Mass at St Marije's, Kolocep, Croatia

We took a week's holiday on the island of Kolocep, just off the coast of Dubrovnik in Croatia, and decided to attend the Sunday mass in the little church of St Marije pictured above. This is the largest of several Catholic churches and chapels on a tiny island, far more than one might expect for the population. The paint was flaking a little and there were patches of damp contending with the faded and jaded fabrics and old, unrestored panels of elaborate gospel scenes with captions underneath, written in a kind of hoch deutsch calligraphy.

Not speaking any more Croatian than 'hello' (which is dober dan), we realised that this would be an exercise in beginner's mind, up to a point, though both of us are familiar with the ceremonies of Christendom in our different ways.  I had a slight advantage (or so I thought) because I did an A level in Russian many years ago, and the two languages are cognate and share some vocabulary. My partner didn't have any Russian, but as someone immersed in a churchgoing early life, she was familiar with the language of the creeds and with the structure of the mass.

What she noticed most as the service progressed was how the music of the language enabled her to follow the basics of what was going on, simply by hearing and remembering the rhythms of the set pieces.

For my part, I could pick out some of the vocabulary (love, truth, freedom, father, and so on) and this helped me to orientate myself well enough to be able to say the Lord's Prayer in English alongside the congregation speaking it in Croatian.  It was a little like a journey on a train which would occasionally flash through a small station whose name I recognised. No sense of control, but a strange sense of familiarity, as though visiting very distant cousins.

The curious thing was that despite the left brain being almost completely disengaged, we were both able in our different ways to take part in something that had a certain timeless quality requiring no language. Best of all was when the priest invited everyone to share the peace, a small forest of hands was suddenly thrust towards us, everyone smiled and shook hands, and no-one said anything. It was a perfect moment - real peace, no words. 

Joseph Campbell, the great expounder of myth, said that the abandonment of the Latin mass was a grave error in church life, because it took away precisely this sense of mystery, of following but not quite understanding, of surrendering to something ineffable and incomprehensible, yet recognisable. Perhaps we experienced something of that feeling on that day in Kolocep, of being part of the universal catholic (note the small 'c') church being expressed in its local vernacular.

And despite all of the battles in religion being battles of words, meanings, semantics, interpretations and nuances (or as Campbell memorably said, about the name of God),  the best part of the morning was the part where no-one let the words get in the way, where no-one tried to be anything other than human beings sharing the peace. Perhaps that is the true pax christi.