When I was young, I would wake early and head off to serve as an altar boy for the weekday, sunrise mass. The same rag-tag band of true believers filed into the pews at 6:30 every morning. Something about being tired, a whiff of candles, incantations, and carefully articulated rituals always mesmerized me. I’ve yet to encounter a more consistently sacred sight in my life than dawn breaking through the stained-glass windows at Christ the King Church.