I’m offline for a few days to visit my father up in the north of England. I will then be at our Diocesan Synod in Westminster next Saturday. This is a temps fort for our communion around our Bishop and there is much to discuss, especially in private, about the future growth of our apostolate.
I ask your prayers for a safe journey, for our Church, and I should be back online perhaps with a photo or two on Monday 5th May.
Please continue to be good Christian gentlemen in the comment boxes! Be good… Thank you.
I have been in a discussion on the longhair forum, and a poignant message came in:
I been getting stressed over growing long hair and so far to me I feel it’s not worth it. I thought of positive and negative things about long hair. I came up with mostly negative things about long hair like worrying about split ends, damaging hair, peoples reactions and maintaining it. The only thing I came up with that is positive is you like long hair. When I shower I can’t enjoy hot showers any more since I worry if it’s going to damage it and so far I feel when I have short I can relax and not worry about this. When my head itches I think I am damaging it when rubbing my head. I really want long hair and don’t know what to do and feel just giving up so I don’t worry about all this. I try not to think about this but it’s hard since I don’t want my hair looking horrible so I don’t give long haired guys a bad reputation. Because a lot people don’t like long hair on guys and want to show everyone they are wrong about long haired guys. I really need some advice in case I overlooked some positive things and in case others worried about things like this before.
I answered on a fairly practical level:
You seem to have a problem of self-confidence. Of course, I don’t know anything about your age, lifestyle, job and philosophy of life. Those are things that “provide the context” about choices like growing hair and affirming your identity and personality in different ways.
The bottom line is that it is your choice, and no one will blame you if you choose to keep your hair short. I did that for many years. If you want long hair, there are several “usual reasons” like following the fashion of a subculture or because you “feel” it is part of you.
Growing hair and going through the “awkward stage” is not easy. That’s where I am at 7 months since my last haircut. We need to avoid being self-conscious. Just act natural, or be natural.
Hair is often tougher than we think. Just look after it normally without getting worried about it. Use good shampoo and conditioner and let it dry in the air without using an electric hair dryer. You can still have a hot (or warm) shower and either wash your hair or tie it back to keep it dry on the other days.
There’s a lot of anxiety in your message. Hair is something we need to enjoy, otherwise there’s not much point to it if it’s an ordeal. You seem also to be worried about what “others will say”. You can’t please everybody, and it still won’t be good enough if you fit exactly into the mould. Be yourself.
My advice is to get the basis straight. Is long hair your way? If it is, you have to take the awkward with the good and persevere with it. There are all sorts of practical things people can help you with on this board, but the essential has to come from you.
It felt incomplete to me, so I added another message:
Another thought came into my mind as I was showering and washing my hair this morning. It is all to do with our attitude in life and our expectations.
Some people are constantly worried about their health, constantly seeing the doctor for minor problems and looking for remedies on the internet. Life has to be lived, even when we do have problems. Our friend Ted on this board is a heroic example of this. We just go on, whether it is life in general, health, money problems and poverty – or the minor inconvenience of growing hair and keeping it reasonably clean and tidy.
Another analogy is saving money to buy a new car. We deprive ourselves of other things to be able to afford what we really want. That being said, the greatest gift in our life – beyond possessions and things that make us feel powerful – is our happiness and freedom in being ourselves, whether or not we believe in any kind of God or some other “being” beyond ourselves.
For many on this forum, growing hair is a journey, like exploring the sea or an unmapped piece of land. It is an exciting challenge, but there are difficulties we have to face and overcome.
My own experience over the past few years has been illuminating. I look back at my own desires and beliefs of when I was about 12, and I find many things I have missed over the years. One thing was sailing, and another was the long hair of poets, artists and musicians in the early 19th century, another (which I never put aside) was music and organ playing. Another was composing polyphonic vocal music, and all these things are adding up into something beautiful and whole.
I went up many blind alleys from my teens and up into my forties, so it is important to take up threads where we left off. This is even more so when we begin to get older and see the sand running through the glass – there’s no stopping it.
