In the ten years or so before I retired, I usually landed at Assumption Church in downtown St. Paul for both Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Always a quick service, starting promptly at 12 noon and over in time for me to be back at work by 1:00 p.m. Last year, Bob and I went to Assumption on Good Friday and yesterday we went to Holy Thursday Mass there. However, Bob is not too keen on the 19th-century pews designed for short German pioneers and he wanted to go to our own Nativity Church this afternoon. We arrived in plenty of time to get a good seat - in our case, the last pew of the first section on the west side of the church.
Shortly before the service started, a seemingly self-appointed usher started stuffing people into pews with fewer than eight occupants. He was still signaling to unseated attendees during the reading of the Passion, and we got an extra deuce in our pew, as well as a young couple with a young child and a newborn. That brought our occupancy to eight plus two kids.
I was actually OK with that, until I moved a little close to my right-hand neighbor. He was definitely not
