Practice for the real thing

WHEN THE REV. THOMAS FLOWERS, ’15, was a student at Nashotah House, he made his way through Practical Liturgics with the help of a practice mass kit.

The former Disney Imagineer, with a background in set design and swordfight choreography, handcrafted the kit — replete with chalice, paten, linens, and cruets — to use as his own personal study tool.

“I’m kind of a kinesthetic learner,” Flowers said. “Maybe because I have some experience on stage working with props, (I know) that when you get used to manipulating and handling things, you can stop thinking about them selfconsciously. And that helped me a lot to learn the manual acts of the Eucharist.”

Flowers remembers fellow students practicing for the senior capstone liturgics final, struggling as they used makeshift supplies — coffee cups, wine glasses — in place of the sacred vessels.

Recognizing that other students might benefit from the tools he used as a student, Flowers recently assembled and donated six practice mass kits to Nashotah House, where they are now available for students to check out on loan from the library.

“My motivation for assembling the kits came from my experiencing what the end of the term looks like for seniors, how much there is to do in such little time,” Flowers said. “I was just hoping to provide them a way to reduce their stress, even if only a bit.”

Flowers purchased the patens, linens, and chalices from a church supplies retailer.

“They (previously) served as sacred vessels, so it kind of feels like it’s an honorable retirement for them that they’re being used to train future generations of priests,” he said.

He also found “stage-grade” stand-ins for the other receptacles and utensils included in the kits, such as the host box, lavabo bowl, and veil.

Before ordained ministry was in his sights, Flowers and his wife, Kim, knew they wanted to “tithe” their final professional years and dedicate them to volunteer work, possibly as missionaries or through a local church.

It was during the Mass at his home parish that Flowers first sensed a call to the priesthood, a departure from his 25-year career with Disney’s R&D arm.

During the invitation to partake, I … sensed a very clear, ‘This is what I want to you to do,’” he said. “It was so out of left field, but when I started talking to the clergy at that parish, they said, ‘We’ve known this for a while.’”

The Rev. Thomas Flowers assembling a practice mass kit.

Following his graduation from Nashotah House in 2015, Flowers went on to serve as Curate and Parish Administrator at All Saints Anglican Cathedral of the Anglican Diocese in New England, located in Amesbury, Massachusetts. He later moved to Asheville, North Carolina, to be near his mother. There he served as a volunteer assisting priest to the Rector of Redeemer Anglican Church and chaplain to the Asheville Police Department.

Recently, he and Kim moved to Nashotah to be near their daughter.

While they may be mere “props,” Flowers hopes the practice mass kits allow seminarians to develop muscle

“What makes it feel like a personal gift is just how much the Eucharist means to me,” he said. “And in some ways, it feels like being able to give that same love to somebody else – that unselfconscious entering into and getting lost in wonder and praise.” †