Easter Monday

One of my favourite places on earth is the chapel of S. Joseph in the shrine Church at Walsingham. It's slightly cramped, the light there never lets you take a good photo, and I believe the shrine hoover is stored behind a curtain at the back of the Chapel. The reason I like it so much, I think, is because on first entering it I experienced an extraordinary sense of deja vu. A few years before, when I was perhaps a month or two old in the faith and still not a confirmed or commincant in the Church of England, I spend three days at the monasteries of Wadi Natrun, the ancient Scetis of Egypt. Staying at the Paramos monastery, I woke up with the bell at 3.40am and practically crawled from the guest house, through the narrow gate into the old monastery complex to the old church. The monks had started Matins and were chanting away in Coptic (monks who can't cope with the Coptic language and visitors with the same weakness are encouraged to attend celebrations in a church opposite the guesthouse). I hung around at the back of the church without a clue what was going on, unable to see much action behind the pillars and screens that separated the monastics from the non-monastics from the laity from the unbaptised from the Anglicans. In a mood to explore, I followed a short passageway into a space that as far as I can remember was pretty much the same size at the S. Joseph chapel in Walsingham, except instead of an altar there was a large icon and reliquary of S. George, and behind the curtain was an altar rather than a hoover. I must have stood there rooted to the spot for over an hour, because by the time I came out the monks were lighting incense for the morning offering and Liturgy and the sun was coming up slowly. I stood looking at the icon pouring out all the prayers of a lifetime of no one to tell them to. I didn't cry, or feel anything dramatic, but my heart was open in prayer and I felt wholly within God's presence. It wasn't until afterwards that I came to realise what had happened, that in some way I had heard God's voice confirming me in my Christian vocation and that where I was and where I was going, He had led me there. I can't imagine what the disciples on the road to Emmaus felt like when they realised what had happened, but it must have been quite similar. Maybe in the midst of their relief and joy at seeing Jesus they felt a sense of frustration, that they'd wasted those moments talking to Him because they didn't know who he was. That intimate presence couldn't just be conjured up again at will, they couldn't just call him back and he'd appear like some sort of friendly ghost, but nonetheless, it was a gift of God, a sign, an encouragement that they would carry with them forever. Most of the collects in Anglican books today include a reference to being fed or given some remedy by God, which made me think back to those moments in the monastery chapel and in Walsingham. There's no switch I can flick to access that sense of peace and tranquility, that sense of the intimate, personal presence of Christ. Still, I can always immerse myself totally in the Liturgical Life of the Church, so full of joy and renewal this Paschaltide, so that I, like the disciples, might know Him daily in the breaking of the Bread.

Glorious Mysteries

Today in the Chapel I was so deeply annoyed and disturbed by people chatting loudly just outside while I was trying to pray in silence. Some woman, who I think was an organist came to the Sacristan standing just outside the door to the Chapel, and asked for the Chaplain:

-"No he's gone to the Ordinariate, he's become a Roman Catholic"
-"Oh really?! I didn't know, and I take the Church Times! I'm Church of Scotland, I'm an elder there, I'm from Glasgow, but I was baptised in the Church of England.....and so I take the Church Times, but I hadn't heard......and I regularly take the Church Times"

And so on and so forth. The very kindest thing I felt like doing was getting up and asking her if, in the Church of Scotland, they ever did actually shut up. I put my thumbs in my ears and tried to get back to concentrating on the Mystery of the Resurrection. Of course, the genius Victorian architects ensured that any words spoken in that place should reverberate and be amplified, and I could still hear her going on and on, just outside the chapel door, totally oblivious to the fact that people might go there expecting silence.

Somewhere in the middle of the Mystery of the Ascension, another woman came to the passageway before the Chapel door and again asked for the Chaplain. I could see half of her through the open door of the Chapel, and she was wearing a black coat and a fur hat, and spoke in a very clipped but slightly breathy Lumleyesque manner. By now I was starting to wonder if this might all be divinely ordered to test me:

-"Hello, I'm looking for the Chaplain"
-"He's not here, he's gone to join the Ordinariate....we should have a priest coming in a bit to say the Mass...."
-"Oh, I can't believe he's gone.....the Chaplain, yes....what's his name, Tom?"
-"Tim, yes Fr Tim"
-"Tom? Tim?......Oh, I hadn't heard about that"
-"Well, we should be getting a chaplain......."

