Good Friday food for thought

When I got home last night, I parked the car in one of the few available spaces still left in the street. For the first three days of this week, getting in at eight, there were none left and I had to leave it across the main road in Greenfield Avenue. The space was almost too small, but I parked the car with less than a hand span of space front and rear. Clare was watching from the bedroom window and remarked on the feat. I'm not sure how I did it without touching or shunting the cars hemming me in. I decided to leave it there in case I had early morning hand eye co-ordination trouble trying to remove it for the drive over to St German's, and went by bus instead, taking advantage of more frequent services along Cowbridge Road, to drop me in town by half past nine, in good time to walk the second leg to church by ten to ten. I met St John's City Parish Church organist Philip Thomas on the bus, looking well and still playing there regularly. Our paths cross rarely these days.

I decided that I would offer a little improvised reflection at each of the Stations of the Cross today, now that I've got back into the pattern of conducting them and feel more relaxed about it. It's something that I recall other priests doing back in my youth, but not something I've ever done in a traditional framework. I wondered if I'd either dry up, or be too garrulous, but once I'd made a start, it came easily. I enjoyed this little experiment and a few of the sixteen people present expressed their appreciation and found it relevant to their experience. What more could I ask for?

We had coffee and hot cross buns in the church hall afterwards. Then I sat in the Lady Chapel, said the Office of Readings and Midday Prayer and enjoyed an hour of quiet (including a meditative snooze) before it was time for the afternoon Liturgy of the Passion, again with a full serving team. We had no organist to accompany the hymns, and I led unaccompanied singing. It sounds so effective in this church and enhances this solemn occasion. The dialogue Passion reading edited by James, the member of the congregation who read the narrator part, was a refreshing success, worth his effort. I hope it will get used again in future. He'd edited out the attributive statements i.e. all the 'He said..' mentions in the text. This causes it to flow more freely with greater dramatic intensity. With a natural tendency to visualise what I hear spoken, the Passion reading felt a little like watching a soft focus film with voice-over. It's extraordinary how the mind processes what it receives.

All went well until we moved to the High Altar for Communion. I discovered the reserved sacrament was not in the aumbry, looked puzzled and stepped back. When I was asked what was the matter, I said spontaneously "He is not here.", and thought what a strange thing that was to say on Good Friday. Then I went and checked in the Lady Altar aumbry, and it too was empty. At the end of last night's vigil, the Sacrament had been put in the sacristy safe, but nobody was aware of this, least of all me. Soon we were back on track, eighten of us communicated and we concluded after the final prayers singing 'When I survey the wondrous cross'. No Good Friday would be complete without it.

I walked back to the city centre and caught a 61 bus home, suitably tired and hungry, glad to have no further commitments, just time to relax and reflect. On Channel Five in the evening was a two hour long documentary called 'The Last Days of Jesus', presenting recent historical research into the political and social background of the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus, and proposing interesting and quite plausible theories about the timing of key events leading up to the Lord's Passion, being spread out over a six month period rather than three days, during which there was a major power shift in Rome which had ramifications for the political status quo in Palestine, a way of stating that Jesus was a victim of rapidly changing events in terms of the balance of power, which deprived him of popular support and drove him into the hands of his religious enemies.

Scholars interviewed expressed the conviction that nobody knows who the authors of the four Gospels were, and that they were all written late in the first century, and in a way that was self censoring in relation to the powers that be, and so don't give us a full account of the  historical record, which is in any case pretty incomplete. The question of whether John's Gospel is an eye-witness record, or at least had its origins in one man's personal eye-witness accounts, was not considered. And there, to my mind stands the un-addressed question when it comes to building a picture of available evidence about what occurred, and how Jesus understood his mission and the part played in it by the country's overlords. It may be time for me to bring myself a bit more up to date on contemporary New Testament study.

    

Lent exercise

Wednesday morning I celebrated the Eucharist at St Germans with ten church members, no children this week as it's half term. Then I spent some time chatting with people in the day centre, before heading home to Newport to visit Martin. His 93 year old mother Jane was in hospital after a fall a week or so before Christmas and wasn't expected to survive, but she did, and last week was released so that she could be cared for at home, with appropriate support. A much happier arrangement for her, the family and the hospital, as she's not occupying a bed which could be put to better use for someone else who needed care they couldn't expect to have arranged for them at home.

