The worship experience at St. Brigid's is meant to be an act of people in community-not a collection of individuals worshiping in isolation

MOMENTS after the last notes of the multilingual recessional hymn had closed the Thanksgiving liturgy at St. Brigid's, Eileen Ruesterholz turned to someone in her pew and asked: "Where would you see something like this?"

The unique "this" was a resounding liturgy that filled the small Westbury church to overflowing with parishioners from different cultures, praising God in English, Italian, Spanish, Creole and Tagalog. The offertory procession, usually a staid affair in which a family brings to the altar the bread and wine to be consecrated, was a rhythmic dance: Three Haitian girls carried baskets of fruit and two carried bread and wine, swaying toward the altar to the beat of a drum and a Creole hymn.

These multicultural celebrations are among the many crescendoes of the year-long symphony of liturgy at St. Brigid's, where public worship is the pastor's top priority, where a larger-than-usual liturgy staff spends an immense amount of time planning and executing liturgies that have set a standard for innovation, spirit, participation and length.

That length is both a fond parish joke and a sure sign that people care enough about their public worship to stay as long as it takes to say the words and offer the gestures that express the parish's exuberant prayerfulness. Even when the liturgies end, parishioners seem reluctant to let them go, moving smoothly from the "holy hour" to the "happy hour" of refreshments such as coffee and cookies that follow many liturgies.

The symphony of liturgy at St. Brigid's is a richly varied work, rising and falling with the changing seasons of the church year and always filled with color: a Holy Week schedule that tests endurance but provides a powerful, palpable experience of the sacrifice-death-resurrection cycle that lies at the heart of the Christian mystery; shamrocks on the feast of St. Patrick; zeppole on the feast of St. Joseph; special services thrown together hastily, but with equal care, for the illness of a parishioner or the sudden martyrdom of Jesuits in El Salvador; rock music that packs the school auditorium with young people every Sunday at a mass called simply "The Six."

This is not the place for Catholics who want an easy-in, easy-out liturgy, quiet and sterile, devoid of interaction with the others in the pews. St. Brigid's embodies the Second Vatican Council's vision of the church as the people of God and its worship as an act of people in community, not a collection of individuals who happen to be in the same space but focus on their private prayer, isolated from others. This parish is about being together in prayer, and the multicultural liturgies are a particularly effective example.

"It's holy ground; it's spirit-filled," said Ruesterholz, who worships at St. Brigid's, although she lives in North Massapequa. "The liturgy and the congregation is so blended. You don't feel that you're separated racially."

But creating meaningful liturgies for a parish with so much diversity is not easy. Liturgy, the public worship of the church, comes from a Greek word meaning "work of the people." And multilingual liturgies, like all good liturgy, really do require work.

Only 2 1/2 weeks before Thanksgiving, the parish's newly created multicultural planning team had met in a small upstairs room at the parish center, to figure out ways to involve the language communities more in liturgical planning, to give them each a larger role.

"How do we do that in a predominantly English-speaking world?" asked Estelle Peck, the parish director of liturgy, who chaired the meeting. "Do we make sure that it's equally distributed? It's really, really hard. I don't want to just throw bones. I'm trying to get everybody together, so that everybody can own it."

One evidence that not everybody "owns" the multicultural liturgies yet is attendance. Every Sunday, the parish offers mass in four languages: English, Spanish, Italian and Creole. Those masses are well attended -- especially the Spanish liturgy, which draws about 700 to the chapel in the school. But when the language communities all come together on such occasions as Holy Thursday, Thanksgiving and others, it becomes obvious who is still in the majority.

"It's predominantly the English-speaking community that comes to the multicultural celebrations," Peck told the planning group. "How do we celebrate a liturgy that's really going to get to the hearts of all our people?"

In the past, the parish staff had done the planning, but Peck made it clear that in the future, the communities should take the lead. "This is going to be a working committee," she said. "I expect us to laugh and to struggle and to fight. If you think you're getting deprived of something, let's get that out in the open."

The first step was a suggestion from Sheila Dunphy, a representative of the English-speaking community. She proposed that one language community should take responsibility for planning a whole multicultural event, with another community planning the next event, throughout the year. The others quickly agreed, and the Haitians volunteered to plan for New Year's Day.

Here are folks in rims today: WITH THE Thanksgiving liturgy fast approaching, however, they had no time for long-term planning. They had to do it right then, sticking close to the format of the 1994 liturgy and dividing up the parts among the communities. The result was like a friendly horse-trading session.

Peck started with the basic question: Do all the communities actually celebrate Thanksgiving? The Haitians acknowledged that they don't have a November feast, but that they have adapted to America. "We eat a lot of turkey," said Yvenet Decessa, one of the Haitian representatives. The other, Darly Allonce, said the Haitian community would like to do the offertory procession. Last year, it was in English and Italian.