And so again they both went on, right outside the Chapel door, almost shouting at each other. I couldn't believe it! Anyone who opens any space to the public should know that to try to enforce strict silence is to fight an uphill battle. Apart from anything, anyone shouting in the street can be heard inside. But for goodness' sake! Presumably these people have actually been inside a Church before, and know that people often go there expecting silence, and to rob them of even a bit of peace and quiet is incredibly cruel.

So during the Mystery of the Descent of the Holy Ghost, my mind slipped to wondering - If I can't deal with people chatting, what can I deal with? If I can't focus my heart and my mind on God and try to open up to him in prayer just because of someone chatting, how on earth will I be able to deal with greater intrusions? If I can't hear God over that Glaswegian woman, how will I hear Him over the noise of the world? If one thing in someone else that I don't like can stop me from seeing God in them, how will I ever love in a truly Christian way?

Sometimes, according to where we are, who we are, and who we are with, prayer is not about trying to block things out, but about letting them in. Creating a barrier around my sense of hearing in order to block that woman's voice out was ultimately futile, and what was left inside my head? Just stumbling words of the Ave Maria as I willed myself to focus, while my mind tried to focus in more and more on her ever fainter voice.

Sometimes, we just have to let it in. We have to let these disturbances become mingled with, or even part of, our prayer. How can we be open to God if we're trynig to block someone or something else out? Prayer is not about sweeping out of our bodies to some spiritual height, it's about striving to be who we are, where we are, with God. Perfectly being where we are, and offering all to Him. Even if this means being surrounded by noise.

I think the swine herders and villagers in today's Gospel reading at Mass were afraid of this. I don't know what lectionary it came from, but today's reading was of Christ driving demons out of two possessed people into a herd of pigs. After the pigs threw themselves into the lake, the swine herders went back to the village and the villagers wanted Jesus to go. Why did the villagers want Him to leave? He had disturbed the order of their lives. Before He came, the men possessed by Demons were safely in their tombs - excluded from society by the fear they provoked. When Jesus restored them to sanity, the Demons entered the pigs and so the villagers lost their herd. Presumably they didn't think it was a worthy exchange - two sane men for a herd of pigs. They were attached to their herd and they weren't interested in the demon-possessed men and their deliverance by Christ. The whole town went to plead with Jesus to leave, because they were worried what else he might take from them, and what else he might give them. How often are we like the villagers? You never know what you will let in when you open up, and you never know who you might be shutting out when you lock yourself in.

The Sorrowful Mysteries

For a long time I was put off the Rosary. I used to find it too long to say a full five-decades, and sometimes I would close my eyes and actually fall asleep during the first one. I was also put off by the sugary pamphlet literature that has grown up around this devotion, all of the different "methods" or ways of praying the Rosary which would help the devoted Christian to say a Rosary without distraction or wandering thoughts, and to derive enormous benefits from its recitation. One phrase sticks in my mind, I think from the book Secret of the Rosary, where we are directed to "make each Ave maria that falls from our lips a little Rose, which we offer at Our Lady's feet, and to weave them into a crown of 53 little flowers with which to crown Her Queen of Our Hearts "....or something similar, I'm paraphrasing, but the language always struck me as camp and unnecessary.

The claims about what could be achieved by the recitation of the Rosary also seemed desperately overstated. After reading some of these pious publications you could believe that a Rosary can do anything, and I did wonder if perhaps these Rosary novena groups were dropping the odd Pater Noster if their devotional efforts hadn't yet delivered world peace.

One of the most detrimental aspects of counter reformation Christianity, in some ways still perpetuated by nominally "Traditional" groups, has been to push personal spirituality into the centre of the Church's public life and to do so at the expense of authentic Liturgy, displacing the traditional understanding of Liturgy as corporate worship, and replacing it with a highly personal and individual experience of the Sacred Liturgy. The typical Traditionalist menu of Rosary, Votive Low Mass, Stations of the Cross, and Devotions to the Sacred Heart is built around the promotion of certain devotions, visions, prayers and indulgences by Popes of the last few hundred years and the promotion of private devotion over public worship. Even the Low Mass, the one bit of Liturgy on the menu, has been turned into a devotion. The faithful got used to saying the Rosary throughout the whole of Mass, or working through a series of meditations while the Priest stood at the altar, stopping only to adore the Host at the elevation. The Liturgical Movement replaced the Rosary beads with Layman's Missals, providing the laity with a vernacular translation of the Mass, in many cases, and instructing them on what was happening, but even this did not satisfy the need of the individual layperson to be doing something during the Liturgy, and we all know where that has taken us....