You are not me, and you have another experience in life. Look at your “reference age” and you will see the answer. You will then never let go of the precious pearl!
It occurs to me that I am simply reflecting on the notion of vocation and purpose of life, two somewhat inscrutable notions for us all, believers and non-believers alike. In the end it isn’t about hair or personal vanity, but who we are and why we’re here. Churches need to deepen the notion of vocation and the idea of a person serving God and the Church by being himself, and not fitting into a conformity mould. One has to have courage to allow people to be themselves, because we become disturbed in our own certitudes and fear of the sinfulness of others.
I have probably discovered more about the notion of vocation in the longhair world than in all my years at seminary and listening to teaching coming from many wise men. We arrive at a time when many of the things we older people knew are being swept away and replaced by nihilism and vulgarity. On the other hand, a seed is bringing forth something new and I refuse to believe that the future is only ugliness and death. There is something in the way of a reaction from The Machine and the dictatorship of exaggerated rationalism. Look beyond the tattoos and heavy rock motives, and some of those souls are opening to grace and light. Yes, I believe in miracles!
We are definitely in a new Romantic era as I listen to this young American! It is a temptation to dismiss the millennial generation, but actually many of them have broken away from the dictatorship of the old century and the same pit as in the 1790’s or the 1890’s. They are free!
I found this link on my men’s long hair forum in response to a young man who was being harassed by his employer for his long hair. In truth, the young man is in the wrong job, because he needs to be in something where he can be himself (on condition of doing his job properly and professionally). There are many occupations where a man can escape the suit and tie and short hair profile of the company man. The man presenting the video has short hair, but that’s obviously his own free choice. 🙂
We spend too much time trying to impress other people instead of being true to ourselves. If we “changed” and fitted exactly into the mould, “they” would still not be satisfied and we would be unhappy.
In all likelihood, our young man is alienated from churches or religion, or has never been anywhere near a church. The newly canonised Pope John XXIII intended to open doors and windows to let in fresh air, beginning with allowing people to breathe and find their faith whilst being their true selves. Of course, some reading this are going to wince and accuse me of promoting modern “agendas”. Not a bit of it. Grace does not destroy nature and we cannot but admire this beautiful spontaneity of a young man in the prime of life and enthusiasm. My own experience in traditionalist Roman Catholicism has been one of trying to fit into the mould, and I found I could not conform enough and be enough of a wet rag!
The Americans call it “thinking outside the box”. Jung called it individuation, reconciling the opposites and coming to terms with what we really are. The quest for wholeness is a theme of Romanticism and the alchemical sciences of old. In the Church, we have doctrinal standards and moral teachings, but the spirit gives life where the letter kills. In Romanticism, redemption is a process of attaining wholeness, not of being ever more compliant with someone else’s ethics.
Self-knowledge is vital, by recognising the pairs of opposites we have within ourselves. It is for each of us to find which are those pairs of opposites, because it isn’t the same for everyone. I remember my time as a working guest at the Benedictine abbey in France, and being told that imagination is an enemy of contemplation. They are wrong. Imagination is the creative logos by which man participates in God’s ongoing work of creation. It is by the imagination that we find ourselves and our freedom.
Wordsworth wrote in 1850:
Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable worskmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society.
We live this diversity in ourself as in society, and peace comes through reconciliation. Romanticism connects beauty and harmony as the Platonists equate the One with Beauty. Truth as Beauty is a unifying of opposites, both in creation and in our own being as humans.
Our whole lives are spent in some sort of compromise with the world, of which the institutional Church is a part, together with our families, homes, work and all the things we have to pay for with money. Some measure of compromise is needed, but we are free in ourselves through the imagination and our constant state of tension with the “pit” that tries to dictate fashion, “political correctness” and la pensée unique. We have to go along with some things to an extent, but within ourselves we are free and beautiful. Being something of a Hegelian, I can see this tension as being good for us, if we can learn to handle it.
Some of us are called to higher things, and perhaps we are not such a minority as elitists and people “of the flesh” might like to believe.
