Today is the feast of St James the Great and while there are five currently open churches of St James, apparently, no one is exactly sure which Saint James any of them is named for, although not only is there confusion about which Saint James the churches are named for, there’s also confusion about which Saint James is which Saint James in general.
But since the pastor of Saint James on Wabash said that there was a parish memory of their parish being named for Saint James the Great, I picked that one to go toa 7.30a Mass.
The parish is a bit unique in that they don’t really have a church, per se. The church building survived a fire in the 1970s, but became dangerously unstable and was demolished in 2013 with its former location now home to a community farm.
Sunday Masses are held in what was originally the church hall, a large building kind of tucked away behind what I’m guessing was originally the parish school and is now a charter school.
Daily Masses, including today’s Mass, are held in a chapel (really a converted parlor) in the rectory.
There were about a dozen people at the Mass all told, but this was the most explicitly welcoming community of all those that I’ve visited on the project, with many people warmly greeting me before and after Mass. There was even singing, I think led by someone over Zoom. I contemplated offering to play the piano that was located in the back of the chapel, but decided against it, if only because the last time I did something like that, I ended up as a music director for that Mass.
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