My understanding is that private prayer and public worship are two sides of the same coin, and we really can't have one without the other. We receive this understanding from scripture: although the Disciples are often to be found gathered together in prayer at key moments in the Gospel, and although prayer in the temple and the gatherings of the synagogue are by no means despised by Christ, we are also told:

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:6

Public worship and private prayer - they should balance each other out. Of course we can have an interior, private response to public worship, and I see no harm in groups of people gathering to practice certain devotions, especially the Rosary, but we have to be able to distinguish between them. Both East and West have devotions which are in some way supplementary to or modeled on Liturgy. Both have Hours of Our Lady to be said in addition to the original hours, the Eastern Church has paraliturgical akathists. But there is no question of replacing the Liturgy with them.

This is all a massive digression from what I originally wanted to say. So I'm back into the Rosary. I've decided that it's all about doing as much as you can, as much as you want to, and realising there can be too much of a good thing - if I find myself with half an hour to spare in the evening and I've already prayed the mysteries assigned to that day, much better to reach for my Office Book instead. Developing a private prayer life is all about building on manageable things, maintaining variety, and not getting hysterical over the Rosary.

Today I prayed the Sorrowful mysteries and effectively came up with my own little "method" without really wanting to. My biggest problem in praying the Rosary is wandering thoughts and not knowing how to meditate on a mystery beyond maintaining a static mental image of that mystery in my mind. To people who have this same problem I'd say: don't worry about it, just chuck your pamphlets away and go and find out how to pray the Rosary in a way that works for you....you're allowed to, it's private prayer! I found myself trying to unravel each of the sorrowful mysteries by drawing on moments from my own little via crucis in life, recalling moments of humiliation, suffering, sadness or anxiety that I could relate to each mystery, offering that experience to Christ and uniting it to the Blessed Passion. So for example, for the Crowning with Thorns I recalled a moment in which I felt utterly humiliated after an argument in public, during the Agony in the Garden I recalled a moment of absolute fear, anxiety and terror about what comes next. Not that we can ever truly understand or imagine the thoughts and emotions of Christ during those moments, but we can gain a small insight into the power of the Passion, and remind ourselves that It is real. By the last mystery I had rehearsed so much that I was left quite deeply moved, having perceived, in the boundless depth of these Sorrowful Mysteries the shallowness of so much in my own life. But this is where the Glory of the next set of Mysteries comes into play: we who believe in Christ know that all things are restored in Him. Although we make of ourselves an unworthy offering, in the prayers of the Rosary said under the breath, or at the great Amen sung aloud at the Liturgy, God takes what we offer and makes it worthy. The great joy of being a Christian is that, at the moment when it hits us just how unworthy and undeserving we are of mere association with Him, He reaches out a hand of friendship and invites us into His very Heart. In the Eucharist we offer our unworthy present, and receive the Perfect Gift: Him in us, and we in Him. This is what it means to be alive in Christ, and every glimpse of this brings the Christian soul greater joy, to sustain us on this earthly pilgrimage.

Go to Mass, pray the Office, and if you still have the time and inclination to do so, pray the Rosary!

End of Our Lady's month of May

Today many Catholic Anglicans will be risking their linen suits on the National Pilgrimage to Walsingham. I really wish that I could go at least once in life, if only for the pilgrimage Mass on the site of the old Abbey. One year.

Well, I thought I would share with readers how I'm marking the last day of Mary's month of May. The picture above is of my home altar. This is not an altar, as people sometimes imagine from the name, where Mass can be said. Rather a "home altar" is a wonderful Catholic tradition which creates a focus of prayer and reflection within the home; a place where one can express personal and religious creativity. It is an altar in the sense that the experience of the Sacred goes in both directions. On the one hand it is a "dwelling place" of Holiness, where God's glory is told in images of His Saints and in the Crucifix. On the other hand, it is the place where "sacrifices" of prayer are made, represented by material offerings of flowers, oil lamps, candles and incense.

