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The Reverend Herbert Jones in the Saint Therese Carmelite Chapel, which is in the basement of the Northshore Mall in Peabody, MA. (photo by Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)
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Today is a holy day, though it probably won’t mean much more traffic at the Saint Therese Carmelite chapel in Peabody.
This is a secular holy day, the Feast of Un-Levied Bread, when the money spent by the shop-till-you-drop set on qualifying purchases eludes the state sales tax (a blessing that continues tomorrow).
And though Saint Therese nestles with J. Jill, Coach, Macy’s, and other tenants at the Northshore Mall, the rhythms at what is believed to be the country’s original mall chapel flow according to the liturgical calendar, rather than the business cycle.
Just past the entrance for Joe’s American Bar and Grill, in between the signs for Bader Dental Group and Dellaria Salon, the nameplate “Catholic Chapel and Religious Gift and Book Shop” directs you downstairs to the mall basement and Saint Therese. Four Carmelite priests and a brother staff the chapel, headed by the Rev. Herbert Jones, a soft-spoken 71-year-old in a brown robe who spent much of his ministry in South America. Cardinal Richard J. Cushing, who opened Saint Therese in 1960, gave Jones his mission cross in the chapel that year.
Merchants were then just beginning to migrate from downtowns to suburban malls, and the cardinal “was always of the idea that the Mass has to be where the people are,” says Jones, who says he knows of just a dozen or so mall chapels nationally. Cushing spared no expense: The chapel seats 350 and is adorned with hand-carved wooden statues from Italy. The surroundings accommodate three Masses every weekday and four on Saturday. Saint Therese is closed Sundays, so as not to compete on the Sabbath with local parishes.
On the last Wednesday in July, as tank-topped teens and others prowled the lengthy commercial corridors of the mall above, 40-plus faithful, mostly elderly and middle-aged, reverently celebrated the feast of Sts. Joachim and Ann at the 3 p.m. Mass. Saturday’s later Masses, which fulfill Catholics’ Sunday church obligation, can pack the chapel, Jones says.
“If I’m in the mall, doing any shopping at all…it isn’t that much time to take to come over here and kneel down, say a prayer,” says Ed Flynn, a widower from Peabody who did just that before the Wednesday Mass.
“Church should be the center of our lives,” says another man who prays here regularly. “There’s an immediacy to it, you know, having it right here.”
According to Jones, the typical worshiper here is an older person, someone at the mall either for morning exercise or shopping. Many Catholics active in their home parishes come to pre-Mass confessions, too uncomfortable facing the priests they know so well. “We’ve sort of become the confessor for the North Shore,” he said with a chuckle.
Cushing’s instinct to mix the holy oil of religion with the vinegar of commerce put him ahead of his time in his church, which had a long history as a staunch supporter of labor that eyed capitalism warily.
But if even Sweden could tinge its proud democratic socialism with accommodations to the marketplace, as it has, then so could the Vatican. The Catholic-capitalist rapprochement came with Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical, “Centesimus Annus.” While dismissing laissez-faire delusions of an unregulated economy, the pope commended the free market as “the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.”
As to whether capitalism could be the wave lifting developing nations, the pope declared, “If by `capitalism’ is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property, and the resulting responsibility…then the answer is certainly yes.”
The Carmelites’ presence works for the capitalists running the mall. “The clientele that they attract you’re not going to find a better customer as far as well-behaved, polite,” mall manager Mark Whiting says. And there’s spillover business for the mall’s other tenants, as Mass-goers sometimes stop for a bite to eat or do some shopping, he adds.
The Carmelites, who have overseen the chapel from the start, are a religious order known for their devotion to contemplative prayer. Being put in charge of Saint Therese, in the heart of a bustling center of commerce, was a coincidence of friendship.
Cushing was close to the prior of the nearby Carmelite community, and he asked his friend to run the new chapel. It makes an agreeable posting for an older priest like Jones.
“I don’t want to administer a parish,” he said. “…It can be a 24- hour-a-day job.” At Saint Therese, he said, “You don’t have meetings. You don’t have a Holy Name Society. You don’t have a parish council…I always said that if a priest didn’t die in a meeting, there’d be no justice.”
Other than Masses and confession, no sacraments are available. Jones recently had to turn down a woman who wanted to be married in the chapel.
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