"Domenic, you've just given up a song," Peck told Domenic Abbatiello of the Italian community, who answered: "We're going to get something in return, right?" And Jose Castillo of the Spanish community, apparently tongue in cheek, added: "We'll give you the Amen." Not much of a prize, since it is essentially the same in all the languages.

In the end, each of the communities seemed satisfied with the distribution of readings and hymns for the liturgy. At a final rehearsal the Sunday before Thanksgiving, they all worked at blending their voices, so that when one of the communities sang in their own language, the others tried to join.

"For the Anglos to have to struggle to learn to pronounce Tagalog is the experience of the other communities, who struggle to learn English," said Stephanie Clagnaz, who leads the children's choir, acts as a cantor at many liturgies, and directed the Thanksgiving rehearsal because the music director, Tommy Thorell, was ill.

Trying to blend the different languages into one choir, as they did on Thanksgiving, is less disruptive to a liturgy than trying to move around 100 to 150 singers from different choirs. "It's just unbelievable, just the logistics of getting the people where they're supposed to be," Clagnaz said.

The homily also is a knotty problem. If the priest preaches only in English, many non-English speakers won't understand much of it. But preaching in four languages also poses problems. At an ordinary mass, the homily would usually run 10 minutes, but at the multicultural liturgies, if the celebrant preached 10 minutes in each language, the homily would run 40 minutes. So the only realistic alternative is to preach a briefer homily in each of the languages. Last Holy Thursday, for example, the pastor, Msgr. Francis X. Gaeta, did exactly that.

Gaeta wrote his homily in English, got help translating it into the other languages, worked on the pronunciation and spoke it all himself.

"I think you should try to do as much as you can to give people a sense of being included, but they have to be charitable towards your limitations," Gaeta said. That is what happened. "What I've heard from the other communities is that they're just so touched that he would give that much time," Peck said.

The apportioning of parts, movement of choirs, blending of voices and preaching of homilies are some of the liturgical complexities that accompany the parish's ethnic diversity. Beyond that, in creating its liturgies, it also must cope with the same challenges that face all parishes after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which considered liturgy so important that the first document it completed was the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

One of the pivotal insights of the council was its teaching that Jesus is present at the mass not only in the consecrated bread and wine, but also in the assembly itself. This places stronger emphasis on the worshiping community than on individual piety. For many Catholics who grew up before the council, this emphasis on community, including such rituals as an exchange of a hug or handshake of peace, has been such a jarring distraction that some have even stopped going to church. Not all who have stayed are happy.

"I do think that there are people who are in our pews on Sunday that are longing for a contemplative experience that sets them apart from other people," said Sister Mary Alice Piil, who teaches liturgy at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington. The challenge is to remind people that they find God in each other, not alone. "Liturgy is about the corporate body at prayer," she said. "It's not just that we're together praying personally. We are together praying as one body."

Explaining the essence of liturgy to her students, Piil gave them an article by the Rev. Robert Taft, a Jesuit liturgist. His opening metaphor is Michelangelo's fresco in the Sistine Chapel, showing God, the creator, reaching out but not quite touching Adam, the created.

"That space is what liturgy needs to fill," said Clagnaz, who is studying with Piil, working toward a master's degree in theology. "That analogy of bringing the believer closer to God is sort of how I walk into every liturgy . . . Our focus is to teach people week after week what the face of God looks like."

At St. Brigid's, no other activity has a higher priority. "To me, liturgy is number one," Gaeta said. "You've got people for an hour a week. You've got to give them the best you can give them." Whatever it takes, no matter how unorthodox it may seem, St. Brigid's does it - even hiring a rock singer to lead the people in song. THE DEFINING prophecy in Tommy Ciotti Thorell's life came from his grandmother, Theresa DeFilippo, who taught him about Jesus, exerted a profound spiritual influence, and often told him: "Tommy, one day you're going to sing for God."

As a boy, he was so serious about being a Catholic that he even got into fights with people who violated church law by eating meat on Friday. For a time, he thought of becoming a priest, but other influences prevailed. "The world drew me in," he said, "and my dad."

Peter Ciotti, a singer, began early to nudge his son toward the music business. Thorell studied tenor saxophone at the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, but grew tired of commuting from Queens. So he graduated from Francis Lewis High School in 1965. He started Queens College, but soon left to travel with a rock band as a lead singer.

Then, when he was 18, his grandmother died. Among her final words was a reminder of her prophecy: "Never forget what I told you." But in his bitter grief, he had no desire to sing for God. His attitude toward God was: "If you're that kind of guy, I don't need you."

