How good to awaken to blue sky and sunshine another day, a perfect summer morning. After breakfast I drove to St German's to celebrate the ten o'clock Mass with half a dozen regulars. I tried an alternative route around the city centre, to avoid traffic congestion generated by the Tudor Street traffic lights. It's only five minutes longer, better than taking nearly half an hour for a fifteen minute trip.
Today marks the Church of England celebrates St Jean Vianney Curé d'Ars, but not so in the Church in Wales calendar. I wonder why? I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in the committee when the revision of the calendar of saints was discussed, to know the reason for omitting this rather unusual 19th century holy man whose preaching and spiritual guidance touched thousands who visited him in Ars, a village at the west end of the French Jura during his ministry there. I visited Ars when we lived in Geneva 140km away. It's a special place for clerics as St Jean Vianney is patron saint of parish priests.
Ars was the only parish he ever served, perhaps he was sent to that rural backwater because his bishop didn't know what to do with him. He was a doubtful candidate for ordination as he was barely literate and needed coaching to take services in Latin. Thus, he had little 'book knowledge', but he did have an understanding of the meaning of the Gospel and the life of the Spirit to apply to the pastoral care of his flock that enabled him to reach the hearts of many.
Because this was so unusual his life was simply understood as filled with extraordinary supernatural gifts. By their fruit they are recognised, but I think there's something more to take note of here. A barely literate son of peasant stock, may have no access literary culture, but his intellectual life is steeped in oral culture and transmission of scripture, tradition and reason in a way that has been discounted by mainstream religious culture. This was common in ancient times, and still happens in some parts of the world today, where spontaneous evangelisation has spread the Gospel and planted the church by oral transmission. The hunger for literacy and introduction of the text of scripture occurred as a result of the message already being heard and understood. I wonder if and how this is working in our strongly audio visual contemporary culture?
On return from church I cooked lunch, and after a siesta walked for an hour and a half in the park. While writing, I listened to Evensong on BBC Sounds catch-up. The setting of the responses by Rose used by the choir of Holy Trinity Sloan Square was one I learned in Geneva, and one I love. It was uplifting to hear it, and some modern Latin canticles and unusual Psalm chants. Anglican church music has a long a rich tradition and is very much alive creatively speaking, in our time.
Ruth emailed next week's Morning Prayer texts as she routinely does in good time. My day next week is one when the Church in Wales celebrates the life of Ann Griffiths, the eighteenth century North Walian whose religious poetry and hymnody in the Welsh language is new regarded as among the finest in any European. She was a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist, a renewal movement with a devotional life of its own that distinguished it from English, Scottish and Irish expressions of reformed Presbyterianism. The Psalm set for next Thursday is too long, repetitive and dull, so I am going to use some of Ann's hymn verses instead, translated into English. They are steeped in the imaginative use of biblical imagery from both Hebrew and Christian scripture, so why not?
After supper Clare and I watched another on-line National Eisteddfod programme on S4C. This covered the festive ceremonial chairing and crowning of this year's bard Dyfan Lewis whose cycle of poems was a celebration of the city of Cardiff. This annual event has never taken place outside of the Eisteddfod Maes (field). Last year's Eisteddfod was cancelled due to coronvirus, but there were concert performances on-line. There's been a programme of competitions on-line this year.
Tonight's bardic ceremony with a reduced socially distanced gorsedd wearing masks matching the colour of the robe, processed from Central Square into the new BBC Wales building where the whole ceremony was performed live to camera, except for a brief video of Dyfan Lewis secretly recorded beforehand, speaking about his work.
It worked amazingly well as a television event, authentic in spirit and in detail, apart from the absence of a group of cute children dancing. I liked what the Archdruid said in his opening remarks "Tonight thanks to television, the whole of Wales is the Eisteddfod Maes." I felt utterly proud to be Welsh, even if my grasp of the language is poor.
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