Saturday, January 26, 2013

Jan. 26, 2013, column:

St. Thomas parishioners visit Catholicism's overseas roots

Nicole Koetting, right, directs members of Amarillo’s St. Thomas Catholic Church at Santa Maria della Mercede Church in Rome.  
By Mike Haynes    
     It’s one thing to celebrate Mass in the spacious, 30-year-old, St. Thomas the Apostle Church on Amarillo’s South Coulter Street.
            It’s quite another for St. Thomas members to sing and receive the Holy Eucharist amid ancient vaulted ceilings built a thousand years before Amarillo existed, just a few feet from the tomb that many believe contains the remains of Mark, author of the first gospel.
The Rev. Scott Raef, pastor of St. Thomas Catholic Church in Amarillo, officiates at a private Mass in St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice.
            In that crypt below St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, the Rev. Scott Raef of the Amarillo church officiated as Jim Gardner and Nicole Koetting led the music a month ago for a group of 68 visitors from Texas.
            For many, the intimate service was the highlight of an Italian trip that began the day after Christmas and ended Jan. 3.
            Koetting said members of the St. Thomas adult choir told her “it was so special to celebrate Mass where the grave of one of the gospel writers was actually behind the altar.”
             The private Mass began a tour that included children’s, youth and adult choirs and musicians from St. Thomas plus family members and friends. “It was a great way to start,” Koetting said.
Jim Gardner, music director at Amarillo’s St. Thomas Catholic Church, visits La Pieta church in Venice, where composer Antonio Vivaldi planned the acoustics. 
            Another highlight was attending the New Year’s Day Mass and blessing at St. Peter’s in Rome, attended by thousands and officiated by none other than Pope Benedict XVI himself.  The Amarillo group was among the faithful inside St. Peter’s Basilica with its 151-foot ceiling and 95-foot altar canopy, below which is the apostle Peter’s tomb.
            The group joined the throng outside in the square as Pope Benedict appeared in a window to give Jan. 1 greetings in multiple tongues. Koetting, who has been the St. Thomas assistant music director for almost 15 years, was accompanied by her husband, Dan, and three of their four children.
“We stayed for at least seven languages,” Koetting said. “But the kids were there with us, so we left after English.”
In addition to the Vatican and Venice, the group provided music at a public Mass in St. Croce Basilica in Florence and for another private Mass in Santa Maria della Mercedes in Rome, a modern church.
They also visited Padua and Assisi. “We were able to see the St. Francis cross in a side chapel of the church in Assisi,” Koetting said. “It’s from the late 1200s. It was pretty moving.”
The Amarillo church has sponsored several such trips, usually at five-year intervals. In addition to the late Rev. Joseph Tash, a key figure on the trips has been Gardner, music director since 1993.
“Jim is an amazing musician,” Koetting said. “He arranged all the music done on the trip. The music that we did at the private masses in Italy, he wrote.”
Brittney Richerson, a violinist on the trip, agreed that Amarillo is blessed to have Gardner. When not wearing his St. Thomas robes, he is active directing music at Amarillo Little Theatre as well as playing piano for the Polk Street Jazz ensemble.
“Too few in the Panhandle realize what a blessing a man with his unique gifts and incredible experience is to the community,” said Richerson, a former Amarillo College student now studying in Corpus Christi and who also has played with Gardner in ALT productions.
Indeed, it also is true that too few know about the quality of music and the arts radiating from the church on Coulter, a little of which was put on display this winter in the pope’s back yard.
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            Mike Haynes teaches journalism at Amarillo College. He can be reached at AC, the Amarillo Globe-News or haynescolumn@hotmail.com. Go to www.haynescolumn.blogspot.com for other recent columns.