SUNDAY – REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY
Father Robert does a lovely Requiem Mass sung in Latin facing the altar. The most beautiful and spiritual Mass I have attended in Holy Rood.
A red-letter weekend as four of the children are here in Lincolnshire.
MONDAY – Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
The Scotland Bill comes back for the last time and I once more speak in favour of full fiscal autonomy, to the extent that the Secretary of State describes me as a Scot Nat member.
The Lateran Basilica predates all these modern disputes by a long time. It was built by the Emperor Constantine in 324 on the Lateran Hill in Rome and its feast has been celebrated since the twelfth century.
Entrance antiphon: “I saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.”
I love today’s reading from Ezekiel 47 – it is on a watery theme:
“The angel brought me to the entrance of the Temple, where a stream came out from under the Temple threshold and flowed eastwards since the Temple faced east. This water, flowing into the sea makes its waters wholesome.”
TUESDAY – St Leo the Great
We travel to Rome for the All Party Holy See Group. Always nice to arrive there. I walk through the darkening streets to a Mass in yet another baroque church. I feel inadequate, that I should know these treasures but I don’t.
I am in this splendid ill-lit church with two nuns and three old ladies and two elderly priests.
My Universalis app didn’t work either – they seem to have another day’s reading in Italy. Whence the Universal Church?
WEDNESDAY – St Martin of Tours
A papal audience in the morning – an enjoyable spectacle in warm autumn sunshine and as a bonus I get to shake the Pope’s hand. But the highlight is the Mass in the English College – a delight to see the spirit of the young seminarians. Fairly impenetrable meetings with two cardinals.
The readings at today’s Mass seem tailor-designed for a bunch of visiting politicians.
“Listen… kings… power is a gift to you from the Lord. He himself will probe your acts and scrutinise your intentions. If you have not governed justly, he will fall on you angrily and terribly.”
THURSDAY
A Mass at the Tomb of St Peter – always inspirational to be literally at the centre of things. St Peter crucified out a hundred yards from here and then dumped into a shallow grave. Whou would imagine that this mighty basilica would stand here two thousand years later – his tomb rediscovered with the inscription “Petros eni”, Peter is here.
FRIDAY
I go to a meeting of Lincs county councillors on the way home.
Luke 17: “As it was in Noah’s day, so will it also be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating and drinking, marrying wives right up to the day…”
SATURDAY
“When peaceful silence lay over all…” (Wisdom)
A day in the country, of autumnal colours, a long walk. I was looking at the Thames first, now in November twilight, and I concentrated on the shifting grey waters, a shift in the mind took place, a shift to memories, plans, receipts of information, to a deeper consciousness of self, a separateness.