In the years that followed, his life was a blur of travel and relationships, of starts and stops. The further he got into his career, the more he had to mold his image to what his managers wanted, like wearing his hair a certain way and adding a less ethnic name than Ciotti. He took the name Thorell from a business associate of his brother.

By the early 1980s, his career was going well. Doing benefit work for St. Francis Hospital, he wrote a song called "One Heart." In 1984, he was booked to sing it before an audience of 3,000 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, including Nancy Reagan. Before the concert, Thorell stood in his suite, wearing a white tuxedo and looking down at Manhattan's dazzling lights. At this moment of apparent professional triumph, he felt empty. "I said, `There's got to be something more,' " he recalled.

Almost two decades after his grandmother's dying reminder, Thorell felt a summons from God. "There was no way, as far as I could see, to walk away from His calling," he said. "I couldn't get away from Him. I tried."

Faced with a sudden health problem that required serious surgery, Thorell became intensely focused on his effort to straighten out his life. Awaiting the surgery, he bargained with God. "I said, `Lord, you got me 100 percent. If I get out of this hospital alive, I give you every song I ever write and give you my entire life. You got my attention.' " Soon after that, he told his manager: "I'm leaving to sing for God."

In his new life, he began to sing in the ministry of the Rev. Robert McGuire at the Spirit Life Center in Plainview, an outgrowth of the Catholic charismatic renewal; started a traveling music ministry, Just for Jesus Ministries; dropped out of the Catholic Church and became a music leader at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Malverne; married Claudia Grappone, whom he had known since childhood; took a job at North Shore Assembly of God in Oyster Bay; studied at an Assembly of God institution; got ordained, and started his own church in North Hempstead. In a few months, he realized he wasn't meant to be a pastor. So he returned to working with McGuire.

Thorell joined McGuire in giving retreats, or missions, in Catholic parishes. One of them was St. Brigid's, where Gaeta saw what Thorell could do. Soon after, when Gaeta was seeking a new music director, Thorell was on his short list. Estelle Peck wrote Gaeta a long letter from her vacation in Maine, urging that he hire Thorell.

There were good reasons for Gaeta to resist. Thorell wasn't a traditional organist, for one thing, and he had once left the Catholic Church. "That didn't bother me at all," Gaeta said. "I was very, very taken with Tommy from the beginning, simply because he really brought people into prayer."

Still, Thorell didn't fit right in. "The first six months was a little rough," Thorell said. "I wanted to make St. Brigid's into a charismatic church. They weren't ready for that music."

Some parishioners also disliked his emotional, crooning style of singing. "People will still comment on that, but from what I've seen working with him, it comes from his desire to minister to people," said the parish organist, Susan Porteus, who met him through the Spirit Life Center and came to St. Brigid's with him. "He sings it with feeling. He doesn't just sing and count measures and notes. That's not ministering to people."

Thorell had to learn some of the daily duties of a music director almost from scratch, such as singing for funerals. "It took a good six months, and Susan was a very big part of it," Gaeta said. "They worked very hard together on that. She's been playing in churches for years. So she has that whole sense. But Tommy didn't have that sense at all."

Gaeta, who didn't want Thorell to be a traditional music director, has been open to the rock singer's creativity. Once, Clagnaz recalled, Thorell asked Gaeta if he could put secular songs in the Christmas song book. Gaeta answered: "Tom, you're the doctor. I'm the patient." Thorell also offered to play soft piano during the eucharistic prayer at the mass, which is usually silent. Gaeta gave it a try. "When I go someplace else now and I don't have it, I feel like I'm flat," Gaeta said. "There's something missing."

The bottom line is prayer. "He has called us into another way of praying -- the expression, the feeling, the humanity," Gaeta said. "I ultimately feel that that is what people are looking for, when people come here, when they come from other places. They want to experience something. They want to be communicated to, in the whole package: the preaching, the liturgy, the singing. Tommy's a very, very big part of that."

For the average parish, the liturgy staff consists of a volunteer choir and one paid music director, who usually doubles as organist. At St. Brigid's, the lineup includes a children's choir, an adult choir, Italian, Spanish, Haitian and Filipino choirs, a director of liturgy, a director of music, an organist and a children's choir director.

That means there are four paid, professional parish staff members focusing on the public worship of its people. Despite the sparks that sometimes fly, they mesh well. "Although we don't have things written out that we're each individually responsible for, I think each of us recognizes each other's gifts," Clagnaz said. "It's not like we're four people who are all strong in the same thing."

