Feeling needed

For the University's trip to Chicago yesterday for a solemn high requiem Mass, I decided to fill my bag with some potentially useful items (for myself and the group at large - roughly 80 people!). I sent 20 chapel veils with the campus ministry employee to hand out as needed, which left me with the following in my bag:

-1 black chapel veil (mine)

- 1 missal

-1 bag of cough drops (lots of colds going around)

- The Privilege of Being a Woman (Alice von Hildebrand): my current spare-time reading (hopefully a post will be forthcoming about this fantastic book)

- The Holy Mass (Dom Prosper Gueranger); the book was given to me over the summer, and I absolutely treasure it. It's a wonderful explanation, succinct but thorough, of the Tridentine Mass. Perfect for study or meditation during Mass itself (though the section on sequences wasn't quite long enough to get me through the Dies Irae last night).

- 1 in-progress scarf (worked on in the car, not in church)

After Mass, the gentlemen in my immediate company wanted to go mingle without their books, so I added to my collection 2 more missals and a Breviary. And no, lest you ask, my bag isn't really that big. It was quite bulging with leather-bound books and I attracted lots of funny looks as I walked through the church. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but you'll notice that a camera was not on my list because my purse-sized camera was forgotten at home last time I was there.