In another age, that young man might have seen the horrors in Paris in the 1790’s and sought beauty and health in Italy, writing poetry or music before a death from consumption or shipwreck at a tragically young age. May he live and teach truth and beauty in our own time, with that beauty and freshness that are still his!
I saw some of the ceremony this morning on television at the behest of my wife. I have walked many times up the Via della Conciliazione and across St Peter’s Square with hardly more than the company of pigeons. This morning, those areas were filled with people and the various police and security agencies paid for at great cost by the Italian civil authorities to protect the pilgrims and clergy.
I don’t relate to these big ceremonies of popular religion, and had a sense of sadness when I celebrated the Quasimodo Mass this morning. Should I give my opinion on John XXIII and John Paul II? I decided not to, but rather to keep silence. I saw such opinions expressed on traditionalist websites and felt alienated and revolted, and also by the “mega church” ceremony that had been somewhat self-consciously simplified by Pope Francis.
There is a lot of controversy about John Paul II as about Pius XII and other modern Popes, but it is reassuring that a man doesn’t have to be perfect or right in every way to attain the beatitude of sainthood. It is something I would wish for any of us sinners who turn to God. What now? I suppose that there will be a feast of Saints John XXIII and John Paul II, bishops and confessors, in the liturgy every year. It makes no difference to me, since I follow the Use of Sarum and admit only a few major Roman rite feasts of Fathers of the Church and men like St Francis of Assisi and St Philip Neri. For the rest of Christendom, there will certainly be a long “cooling-off” period during which John XXIII will be largely forgotten and only shreds of memories of John Paul II will remain as we all get older and see changes in the world. Many questions remain, and people will always be dissatisfied.
I leave the polemics and questions of infallibility in prayerful silence and pray that somehow, God may bring good out of this event.
It reads like a begorrah reporter wearing bright green wellies and carrying a piglet under his arm, looking forward to certain journalistic ideas of reform in the Church, but there are quite a few independent reports of this incident. (By the way, I like the Irish even if I tease them.) Just do a Google search on the Cardinal in question. Anyway, here it is: “Jesus not coming back by the looks of it” admits Vatican. I can’t imagine the most asinine churchman saying something like this on the record, but perhaps nothing surprises us any more. So, Christ was drunk when he said things, so we just dismiss them. The one quoted as having said these things is Cardinal Giorgio Salvadore, who appears to be Archbishop of Palermo in Sicily.
Well then – what’s the Church for? It all just makes you want to weep! Those guys are just like our politicians. They cost huge sums of money and just serve their lousy careers. What is really shocking is not whether those men believe what they (are supposed to) teach, but that the attitude really seems to be “We grant that it’s all a load of tosh, but keep the money coming in all the same“!
The General Judgement and the Parousia are terrifying mysteries, as is our own death. The world hasn’t ended just yet, but it will happen. Mankind seems anxious enough to make that happen through wars, pollution and the plundering of the earth’s resources. Perhaps the world might end without the coming of Christ. That’s about what we deserve! I’m not afraid of dying… The rub is dying in God’s grace.
There seems to be a happy medium between hysterical American fundamentalists committing suicide in anticipation of the Rapture and the smug complacency of ecclesiastical bureaucrats. The Scriptures and the Creeds are written largely in allegorical language, and the exact meaning is hidden. Jesus was condemned to death for telling the High Priest Caiaphas and the others present at his trial that they would see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven. He was not drunk when he said that! What do those words mean? The Temple clergy saw no such thing in their lifetimes.
There are many eschatological speeches by Christ, especially when castigating the Scribes and Pharisees. What do they mean? Here is an introduction to the branch of theology called eschatology. It describes the Catholic tradition as well as ideas coming from other Christian communities in the past and present. It is a vast subject, and I won’t even attempt to tackle it here.
That being said, we seem to live in a time when men of the Church show complete irresponsibility and recklessness in what they say to the press – and even to individuals over the telephone. Quis habet aures audiat!
I have written a couple of articles recently about Don Lozenzo Perosi and his major compositions, in particular his oratorios and secular orchestral works. I mentioned his church music in passing, for its style is totally different. These works are generally for one, two, three or four voices and organ accompaniment. Here is an example of some of them them sung by the cathedral choir of Milan.
