At the invitation of Father Lee Kenyon, I have just returned from a most remarkable and wonderful Holy Week at Saint John the Evangelist in Calgary, a church of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter. The parish was received into the Church in December 2011 with around 65 persons, and they have received the same number again since then, and attracted a large number of 20-35 year young adult Catholics from the area. Regular Mass attendance is now well over 100. The parish celebrates exclusively according to Divine Worship, the liturgy prepared for the ordinariates, and has a daily celebration of the Mass and the public recitation of Morning and Evening Prayer according to these rites. This includes Mattins sung to plainchant twice a week with homeschooled children who have begun to meet together in the parish to form a cooperative and to form the beginnings of a choir school.
The music at Saint John’s is supported by an amateur parish choir. The English Hymnal and the Canadian equivalent, The Book of Common Praise, supplement the complete propers sung in English to settings from Wantage and the English Gradual. The Ordinary of the Mass is sung to settings by Merbecke and Healey Willan, with great confidence and gusto by all. A good pipe organ assists with this, together with the singing of many the parts of the Mass as prescribed for a said or sung celebration.