Holy Rosary Church, Jersey City, NJ

August 24, 2013

Holy Rosary Church

344 Sixth Avenue

Jersey City, NJ 07302

www.holyrosarychurch.com

This church is hitting on all cylinders.  Most cylinders, anyway.  It’s a good sized church, with bright, if not a little sissy, colors.  The priest, Fr. Jerzy Zasłona, is energetic and cheery, and he is a good speaker, which is a real feather in his cap.  During his homily, he took the rarely-used approach – in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before – of asking the congregation questions that he actually wanted answers to.  It was a little awkward, because everyone was acting like he was asking a rhetorical question, so no one responded.  For example, he asked “who here takes the PATH train to Manhattan?”  I thought he would move on from the question, assured his point had been made that he was going to talk about taking the PATH train, but he pressed on: “Anyone?  Has anyone taken the PATH train to Manhattan?”  Of course we have, bro.  We all have.  He asked four or five questions like this, and it was a little awkward each time.  Truth be told, though, I like the idea of an interactive homily.  Sometimes I just want to call a priest out on what they're talking about.

I thought the Gospel reading was weird.  It was about Jesus saying how narrow the doors to heaven are, and that a lot of you who think you’re getting in maybe aren’t actually going to get in.  And Fr. Zasłona was taking it pretty literally, saying yeah, we’ve got to be all in on following God’s teachings to get through those pearly gates.  Like we're putting all our chips in the center of the table.  We're leaving everything out on the field because it's the World Series.  That kind of "all in."  But I was thinking, “why do the doors to heaven have to be narrow?”  If we’re all good people, even if we’re sinners and don’t do everything we ought to do all the time, why wouldn't God let us in?  But whatever.  This is all unknowable.

The icing on the cake for this church was two-fold.  First, the ministry of music brought down the house with a raging City of God to close the mass (though it's much better with a piano than an organ).  Second, the church has savage statue of St. Michael.  I went and took a picture of it after mass was over, and there was a sweet old lady just hanging in the pews after mass who saw me.  After I snapped the photo she cheerily asked, “you like St. Michael?”  “Yeah, that’s my name, Michael,” I said with a smile.  How awesome are those sweet little old ladies who just know all their saints and stuff?