My own musical formation was in England, in the Anglican tradition, and I only learned about Gregorian chant when I crossed the Tiber. My biggest surprise was when I went to Rome in 1985 to begin philosophy at the Angelicum and my major seminary at the Pontifical Nepomucene College. We usually attended Papal masses at St Peter’s on the big occasions, like the major feasts of the church year and canonisations of saints (John Paul II was very generous for that!). The Sistine Chapel choir was on its podium near the organ installed in the basilica in the 1950’s under Pius XII. Papal churches were at one time as conservative about organs as the Orthodox Church! Only recently has a small two-manual instrument been installed in the Sistine Chapel. The greatest surprise is the choir! English ears just can’t get used to the sliding notes, the vibrato and the cloying slowness. Milan is just the same as Rome – it’s the Italian tradition!
Perosi’s church music is very telling, almost similar to some of our Victorian composers like Stainer and Goss, lacking the finesse and subtlety of S.S. Wesley or Stanford a little later in the century. Why this divergence of style in one man! The answer is Pope Pius X and his interest in reforming Roman Catholic church music. He found that Gregorian chant had all but disappeared and replaced by “operatic” compositions. Reform of church music is a part of Pius X’s liturgical movement.
Perosi had spent some time in Germany, and some of the scores one finds rummaging in the choir lofts of churches in Germany and Switzerland can be quite a revelation. To what extent there was any influence from Anglican hymns, it is difficult to tell. Together with a number of German musicians, Perosi and a few other Italians put together a Cecilian Movement to react against excesses of Mozart, Haydn and Verdi.
The Council of Trent came within an inch of getting rid of all music other than Gregorian chant! Pope Marcel II and Palestrina saved the day. Pius X and Perosi were much more moderate and sought to promote both Gregorian chant and a more sober choral style at Mass, Vespers and Benediction. Giovanni Tebaldini, Perosi’s predecessor in Venice, was the main motor force behind the beginnings of this movement.
We are given to believe that even choral polyphony disappeared during the nineteenth century. If this was the case, it is difficult to imagine churches in Europe with only operatic style music, mainly sung by soloists with reduced orchestral accompaniment. I also find this hard to believe, given the character of some of Mozart’s work, the Ave Verum being the best known “sober” choral setting. Bruckner in Austria was writing absolutely sublime motets, both a capella and with organ or orchestral accompaniment. Popes tend to generalise and mix everything together, as Pius X also did in regard to Modernism! Everything got tarred with the same brush – more Italian sloppiness!
It was certainly a wonderful thing to bring Gregorian chant and polyphony back into the repertoire of cathedral choirs. But, who would advocate the abolition of masses by Mozart and Haydn? Happily, the ban was never absolute.
Church music comes and goes. Anglican church music is mostly a nineteenth-century movement even though there are many fine anthems and service settings from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Surpliced choirs in Anglican parish churches only really came in from the time of S.S. Wesley, about the same time as the Oxford Movement, Pugin and the Ecclesiological Society.
Italian and German choirs are generally surpliced, and formed of boys and men like in England. Unfortunately, I have not seen them occupy the choir stalls in France, Italy or Germany. That seems to be an English peculiarity, which is wonderful for the quality of the music and response of the choir to the Master of Music directing it.
We don’t have resources in the ACC to do anything musical. It is difficult enough to find organists, let alone get an amateur choir of some competence together. Even a quartet is not easy, since you need singers with musical training and sight-reading ability to get together a repertoire in a reasonable amount of time. Even Church of England parishes are finding it harder to keep the choirs going.
In the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict XVI tried to promote good music as much as he could, and perhaps some of those initiatives survive. There is an Istituto di Musica Sacra in Rome, but I don’t know how much real influence it has. I was tempted to study there myself, but I didn’t have the money or sponsorship.