Later, after I returned for lunch, I went into town and met Ashley in John Lewis' top floor restaurant for a sit-down with a cup of tea and a business planning chat, away from the office, and the inevitable work tasks we both get distracted by. It made a change for us.

We were both back in the office this morning for the monthly Radio Users Group meeting. I drove and parked in the basement, intending to spend the day in the office and then drive over to St German's for Stations of the Cross in the evening. Ian had asked for Microsoft Office to be installed on his machine, and I'd forgotten to bring in the disks with me, so I went home on the bus to collect them, and had lunch while I was there, before returning. 

I'm surprised every time by how long the installation process takes on newer machines, and wonder if having to install on a 64 bit machine a program designed 15 years ago to run on a 32 bit machine makes a difference. It seems to me that the CD drive doesn't run at such high speeds, as if it needs to take extra time to unpack and scan every item of really old software before installing. A two CD installation packet took the best part of an hour, but once installed it runs very quickly. 

There were nine of us for Stations of the Cross at St German's. Making the customary genuflection at each station was more taxing than I'd anticipated, as my dodgy left knee reminded me that the movement is not something I do very often. For years in church ritual I've favoured the deep Sarum bow over genuflection, to avoid clumsy movement and toppling over, and to protect the dodgy knee. I should have known better, giving unaccustomed exercise to underused and stiff muscles. The lousy weather this winter has meant that I've had less than enough regular exercise. I felt quite physically tired by the end, although undertaking this traditional form of Lenten devotion was refreshing to the soul.

  

Via Crucis in Los Boliches

This morning, I drove into Los Boliches for the first of my Lent Course sessions to the sound of the Fauré Requiem on RNE Classico. The keen east wind was whipping the bright blue sea into a host of foam topped waves breaking on the shore, a beautiful sight. It seemed just right as a backdrop to the music. There were only half a dozen of us present, perhaps more next week, as in the afternoon people would be turning out for the annual Womens' World Day of Prayer, and few were willing to come twice in a day.

The afternoon service, devised by Christians in Egypt was attended by over forty people, and beautifully presented. Lay Reader Caroline preached an excellent and insightful sermon for the occasion, and yet again, there was tea and cake to follow.

I stayed on after the service to take part in the parish Stations of the Cross, walking through the streets of the barrio, to and from the church, with team of local cofridia members carrying the statue of Jesús cautivo -  Jesus bound - to which their confraternity is dedicated.

I believe this image depicts Jesus standing before Pilate for judgement - the subject of the first Station of the Via Crucis. It truly was an all-age-service, both from the perspective of the crowd of a couple of hundred followers, and those leading the procession.

There were junior and middle school children as servers and thurifers - girls and boys, teenagers carring the fourteen placards bearing images of the Stations, the singing of popular hymns while we walked, led by the older women with confident voices. (Did they sing flamenco as well, I wondered.).

Eighteen men, mostly young, in black suits carryied the trona on which Jesús cautivo stood, laity men and women taking turns to introduce a Station and lead prayers. Only very occasionally did the priest do anything more than preside. In fact the whole thing was organised in a manner that meant it could be carried out if there was no priest. That's a real tribute to the nature of community in Catholic Spain today. It's all possible because, however secular some aspects of Spanish life are today, this kind of social solidarity, deeply rooted in Christian faith, is still valued. It was a very moving expression of parochial solidarity and co-operation. I took lots of photos and could still join in prayers familiar to me in English. 

Although I was tired, cold and hungry at the end of a long day, I stayed right to the end, absorbed by an experience that is so much part of the normality of life here, not at all a cultural feature for tourists, many of whom were watching from bar or restaurant as we passed them by. My new Sony HX50 on Auto settings did well to capture a few pictures I'm quite pleased with. With more experience of working with the camera's various layers of settings, I should be able to improve the quality of images, and maybe reduce motion blur. Hopefully there will be more opportunities of this kind in weeks to come. You can see the rest of my efforts here