In A Reflective Mood...

I was fortunate enough to attend Mass in the Extraordinary Form during my stay in Eastbourne. The greater freedom to pray quietly without having to join in with responses fitted my mood, and I was able to contemplate the Mysteries depicted on the panels behind the altar and on the stained glass.

It provided me with a salutary reminder that the Catholic Church acknowledges and cares for our human nature so much: the senses are fully engaged - sights, sounds, smells, bodily gestures...

The tendency to simplify things, to whitewash over frescoes, to reduce things to their most basic forms might seem to be a return to a more pure form of worship (and I'm sure that was the motivation behind the "reordering" of many church buildings) but what it really does is emphasise the spiritual at the expense of the physical.

We are soul and body. We are created as a unity of spirit and matter, not a spirit trapped inside a physical shell from which it needs to escape in order to reach God. Jesus became Man so that he could communicate fully with us. That is the reason we adorn our churches with statues, paintings, beautiful vestments, ornate vessels; that is why we have music, incense, ritual...

*ahem*

Sorry about that. Just one of those moods. I'll be back to normal tomorrow. Meanwhile there are a couple of photos from Our Lady of Ransom over on my Flickr page.

Testing Times...

It seems that England have come up with the goodies this time around. They've beaten India by an innings and 242 runs in the Third Test. Or something like that... Mind you, I heard that this was likely back on Thursday, when someone or other made a comment to the effect that he hoped anyone with tickets for Sunday's play had alternative arrangements planned, just in case.

I never did get a satisfactory answer to my question: what happens if you buy tickets for the fifth day's play, and it's all over?

Photos From Faith...

I've finally managed to get a few of my photos from this year's Faith Summer Session loaded up onto Flickr. I'm not quite sure why, but I haven't managed to take as many as usual, and I got very few of the unposed "reportage" shots. I shall have to bear that in mind for future reference.

Gabriella and Helen from St. Alban's were very happy to be photographed with Professor Tom Pink (he gave an excellent talk on the Thursday morning) but I didn't catch the name of the chap on the left of the photo...

UPDATE: Thanks to Fr. Chris Findlay-Wilson, I think we can safely identify the aforementioned chap as Nathan Too... he seems to love being in photos as much as I loathe being in them, so that's all right then!

I wasn't alert enough this year to try and organise a bloggers' photo, but I did manage to snap Joanna Bogle and His Hermeneuticalness in a quiet moment...

I just couldn't resist getting a photo of this chap's t-shirt...

I did manage to get a few photos during the various Masses...

...and, of course, during the talks the audience is fair game...

There are a few more photos over on my Flickr page, so do go on over to have a look.

Fr. Briggs' Silver Jubilee

The start of August has been rather busy for me. In addition to the Faith Summer Break (more about that to follow), I also was privileged to attend the 25th. anniversary of Ordination of Fr. Charles Briggs, parish priest of St. Mary's, Chislehurst.

Fr. Briggs chose to celebrate a votive Mass of the Holy Ghost, and borrowed the High Mass set of vestments from Blackfen. It's not often that these exquisite vestments get an outing, so it was quite a treat to see them... and I have to say that they did look rather good in the setting of St. Mary's, which is a beautiful church...

I'm afraid that I threatened Chislehurst's MC with a painful and lingering death should any of the vestments go missing, and he appears to have taken me seriously, because they all came back safely. We even appear to have acquired an extra corporal...

I was delighted to get the chance to meet up with Fr. Ray Blake again. He kindly agreed to pose for the blog along with Fr. Nicholas Schofield and Fr. Marcus Holden...

It was also a real treat to meet Fr. Michael Brown, of Forest Murmurs fame. Fr. Charles seems to get mentioned regularly on Fr. Brown's blog, so it was nice to put a face to the name at long last.

The reception afterwards was held at Chislehurst Golf Club - the parish priest of Chislehurst is always a member of the Golf Club because it was formerly the home of the Emperor Louis Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie - the Emperor was buried in St. Mary's before the Empress carted him off to Farnborough Abbey in a fit of pique. It's just such a shame that Fr. Briggs doesn't play golf!

Archbishop Emeritus of Southwark, Kevin McDonald, preached the sermon at the Mass. It was good to see that he looked so much better after all the health problems he had...

There are one or two photos on the Southwark Diocese website - unfortunately you have to scroll down to find them, because the different entries don't have separate links. More of the photos can be seen on my Flickr page.

The Human Face Of Blogging...

One of the most common criticisms of blogging I have encountered over the five years I've been running my own blog is that it discourages "real" interaction. After all, as the argument goes, you bloggers, you're all just stuck in your own rooms, looking at a screen... Get a life!

Well, this blogger would like to disagree. I've just been having tea and chocolate cake with Annie, who runs the Arundel & Brighton LMS blog. We would never have had the opportunity to chat if it wasn't for our initial contact via the blogs, despite the fact that she lives just a few streets away from my mother's house. After a morning discussing liturgy, education, counselling, Charles Dickens (don't ask) and a few other bits and pieces, I think we've pretty much succeeded in putting the world to rights... Of course, our brilliant plans for world domination might come unstuck because we can't implement them until after we have finished just one more pot of tea...

Still Alive...

I've been rather busy over the past few days. First priority was to get a short article written for the Catholic Herald. No idea if it actually passed muster, but at least it was in on time. With a busy weekend schedule, I haven't actually had time to sort out all my photos from Fr. Charles Briggs' Silver Jubilee Mass, the photos from the Faith Summer Session, the photos from the Missa Cantata for the Feast of the Transfiguration and from Vespers, and photos from yesterday's Mass at Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane (I happened to be in central London - not looting, I hasten to add!)

Today I have travelled down to Eastbourne, delaying my sorting of photos still further...

I'm not fleeing the looters, by the way, I'm just dog-sitting for my parents who are off visiting my sister. I'm not particularly happy about it (I'd much rather be home looking after my cats) but there is a silver lining to this cloud, namely the discovery that 10am Mass at Our Lady of Ransom will be in the Extraordinary Form for the duration of my stay...

I shall take some photos of Eastbourne if the weather stays nice, and add them to all the ones I have to sort out on my return...