where the old saying "raising the dead" came from; I'm likely wrong, but I never knew such lifts existed and again I was impressed. I was also shown the aforementioned remaining walls of the old church, as well as a room which was created as a bomb shelter during WWII. It still bore the ugly blue paint an earlier pastor chose to paint the entire church with. Thankfully that paint is long gone from the church above.

Then we walked down the middle aisle out into the vestibule again, Don spouting one fascinating fact after another as we walked. We walked up a cramped spiral staircase which lead to the second-floor balcony and the pipe organ he is so fond of. "This balcony doesn't get used for services anymore, but once in a while we have a chorus up here and the acoustics in the church are amazing." We squeezed behind the wooden pipes themselves where he showed me scratches on the wood from years ago; these were the real deal, not some fiberglass mock-up.

The stained glass windows along the sides of the church were imported from Innsbruck, while the three panels adorning the wall above the altar were American made in the early part of the 1900's. The difference in quality between the two was distinctive. This is one area the American craftsman couldn't touch. Other round stained glass windows had given way to air conditioning ducts.

This small church contains all the requisite pieces of ecclesiastical pomp and circumstance, yet by the end of my impromptu tour I knew it held something far more important. You see, anyone who knows me knows I'm not from DC—I live in Arizona. Prior to that Sunday I had never met Don. Here was a man who, without reservation, took a complete stranger on an almost magical tour of his church. He gave of his time to a complete unknown in a town where they'd just as soon stab you in the political back than give you the time of day. When he did finally walk away to tend to some other matters before Mass started, it dawned on me that I had probably seen and heard things that parishioners who'd been attending Mass there for many years have never seen nor known. And I'm not even one of their flock.

I took my place again in the pews near the back. The wood creaked slightly as I entered the pew. The Sunday crowd was starting to filter in, quietly, reverently walking through the dim interior.

Short of Heaven, this small church may be as close to perfection as I may ever witness. God willing, I'll find out how Heaven matches up to St. Mary's on 5th and H.