... if not our "discontent," then certainly OUR DISCOMFORT.....
The Coronavirus, CODIV-19, has knocked so many of our traditional Easter practices and celebrations into a cocked hat.....
Nonetheless, there are many memories of Happy Easters past that we can recollect and in some ways enjoy again.....
ONE OF THE BC NEWMAN CENTER EASTER CELEBRATIONS STANDS OUT TO ME WELL ABOVE THE REST <<< --- >>> THE 1969 NIGHTLONG EASTER VIGIL AND SUNRISE MASS
In this Year of Our Lord 2020, few of us are readily able to engage in contemporary overnight mass gatherings and celebrations for the Vigil of Easter, or anything else for that matter..... (And just between us girls, at some of our currently calculated ages, few of us are likely able to engage in "all-nighters" of any sort, no matter how much we might want for it to be so.)
HOWEVER --- THERE IS ALWAYS MEMORY LANE.....
With or without Joe Franklin, maybe some of you can recall that It was almost fifty-one years ago that the Brooklyn Newman Center conducted an all-night Easter Vigil event that was patterned on the celebrations conducted by the French and International Ecumenical community at Taize, in the Burgundy region of France.
It was on Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, 1969, that the BC Newman Chaplain Father O'Sullivan was joined at the Newman Center by Father Batchelder from a nearby Episcopalian parish who presided at times jointly and other times individually over several prayer services conducted at various places in the building during the all night vigil. The whole thing culminated in a celebration of a mass at sunrise in the Newman Center Chapel, with Father O'Sullivan, as the celebrant, along with Father Batchelder, as Deacon.
The evening was punctuated by several more secular type events, such as: movies like "Doctor Strangelove" upstairs in the ballroom, and including multiple showings of a very vivid and up-to-date NASA documentary about the first manned mission to the moon, which by plan orbited the Moon but didn't land on the surface; poetry, prose readings and folk songs in the lounge --- where there was plenty of coffee, and some bagels and pastries; and various planned and unplanned jaunts to nearby venues for things like pizza and a few adult beverages (and I'm sure that a few six packs made it back inside 1260 Ocean Avenue that night, because I remember Father Batchelder toasting "A Holy and Happy Easter to All" with a can of "Bud" sometime after a prayer service for the midnight hour).
There was a very good crowd at the beginning of the evening, because many expected a more normal Easter Vigil service followed by a mass that would have satisfied their Sunday obligation..... Most early evening attendees departed before very long; however, about twenty hung-in for the movies and some later prayers and socializing; and about a dozen endured the whole ten hours or so until the break of day--- in the end, about thirty folks assembled and/or re-assembled for the mass at sunrise (including Economics Prof. Arthur Hess, the "Night Newman Faculty Adviser," with his family).....
Afterward, it was generally thought that the whole event was both spiritually and socially worthwhile, especially for a "first try" --- and given that so few, who came to the beginning of the Vigil's prayers and celebrations, knew that it would require marathon endurance..... Sadly, , to my knowledge, there never was a similar followup event like the 1969 Easter Vigil during the rest of my time at Newman. On the other hand, that made the 1969 Newman Easter all-nighter additionally memorable as a one-off event and experience.....