Nevertheless, we have to keep the light burning, composing new music and doing quartet and chamber choir work to a high standard. We are condemned to singing outside churches, and that is a real shame. Perhaps we could sing in my chapel, but we would be the only ones there! Keep calm and carry on – so the wartime slogan goes.
Thinking about Lent now that it is over, I return to a favourite quote by Oscar Wilde as he suffered his incarceration in the 1890’s:
Reformations in morals are as meaningless and vulgar as Reformations in theology. But while to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered. And such I think I have become.
To many people, Lent is a time for self-reformation, asceticism, working on a particular fault of character (losing one’s temper too easily for example). Historically, it is the preparation of the Catechumens for Baptism, and by extension, the preparation of the baptised for the renewal of their Christian commitment and the reconciliation of excommunicated public penitents with the Church. Often we do well to be hard on ourselves and gentle on others.
All too often, I’m not hard enough on myself during Lent, and not being in a monastery makes serious fasting and abstinence impractical. When my wife is out at work, I would often do a vegetarian lunch, or simply eat leftovers even if they contained some meat. Fish used to be a cheap substitute for the meat of birds and mammals – no longer. I find fish and shellfish a most enjoyable delicacy, and they cost serious money. Technically you can eat lobster on Good Friday and technically observe the fast and abstinence – but it would be monstrous hypocrisy! Things have changed. Even in monasteries, fasting is adapted to the kind of work a monk does, and I have been doing quite a lot of work in the garden while translating work was scarce. We have to be realistic even if there is a risk of self-justification in our complacency.
Charity and alms-giving? Money is also quite scarce, hard-earned and over-taxed, and it is more rewarding to help people in difficulty directly. My wife helps people with her legal knowledge, and she and I have a friend who needs help with many everyday things because he has psychological difficulties. It seems better to do that than fritter away precious resources for organisations and agencies we don’t know and do little more than collect money and show glossy pictures of hungry people in Africa.
Regularity with prayer and the liturgy? I have to say in all modesty that I haven’t missed a liturgical day, and have treasured the liturgical and biblical texts that guide us through the forty days. We were reminded of our mortality, but above all that the spirit is more important than the letter. Our hearts have to be in it as much as our reasoning faculties. We are reminded about human wickedness such as caused our Lord’s Passion, and meditate on it deeply, lest we should be even worse!
What was more important to me was to work on the shadowy recesses, my whole purpose in life and my vocation. Was the heart I had and have in Christianity ebbing away? It can happen when we are alone spiritually and surrounded only by non-religious friends and colleagues. I looked back at the days of before seminary and many things in life of which I am deeply ashamed and for which I have already been forgiven by God through the ministry of a priest. From being guilt-ridden, I found moments of light and intuition that I felt at the time had to be sacrificed for a deeper Christian commitment and a vocation to the priesthood. I grappled with ideas that penetrated my being as a child, as a boy of twelve or thirteen, and as a student in my late teens. I found a great amount of light when reading about the Romantics and the way they reacted to the inhumanity and madness of the French Revolution and The Machine. The man who lives with his heart and not only his head wrestles with the darkness and anguish of his Sturm und Drang, and returns to nature in a quest for strength, beauty and love. That is me, the kind of person many churchmen see as not very good material for the priesthood of team players and company men!
Indeed, Lent has its deepening and mellowing effect if we are so disposed to get down to the roots and be brutally honest with ourselves. By the time Passiontide arrives, we become heavy and tired, and tempers can fray. I remember some appalling moments at seminary when some normally calm and serene men would fly into a rage. I notice that we all become quieter on the internet in those times, no less now during this Easter Octave! Lent this year seems to have taught me more compassion, as I see where my own failings are and how badly I understood and felt my vocation as a priest. I went through the worst, whilst the TAC as I knew it crumbled around me (I know many commendable efforts are made to rebuild in England, South Africa, the USA and elsewhere) and I had only to see my own failings to know why I wasn’t Ordinariate material. I didn’t even bother to apply. I express again my gratitude to Bishop Damien Mead for having me in his Diocese in the Anglican Catholic Church.
