By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
The most poignant life moments often are unimaginable or inconceivable until they actually occur. That’s the tagline for one of my favorite college memories—late night Sunday Mass at the University of Notre Dame.
I did not have what one would call a conventional Catholic boyhood. Irish-Catholics are religious outliers in Latter-day Saint Northern Utah. My parents divorced when I was young. I grew up at a Trappist monastery near my home, a story I tell in my book Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021).
Still, I was not hopelessly unconventional either. Holy Cross sisters and Jesuit priests taught me during seven years of parochial school. We went to church every week. And Sunday Mass usually happened on the morning of the Sabbath Day.
As a result, imagine my surprise when, in the Fall of 1979, I arrived at my new home on the Notre Dame Campus and discovered that Sunday Mass in my dormitory chapel started at 10:30 p.m. Yes, post-meridiem. That’s Latin for after noon…ten and a half hours after noon, to be exact.
My century-old dorm—Howard Hall—was the first ND building constructed in the collegiate gothic style of architecture. The residence hall featured arches and decorative carvings of students, animals, and even St. Timothy, in honor of Timothy Edward Howard, the professor and Indiana State Supreme Court Justice for whom the building was named.
Back then, almost every residence hall on the Notre Dame campus had a priest or nun as a rector. Howard Hall’s imbedded cleric was a Holy Cross priest, Chicago native, and theology professor named Eugene F. Gorski. A kind, learned, and patient man, each year Fr. Gene guided the 150 or so young men living in his hall through the Sturm und Drang of college life. He called us his “stalwarts” and “pillars.”
His gentle guidance included celebrating Mass with us each Sunday night, starting at 10:30 p.m. in the dorm chapel. The only other times in my life I’d been to church so late at night was for Midnight Mass at Christmas and Easter. Thus, when I learned about the start-time for services at Howard Hall, my first question was, “Why?”
Fr. Gene noted the nocturnal nature of most college students and simply said, “This time seems to work best.” Of course, there were many other opportunities to pray and worship. Every other dorm also had a chapel and offered Sunday Mass too.
My Monastery Mornings book describes a few other options: “Notre Dame’s campus features lovely twin lakes named after Saint Mary and Saint Joseph, as well as a replica of the Lourdes grotto, cave and all. The Basilica of the Sacred Heart, built in 1888, was home to the weekly Sunday high liturgy mass affectionately known as ‘smells and bells’ because of its use of handbells, incense, colorful vestments, a full choir, and other pageantry.”
I tried them all. It turned out, however, that Sunday night at 10:30 p.m. worked just fine for me.
At the end of each week, most of the dorm’s population crowded into the small sanctuary—lit primarily by flickering candlelight—and sat on the carpeted floor surrounding a small altar. Some were finishing a day of studying, others had a few more hours to go before they’d sleep. Many wore bathrobes and pajamas, with only socks or slippers on their feet.
Among that youthful population there was an inordinate wealth of talented musicians and singers. My dorm mates were guitarists, piano players, violinists, members of the famed Notre Dame Glee Club, and choristers from the Basilica chapel choir. They made beautiful music together.
Most of our hymns were right out of the Dan Schutte and St. Louis Jesuit songbook, including wonderful standards like “Blest Be the Lord” or “You Are Near” or “Be Not Afraid.” Fr. Gene, with his Master of Music degree and doctorate in Sacred Theology, also made sure we sang or heard some of the classic liturgical tunes.
None of us were monks, but it was a monastic-like experience. One Sunday night during our senior year, my classmate and fellow westerner John Fitzgerald leaned over and said, “One day, we are going to miss hearing all these male voices raised in song.” He was right.
After Mass, punch and cookies fueled another burst of community spirit. There was lively conversation, fine fellowship, and more music, once including a memorable impromptu rendition of “Heard It in a Love Song,” the popular 1977 single from the Marshall Tucker Band: “I ain’t never been with a woman long enough, For my boots to get old, We’ve been together so long now, They both need resoled…”
At Christmas time, there was caroling, including one written by a dorm resident, with lovely new lyrics like: “Across the fields of Bethlehem, on this holy night, ‘lo a savior born tonight.” There also were wonderful unsung words.
We heard from many guest homilists, mostly the great men and women of the Holy Cross order at the heart of the Notre Dame and St. Mary’s communities. University president Fr. Ted Hesburgh shared stories of his world travels and international work in the fields of Catholic education, human/civil rights, world peace, and interfaith dialogue.
Campus minister Fr. Bill Toohey talked about “the people who make us feel more alive because of what they bring to life in us.” And Fr. Don McNeill—founder of the ND Center for Social Concerns—echoed themes from his 1982 book Compassion, such as: “Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion and anguish.”
One remarkable evening, the wonderful preaching and the beautiful singing merged. Our guest homilist was Holy Cross Brother Paul Loos.
A Missouri native, Brother Paul served during World War II in the Army Air Corps as a gunner on the B-17 bomber, and worked in sales and management before joining the Holy Cross order in 1960. Thereafter, he managed a college book store, assisted in retreats, worked in a parish, and helped with the formation of candidates for his order.
When I met him at Notre Dame in the early 1980s, chronic knee problems forced him to use crutches and a golf cart to get around campus. The difficult and painful affliction grew worse over time, but he bore it with a smile on his face. When he passed in 2005, his obituary noted, “Wherever Paul was assigned he brought laughter and life.”
This is the Brother Paul we saw when he was the guest homilist at the Howard Hall Sunday night Mass. I can’t remember a word he said, but at the end he mentioned how whenever he felt a little sad, a tune from the Broadway musical Annie came to mind.
I worried an audience of cool college men would dismiss or snicker at his simple unsophisticated reference to a comic strip and Broadway musical about an eleven-year-old girl. To my utter surprise and delight, however, some 100 college men simultaneously serenaded Brother Paul, singing, “Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, you’re only a day away.”
I went to Notre Dame expecting that my most vivid memories would involve classroom epiphanies, gridiron glories, and lifelong friendships with people from all over the country. All of those things happened, to some degree.
Yet, four decades later, the most vivid voices in my head are the tenors and baritones of my dorm mates, gathered in the dark together as one week ended and another began, singing “Glory and praise to our God, who alone gives light to our days, many are the blessings he bears, to those who walk in in his ways.”
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.
So enjoyed this….