The sacred smell remains with me in memory, that of the incense as it rose from the altar and wafted its way through the church. During the rite we called Benediction, the priest would swing the golden vessel on its golden chain, toward the Blessed Sacrament as a way of worshiping the Lord. That burning aromatic substance inside the vessel made the building feel even more holy than usual, suffusing the structure where the spiritual life of my boyhood found its focus.

The parish is no more, having been suppressed last year by the archbishop for lack of attenders and a dearth of clergy. But there is no suppressing my 1930s and 1940s memories of the place, with its Latin language liturgies, its pews crowded with families dressed in their Sunday best, and familiar hymns, features of a church flourishing with faith and practice.

The pastor and his curates, their backs turned toward us as they recited the parts of the Mass, showed themselves reverent but businesslike in getting through the rite in time for the next congregation to enter. Those of us receiving holy communion would be hungry and thirsty, when we thought about it, in accordance with fasting rules then in force.

The day of my First Communion, May 31, 1936, stands out as altogether special. At age seven, the age of reason as the church defined it, I qualified for this event, which was followed by a parish breakfast served to us amid much rejoicing. In recalling the occasion here, I have before me a photo of my second grade public school class. My mother wrote all our names on the back, with an asterisk noting those who had received this First Communion together.

Not lightly did we approach the altar rail that day: we had prepared for it over a period of months. That meant studying our catechism, memorizing the answers to questions familiar to virtually all members of our faith community. Preparation also entailed our first confession, as we were shown our way into the dark box where a priest was waiting for us to tell him our sins. I don’t remember any of the awful deeds I shared with the confessor that day.

The boys among us wore white suits, and white shoes and socks. The little girls wore white dresses and veils.

No enfants terribles were among us that day, because all of us were shriven and pure as newly bought sheets of paper. As we approached the altar rail in awe, not without fear of making a mistake, the priest placed the host on our tongues and we returned to our pews united with the Lord Jesus. The emotion of that day has remained in my memory for 70 years, suggesting that the parish was making a durable investment in its boys and girls.

Church in those days was much more than Sunday Mass. Devotions, too, loomed large in parish life, rites like the already mentioned Benediction and confession. Some adult parishioners confessed every week even if they had no axe murders or other heinous sins to accuse themselves of. Pushed by our parents, we children would be there, too, prepared to divulge our transgressions. As I entered adolescence, my most pressing spiritual danger tended to be the photos of women in Life Magazine or the National Geographic, scandalously revealing according to the standards of the day.

Novenas enjoyed great popularity, too, those nine-day sessions of prayer, hymn singing, sermons, and Benediction. Each March, we prayed and sang to Saint Francis Xavier, the 16th century Jesuit who had baptized thousands of Asians as one of the first of his order’s missionaries.

At one stage, the saint’s arm made the rounds of parishes, in a glass case that displayed the sacred limb that long before had brought so many people into the church. Singing the hymns, smelling the incense, listening to the words of Scripture and the visiting preachers, all gave this young boy a palpable sense of what it meant to be in touch with the holy.

But nothing stays the same. People change, along with their institutions. Long life exposes us to shifts in thinking, in taste, and in the way things are done. You find that what seemed fixed in place was not nearly so immutable as you thought. As the ancient Greek philosopher knew, it is impossible to put your foot into the same flowing river twice.

In retrospect, it surprises me that the Catholic subculture held together so tenaciously. That way of being religious felt to me, my parents, and just about everybody else in my circle of friends remarkably stable, immune to the winds of change that would transform it decades later. Of course, in time I would become aware of Catholic provincialism and worse defects, but in my boyhood it all seemed as if it all could last forever.

Richard Griffin