A great theme to meditate upon through Lent is not only our mortality – we won’t live forever on this earth and we won’t take our possessions with us – but also our capacity for evil and sin. It is also a face-to-face with ourselves in our failures and loss of innocence. It is when we are faced with this reality that we can begin to rebuild with the resources we already have within us. We can’t replay our lives like winding back a tape and pressing “play” again. But, we can find many things in our secret gardens and treasure chests we thought we had lost. Failure in the Roman Catholic priestly vocation caused me to look back and discover that nothing is lost. This is why I have decided to revive my desire to compose music, reigniting it little by little with short and simple pieces, and seeing how far I can go. It goes with my sailing, another childhood dream from Swallows and Amazons and my beloved English Lake District. These things are bringing humanity and warmth back to a priestly vocation that seems so useless to others!
That is one lesson I learned in the Roman Catholic Church, which is weaker in the Anglican tradition. Not all priests are parish pastors with the cure of souls. Perhaps in earlier days, I would have liked to be a country priest with not so much to do as I wouldn’t be able to live a contemplative life. I know the reality here in France, and it is no life for a sensitive human being! The medieval Catholic tradition sees the priest as a contemplative as well as a pastor and teacher. A couple of days ago, I wrote about Don Lorenzo Perosi who spent most of his life in poor health, often in great spiritual difficulties, but who rivalled Puccini as one of the greatest Italian composers of his time. He said his Mass each day and spent several hours in prayer. Franz Liszt was not a priest but was in minor orders and presumably lived a spiritual life as a Romantic musician. Dom Odo Casel was a Benedictine monk who spent many years as a chaplain to a community of nuns. He had time to study and write his beautiful books on liturgical theology and the Christliche Kultmysterium. Some have written to me asking why I put so much into a blog rather than being “out there” as a religious salesman peddling my wares or running a parish. Many of us are useless servants, yet living our priestly vocations in a different way.
I would love to be more involved with the training of priests and education, with liturgical studies and promoting the old Sarum Use and other local rites, and above all for promoting Christian culture and art. That wish may become a reality in England as well as my life with so many people alienated from churches and priests. It is in this way that the fire can be kept alive and fuelled with God’s love.
The person in question is particularly interested in the cinema. Indeed, it is frustrating to see a great film only to find that a portrayal of a priest or liturgical ceremony is totally wrong – simply because they didn’t have the right advisor. There is no excuse, because some films about churchmen are excellent, for example The Cardinal made back in 1963. I love good films as much as anyone else, but there are also other aspects of art and beauty both inside and outside the Church’s liturgy.
I say it another another time, that we who are sensitive to these things need to take our distance from the “world” as the monks do. I do use modern gadgets and machines – I can’t avoid them, but I keep as much distance as possible. Another thing is to keep out of towns as much as possible and close to nature. At the kind time, we have to be open to people and kind, not scowling or aloof. The balance is difficult to find.
For artists, there is scarcely any outlet for art and human sensitivity. I spent some years in my late teens and early twenties as a church organist, wherever the priest and people in charge of the parish had some aesthetic sensitivity in those brutalist days of the 1970’s (perhaps less brutalist than now). Since then, I have discovered the joy of making music outside church in chamber group singing and composing music for this kind of work. I have just completed another miniature of a setting of a stanza by the poet John Keats to go with In pace in idipsum for our concert next December. I hope also to do a song or two for my wife with piano accompaniment. Keep it small and simple, and it has a chance of getting performed!
As a young layman in the Church of England, most of my churchgoing was in cathedrals unless I was playing the organ, directing a choir or singing in a parish. Most parish churches, face it, are somewhat pedestrian and tedious. I found it that much worse in the Roman Catholic Church and even in some of the traditionalist places doing the old liturgy.
People need to be encouraged to soar high in whatever they have the talent to do. It is something to do with what Jung called individuation – learning to be ourselves and accept our difficulties. Most art involves a degree of acquired technique, but the basis has to be there in the first place, together with a determination to work hard and do our stuff – actually complete and achieve something. We can start small to build up our self-confidence, then we find out what we can do, and build on that. This is something I found with composition. I had no self-confidence and remained “blocked” for so many years. I’m sure the stuff I am producing wouldn’t stand up to the critics, since I “lack originality” in my Renaissance and post-Romantic sensitivities. I don’t care, if I give something beautiful to those able to receive it.