At the center is Peck, who has been running the liturgy for a decade, now in close coordination with Gaeta. "He gives me tremendous freedom and leeway to be able to be creative," she said. Peck brings to it a master's degree in theology, a profound love of liturgy, a cherubic smile, an artistic touch with a computer and a flair for organizing. She pulls together the planning meetings and coordinates everything. In church, she hovers gently around the periphery, making sure it all works.

Clagnaz, who studied voice at Juilliard, has a master's degree in education and a gift for teaching. That uniquely suits her to run the children's choir and the sacramental liturgies, such as first communion and confirmation. She has a powerful voice and a strong personality. Sometimes, she and Thorell differ on musical issues -- quick flashes of harmless, short-lived lightning between two highly charged people.

Thorell is a multi-talented musician who composed much of the parish's trademark music -- from the traditional "Agnus Dei" and "Kyrie Eleison" to the catchy, triumphant "He's Alive" -- and also has a genius for improvisation. Influenced by the charismatic renewal movement, which emphasizes the everyday presence of the Holy Spirit, he flourishes in situations such as the monthly Jesus Evening, a free-form healing mass that allows him to take the music where he feels the Spirit is leading.

Porteus, the only one on the team proficient on the organ, provides a steady, disciplined musical anchor and a counterpoint to Thorell's piano. "Musically, we blend, because of my training in reading and organ and his ability to just play off the top of his head," she said.

With so many players and so much going on liturgically, St. Brigid's does a prodigious amount of planning. The average parish gets by with one liturgical committee. St. Brigid's has a liturgy board that sets policy, a committee that meets monthly to plan the weekly family mass in minute detail to make it meaningful and engaging for the children as well as the parents, a group that plans the rock mass, and now, the new multicultural committee. "I just think it's important that everybody has a say in it," Peck said.

The parish provides more printed liturgical material than most, which Peck produces on computer. One unusual touch has been Gaeta's daily reflections during the Advent season. Last year, they appeared weekly in the bulletin. This year, Peck compiled them into a booklet, "What Shall I Give Him, Poor as I Am?" She creates song sheets for the masses every week. She finds them a good planning tool, but they also convey a subliminal message to parishioners.

"It's wonderful, because it really personalizes it for that community," Piil said. "People take it much more seriously, I think, when they see that people have put that much into it."

Thorell chooses the music for the adult masses. The overall tone of that music reflects his background in the charismatic renewal - uplifting, emotional, spirit-filled. That music is one of the parish's widely loved hallmarks.

But one worshiper, who drives to St. Brigid's from another parish specifically for the liturgy, said that her only complaint is that the lyrics of the music sometimes focus too much on individual relationships with God, not on the community. "It's too privatized for me," she said. "It's community worship and it's supposed to lead us outward."

As crucial as the music is, however, it is only one element in the liturgy. "You need good prayers, you need good leaders of prayer, you need good ministers," Peck said. The parish has been lucky in having pastors -- Gaeta and his predecessor, Msgr. Frederick Schaefer -- who place a strong emphasis on good liturgy, and priests who are open to the liturgy's spirit and capable of powerful preaching. But good liturgy needs more than priests. Those who distribute communion must look people in the eye as they say "the Body of Christ." The ushers must smile, offer a palpable sense of welcome and pray with the assembly before taking up the collection, to help sanctify the moment.

In addition, Peck said, liturgical leaders need to focus on events that are preoccupying the people, such as Mother's Day or Father's Day, and issues that have engaged their attention. When Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on a Saturday afternoon, for example, she rushed to the church to include prayers for Israel in the prayer of the faithful. "To me, those little things speak very clearly to people that we are concerned about the whole world," she said.

Another hallmark of the liturgy is willingness to try something different. This Advent, for example, the leaders of the Sunday evening rock mass are distributing "Give Peace a Chance" slips, inviting people to write their own name and the initials of someone with whom they are trying to make peace. The idea is to get people to make a commitment to peace-making, and the identity of those represented by the initials will remain confidential. The slips will be used as chances in a drawing for an appropriate rock mass Christmas prize, a Tower Records gift certificate.

Above all, though, the liturgy touches people on an emotional level. Frank Pesce, an attorney and a former editor of the parish newspaper, The Spirit of St. Brigid's, recalled how closely Peck, Thorell and the Rev. John White worked with him in planning and personalizing his mother's funeral in 1993, and how comfortable the parish made his family feel. His daughter, Jeannine, read one reading, and his son, Danny, read the prayer of the faithful.

"After the funeral, it was amazing how many people were coming up to us and saying how beautiful it was," Pesce said. One of them was his uncle from the Bronx, Ted Tobia, whose reaction was the kind of review any liturgist would want. "His statement was: 'Love was bouncing off the walls in there.' "