Rehearsal!

This series of Blogs began with the August 9th entry. If you missed the previous, you might want to back up and get caught up.

Stadiums built since 1987 seem to have become smaller. I guess that is one way of declaring an event to be "sold out." However, the Silverdome was a mega-stadium and I am providing a photo to help you to visualize at least a bit the scope of the moment.

Anyhow, as the time drew nearer rehearsal became the question.

We had to gather the troops together and rehearse. We could not just leave things up to chance, asking our ministers to "imagine" their situations. They had to have some advance, practical, hands on experience of the situations with which they would be actually dealing.

We had to rehearse!

Actually, those upper regions were easy. They were fixed. They wee stationary. They were not going anywhere. As long as we could get access to the building, we could schedule rehearsals for those distant regions and give the ministers a hands on feel for what they needed to do.

And so those rehearsals were scheduled and actually happened.

The big challenge was ground level.

Almost right up to the day itself, that was remaining a vast, wide open space. Seating and platforms and anything else was only existing in the imagination. Reality would not become visible and tangible until -- well, we were assured everything would be set and in place on Thursday, two days before the big moment.

Thursday evening the building would be available for the grand, ground floor experience and rehearsal. Everything would be in place and we could provide a feel for the actual experience.

And so the final rehearsal, the one involving the main floor, was scheduled for the evening of September 17, just two days before the Mass. On that evening we could see and feel and walk and experience what the main floor would actually be like.

Only it wasn't quite that way!

As our critical ground floor ministers and those responsible for moving things from that level to those above began to arrive, a certain degree of panic began to emerge.

The platform for the Mass was not yet built. And the seating was not yet in place. And it all could not be because bevies of semis, loaded with the necessary equipment were still filling that ground floor space.

We looked out in unbelieving amazement at seeing not the expected all completed, all ready setting to see semi after semi after semi with cargo waiting to be unloaded and set into place.

Nothing was even close to being ready!

Could we properly describe the coming scene? Call on our ministers to effectively imagine? Could we do that?

But even before we began to speak and even, perhaps, shout to capture minds and imaginations, a sound began to emerge.

Across the way from where we had gathered for our rehearsal, the choir, multiplied by countless additional numbers began to tune up. They were also rehearsing! 

And they were loud!

And our question became - how loud can you speak? We had no amplification system. To communicate with our ministers, we would have to get loud, really loud - raising our voices above and over the sound of the choir of over a hundred voices and also those semis out there on the field unloading the equipment that should already have been in place.

And then came still another surprise - the orchestra!

Of course!

This was a Papal Mass. It was not enough to have a hundred plus voice choir.  That choir needed an accompaniment fitting the occasion. And that would be the orchestra and they also needed to rehearse. And that was happening right then and right there in that emerging nightmare.

Communicating with our ministers and actually helping them to grasp what was expected of them had become nearly impossible.

Until  . . .

The thunderstorm!

Yep!

Ever heard the sound of the wind and rain, serious, steady, soaking rain up against a domed roof?

Loud is hardly a proper descriptive for that sound. Even the orchestra and the choir seemed at least momentarily defeated by the storm. But the storm did come and the rains did resonate against that domed roof.

And there would be no second chance for us. John Paul was arriving the next day and the Silverdome would be totally secured by that time and, therefore,  inaccessible.

Rehearsal was over. Nothing more that we could do.

We could not communicate; we could not work on the site; we could not . . . 

Well, all we really could do was send everyone home and hope and pray that somehow things would come together.

Ground floor rehearsal was permanently grounded!

We could only guess at what the real thing might look like! 

Still more! - so please come back!

Meantime, Keep Praying . . . and Stay Safe!