A dark overcast cold and rainy day. I thought that I was very slow getting to sleep last night, but my fitbit showed that I had slept about the same length of time as other nights this week. I had a phone call from Ann while I was listening to the news in bed, saying that Marlene her mother's condition had worsened. The nurse who visited early in the morning when asked thought it was time to ask for the last rites. I was there with them an hour later laying hands and anointing her. She's weak and on the edge of consciousness unable to respond but aware of the three of us being with her and praying. The last person I anointed was Linda,home from hospital but fighting an antibiotic resistant bug. That was back in 2022 while I was on locum in Estepona. It's a rare privilege to offer this kind of ministry in a regular pastoral context, few think of calling a priest in a life crisis nowadays. I'm grateful to have had this privilege very occasionally in my life as a pastor.
I went to the Cathedral for the Preaching of the Cross at midday, the Dean Jason giving me new insights into the phrase from Matthew's Gospel 'his blood be upon us and on our children' which has regrettably been wrongly interpreted as blaming Jews for the Messiah's death prompting anti-semitic behaviour. That's because we speak about someone with blood on their hands as being blamed for causing a death. Hebrew religious thinking regards blood as sacred, the bearer of life, not of blame and curse. Before the trial of Jesus, the chief priest expresses the view that it's better for one man to die to save the nation from being seen as a threat to the Romans and provoking its own destruction. Such an expedient kind of bloodshed would be the blessing they wished for. It's self-deceptive, and their very fears are realised some forty years after the death of Jesus when the Temple is destroyed and God's people dispersed across the Empire.
Dean Jason's third address wasn't an address, but a marvellously conceived imagining of the experience of the Roman Centurion at the foot of the cross, brilliantly acted. I wonder if he wrote it himself or found a suitable script to adapt. After a short break, the Liturgy of the Passion followed, assisted by a thirty strong choir, twenty of whom were girl choristers Psalm 22 and the appropriate anthems were beautifully sung, but the outstanding element was a sung rendering of St John's Passion, not in the Gregorian chant version, but a different setting for narrator, solo voices and chorus with the Christus role sung by a trio, two female and one male voices, with ethereal discordant harmonies used with spine tingling effect. It was composed by a contemporary writer David Price, organist and master of choristers at Portsmouth Cathedral. I came away uplifted and invigorated by preaching and the music. Unusual for a Good Friday, I must admit.
Having skipped lunch, we ate at tea time. I cooked hake with brown rice and veg. Then I went to Tesco's to buy some hot cross buns and we each ate one later. I watched last week's episode of Helsinki Crimes and then live streamed this week's, as well, before returning to the Semana Santa live stream of the Malaga processions. It was good to glimpse the Malagueta barrio trona of the descendimiento returning to its base next to the Plaza de Toros, and I went to bed late as a result.
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