SUNDAY
I was asked to do the reading in our local church at Hainton.
St Paul asks a Philemon to look after Onesimus, clearly a slave. He describes him “not as a slave any more but something much better than a slave: a dear brother.”
MONDAY
Psalm 8: Domine, dominus noster / O Lord, our God
I am working through the Psalms in our local Anglican church. Reading, sitting alone in the empty church, looking at the Latin. They are extraordinarily compelling.
TUESDAY
I go to the Knights of Malta Mass in St James, Spanish Place. This was one of the embassy churches. It is since rebuilt, but beautiful. One has in this place and with this mass, largely in Latin, a sense of continuity.
Continuity is an aspect sorely missed.
WEDNESDAY
I was invited and nearly didn’t go because I was so tired to the Copt celebration in St Margaret’s, Westminster. I’m glad I went. They had kept a seat for me, and they need supporting.
It’s a strange atmosphere: Orthodox, but with an Arabic rather than a Russian tinge. The singing and cymbals strangely rhythmic. Did St Mark really found them? Does it matter? They certainly found monasticism, the hermetic and cenobatic kind.
Through two thousand years of persecution, even into this present week of burning churches, they have kept the Faith.
THURSDAY
The great passage from Luke 6:27-38 so majestic in its poetry, ending with the final daunting challenge: “the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back,” something we never heed, know but do not act upon, understand but ignore, accept grudgingly, give a little hope for more.
FRIDAY
We travel to Walsingham for the OMV pilgrimage. A long drive but grateful to arrive. The priest quotes Newman. What was it? The thought sits elusive at the back of my mind.
It is in dying, in making mistakes, we learn. No it is that “in changing, we become perfect.” Or something like that. We constantly have to change, but we don’t wan’t to, so do we reject perfection? Of course we do: it is too demanding.
Later I sat in the Anglican Shrine, alone, late at night. It closes late: more churches should close late. It is at nighttime, in quiet, that thought comes easier. In the Anglican Shrine is a replica of the Little House of Nazareth. It may be a replica but in its attention to what might have been it has power.
I realise that it is irrelevant if religion is true. Because for me it has the power to make me happy. Atheists may scoff at it being a kind of opiate for the brain but it is not chemically induced. It is induced by the rationality of thought and search.
SUNDAY
We have our final mass at Walsingham. With all the other groups it cannot have the power of the other two, but the magic of the place persists on the journey back. It is in this place where eternity is nearer, closer than elsewhere.