My home altar started life as a St. Joseph's altar to celebrate my name day, but it has survived through year and has been reconfigured monthly. The altar is three-tiered to represent the Holy Trinity and the Holy Family. The principal image of the month is displayed on the top tier, this month is it Our Lady of Candelaria. In front of Her on the tier below are three small oil lamps, two of which burn for specific intentions, the central one is kept lit whenever I am at home. Beside the lamps are two metallic icons from the Holy Land reflecting the principal patronage of Our Lady and S. George, and which remind me to pray for peace in the Middle East. The tier below features images of my other patrons, S. Joseph, S. Gerard, S. Magnus, each one reminding me to pray for specific intentions, for my parish and for pregnant women or new mothers. The right hand corner of this tier is dedicated to prayer for the dead, and besides a picture of a deceased relative, normally features a book of prayers for the Suffering Souls. The left hand side of this tier reminds me of spiritual discipline. It is where I keep my rosary (from the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham) and recently features an image of whichever Saint I am remembering who isn't the principle Saint of the month. In this case I'm remembering to thank Venerable Jose Gregorio Hernandez (a Venezuelan doctor who died in 1919 and was beatified in 1949), for prayers for recovery from a recent illness.

Anyway, I hope my little home altar encourages other people to take up the tradition. For some tips and more information check out this article on the Domestic Church, which gives some good background and ideas for bringing holiness into the home.

Civil Unions

I was following a train of thought this morning on public transport, and decided to note down my feelings on the back of a shop receipt for bagels and plant food, when I suddenly realised I'd inadvertently composed a Haiku. Here it is:

Civil Unions,
For Heterosexuals;
Why would you bother?

The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

On the 21st November, Western Catholics keep the feast of the Presentation of Mary, the event of Mary’s presentation by her parents Anne and Joachim at the temple in Jerusalem, where she would be consecrated to God as an act of thanksgiving for her birth.

The event is not recorded in the New Testament, but rather in the Protoevangelium of James; an apocryphal text that fills in the detail of Mary’s birth, early life and the birth of the Saviour. Since the origins of this feast lie outside of canonical scripture, its observance is regarded as a pious tradition. After spreading from the East and establishing itself at the Papal chapel in 1372, the feast was suppressed by Pius V, reintroduced by Sixtus V, elevated to a Greater Double under Clement VIII and made a Memorial by Paul VI. The association of Mary’s entry into a community of consecrated virgins at the Temple has also marked this feast as Pro Orantibus day, a day of prayer for cloistered religious, who live a life totally dedicated to God in prayer, silence and concealment.

Despite the apocryphal origin of this feast, the presentation of Mary is not at variance with our encounter with her in scriptural events: the Annunciation, the Nativity… Mary at Cana….Mary at the Cross. Artistic representations of the Presentation in Eastern Iconography or the lavish illustrations found in Medieval breviaries show Mary as a tiny figure, dwarfed by her parents and by the high priest waiting to receive her at the Temple steps. She is Mary alone, a small child of perhaps three years, probably frightened but ultimately trusting, in the way that children naturally are, as she climbs the temple stairs. This image of Mary echoes that of the Annunciation, when Our Blessed Lady, no doubt threatened by uncertainty and perturbed by the appearance of an angel, resigned herself totally to the will of God; accepting with humility and grace an uncertain future with simple faith. In the presentation, the child Mary makes a wordless fiat in true discipleship of her Son, who said : except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Mary’s Presentation of herself to God’s service so early in life is like our prayer of Morning Offering, when we pledge to offer to God all the prayers and deeds, joys and sorrows of the day to come, although we don't yet know what they will be.

This feast is a day on which to be consecrated anew, to be edified by the example of Our Lady, and to pray fervently to God, in union with his Blessed Mother and all our brothers and sisters in religious communities, who pray with us, for us, in the unity of one spiritual body.

Collect: O God, Who didst will that this day the ever blessed Virgin Mary, dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost, should be presented in the temple: grant, we beseech Thee, that through her intercession, we may be worthy to be presented in the temple of Thy glory. Through our Lord.
-1962 Daily Missal