Mass Reflection: St. Philip Church Flower Mound, TX

Home Sweet Home

Church Website

Isaiah 66:10-14c

Psalm 66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20

Galatians 6:14-18

Colossians 3:15a, 16a

Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

Throughout my travels, I’ve never done a write-up for our home church, St. Philip in Flower Mound, TX. Down here in the Bible Belt—or as I like to call it, the Baptist Belt—finding a Catholic church can be a bit of a chore. Especially if you’re like me and actually care about how a place looks, it takes a while—particularly in the Dallas suburbs—to find a parish that isn’t a 1970s architectural abomination. Over in the Diocese of Fort Worth, I think the churches are a bit more plentiful and generally easier on the eyes.

When St. Philip was built, I assume the architects actually wanted to create something grand and worthy of being called a church. I think they hit the mark—and it still hasn’t reached its final iteration. A history of the church and how it came to be can be found here. One aspect I highlighted in the pictures at the bottom was the stained-glass window. Right now, there are two installed, and there are plans to install 12 more in the future. More info can be found here. I’m really excited to see the progress the church makes in the coming years.

Mass today was celebrated by Msgr. Francis, who seems to preside over the 9 a.m. Mass every time I’m there. He’s a very kind man—very reverent—and he speaks well. His accent is just very thick, and they provide his homily notes in the worship aid. I haven’t yet had a chance to talk to Msgr. Francis personally or to ask how he ended up as a priest in Flower Mound, Texas. Maybe I’ll get a chance to interview our clergy for the blog—stay tuned for that. I asked Google where his surname comes from, and apparently it’s Ghanaian. I can almost guarantee that Msgr. Francis speaks fluent French along with English.

We have a new organist, and this was the first time I’ve heard him play, knowing it was him. There were the usual few songs starting at about 8:55, and the bell rang promptly at 9. One thing I’ve always appreciated about our parish is that people in the congregation actually sing. One person who normally sits behind us is loud and proud—though often off-tempo. That’s okay. A for effort.

The readings today were about a flourishing Jerusalem that comforts its people like a mother comforts her children. The Gospel told of the 72 disciples sent out to spread the message of Jesus—even the demons were subject to His name. Jesus tells the disciples not to rejoice in the power they have, but in the fact that their names are written in heaven. A good message: earthly power is one thing, but true joy comes from belonging to God. I’ll attach my photos of Msgr. Francis’ homily—he always makes a lot of good points.

I don’t really have a ton of highlights from today. It all feels normal to me at this point. Our parish is fairly traditional—we do Kyrie eleison in its proper Greek, and Sanctus and Agnus Dei in Latin. I wish we’d just go all out and start saying Dominus vobiscum and doing the Gloria and Pater Noster in Latin too. Obviously, we wouldn’t be able to go full TLM, but I’ve heard of a couple of places around DFW doing the Novus Ordo in Latin and ad orientem, so maybe there’s hope. We do like to chant the Our Father, and I always really enjoy that.

We currently have a seminarian doing his summer assignment at our parish. He’s from—I think—Grapevine, which is just down the road. Nice guy. He was distributing the Eucharist today, and he’s the one I received from. He also blessed our daughter. She was just baptized a couple of weeks ago at the ripe age of three months and some change. I’m already very excited for her first Communion in a few years.

Mass ended, and we sang a hymn I can’t remember the name of, but it was set to the tune of my favorite: O God Beyond All Praising. My wife took a great photo of me holding our daughter during the recessional. I think it’s a beautiful picture. We don’t usually share photos of our daughter’s face, but this one really captures her essence, I suppose. We actually finished singing the hymn, which was a nice change. We normally duck out after the first verse (once the cross has left) so we can beat the gridlock in the parking lot. But we weren’t in much of a hurry today, so we just took our time getting out. It was nice.

That was that. We loaded up the car and headed home after another good Mass. Our daughter only got a little fussy toward the end. She’s always calm in church—she likes looking at the ceiling.

These Sundays at home, at our home parish, are always a good reset. We love the Flower Mound area, and we love our home church. If any of you reading this are considering moving to the DFW area, FloMo is hard to beat.