Normally if you want to get a seat in the Cathedral for Midnight Mass you have to get there by 10.30. Today I had been asked to do the reading at Matins before the Mass. Of course I had read this beautiful passage from Isaiah several times but when I stood up before this huge church to read it, I was so nervous I had not a clue what I was reading. A mere automaton but this is all one needs, an instrument for poetry of a majestic kind. What sort of man living in a tent in a primitive society could produce such writing? Who was he and how inspired?