Indeed, any art is hard work, grit and self-discipline – rather like Lent in the Christian life. We need to be scoured out and get rid of the non-essential to find our true selves. That is true humility, not the kind of negativeness one often finds in spiritual writers.
Film making is an art too, but not one I know anything about. It has its acquired techniques and the flair of a born cinema producer. My own talents don’t lie there.
Deborah Gyapong quotes:
I think of the loss of the sense of the beautiful as one of the great heresies in the Church in the modern age. It has been devastating particularly because it undermines all of our efforts at evangelization. What good does it do to tell people that the Holy Spirit is Wisdom and Power in a hymn or movie that is lame and pedestrian?
Indeed, that is so right. If I were not a priest, I don’t know what I would do in the way of going to church (mine is the only ACC place of worship in this country). Perhaps I would go to a monastery, though nothing but Gregorian chant is gruelling, especially in the Dom Gajard / Mlle Denise Lebon tradition! What does someone do when there is more spirituality in secular music than in the churches? Perhaps that is how others feel about my odd way of celebrating Mass, otherwise they would be coming in droves. They don’t. Many of the things “they” like just kill me! That’s life…
There is not only the beauty produced by human art. There is also the natural world beloved of so many generations of Romantics and sensitive souls. We have the sea, the mountains, the forests and deserts, all depending on which parts of the world we live in. I have the soaring chalk cliffs and the English Channel, very similar to England’s south coast, except with the wind coming “the other way” – and a sailing boat to enjoy it all. Philistines are often insensitive to nature and respecting the environment.
We are now out of Lent and in what the Eastern Orthodox call Bright Week. Perhaps some of us could work on our writing skills, buy some tubes of paint, canvas and easel and some paintbrushes – and try it, and persevere. I am sure that many of you readers once played the piano or the violin in far-off days, and the instrument lies idle in your homes. We are each and every one responsible for resisting the culture of i-pads and mobile phones that do everything except make tea! Even with bashing away on a keyboard, just as I’m doing now, we can begin to wonder if we could write by hand any longer or even read a book! It is up to us.
I would love to read some comments from people deciding to take something up, do what they wanted to do as children, having the courage to do something about it.
Yesterday, I sang the praises of that great Italian musician and churchman Don Lorenzo Perosi. As we enter the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, one of the Old Testament figures of the Transitus Domini, I present you one of Perosi’s greatest works, La Risurrezione di Cristo which is sung in Latin to biblical and liturgical texts. This is rather a nice performance by the Cappella Musicale del Duomo di Modena.
It makes a difference to hear an Italian orchestra playing in tune, and for the performance not to be insipid as is often the case! The young conductor really knows what he is doing – hats off!
This is a playlist of several clips, so you need to click on this link to hear it on Youtube.
I wish you all a happy and glorious Easter in the joy of the Risen One. This setting of O Filii et Filiae is taken from the monumental oratorio of Franz Liszt, Christus. Like the peace and reverence of the Mass of Christmas, we enter the mystery of the empty tomb still in the darkness of the night, and the euphoria has not yet hit us. We approach with faith and quietness, still stunned and finding things difficult to believe as we lived through the bitter moments of the Passion in our prayer. This is the mystery of the Resurrection.
Tomorrow morning, as is the Sarum custom, I will be taking the Blessed Sacrament (third host consecrated on Maundy Thursday) from the Easter Sepulchre to put it in its exalted place above the altar of the chapel – in the hanging pyx. The cross of Good Friday will also be taken from its burial place.
This is indeed a moving moment of the Church’s year. It took the whole length of Septuagesimatide, Lent and Passiontide to get to this moment. Let us treasure it.
This is my personal blog concerning my philosophy of life as a Christian following the Romantic world view. I am a priest in the Anglican Catholic Church – Original Province and live in France.
