First Time

I am going to ascend the altar in a few minutes to celebrate my third Mass for today. Today All Souls Day, and Christmas Day, the Church positively encourages, rather than discourages priests to trinate.

The first Mass was simple just with the Ordinary (Kyrie etc) sung. Tonight's Mass has been organised by some of the younger people in the Parish and has the Latin Propers. The middle Mass, I celebrated was private, just me and a server, I offered it in the Extraordinary Form, the first time I have actually done so. It took me an hour to celebrate Low Mass, slowly reading the text and rubrics. I don't know if at public Mass I might have disedified people, I got a bit mixed up with the ablutions, I think maybe not.

It is strange how comfortable it felt, like tool that just fits the hand. It was an incredibly prayerful experience. I offered it for my own deceased relatives, principally my mother who first received the Lord at this Mass, her parents, and all those ancestors who would have been buried with these words. I felt a strange union with those priests of ages past whose mouths uttered the same words, whose hands made the same gestures. At the back of my mind was the commandment, "Honour your father and mother, and you will live long in the land". It makes me sound like a wet liberal but "it felt right".

In Paradisum deducant te Angeli

Here in England and Wales it is All Souls Day.

"May angels lead you into Paradise;may the martyrs receive you at your coming and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem. May a choir of angels receive you..."

Altar for Holy Souls

See unbleached candles, purple frontal, I know it looks blue, its my cheap camera, plus one of the treasures of the Church an ivory calvary. I don't know much about it, the oral tradition is it was given by the Forte family, when they owned the Grand Hotel here in Brighton, so many of their staff came here. It is normally in the sacristy.

My Will: Black Shot through with Gold

November always, as it should, gets me thinking about my own death. I have been nagging my people about remembering the Church in their will, and I haven't yet written mine. There is not much to leave an icon or two, a few musical instruments, some vestments.

What I want to spell out is my funeral. I am well aware that the Lord has poured out grace upon grace in my life and my response has been pretty mean spirited. I am conscious of the words, "to him who has been given much, much will be expected", well I have been given much.

I have read about saints, I haved lived in the company of saints since my baptism, I have met a few and I am definitely not a saint. Through the grace of God, and the sacraments, I am faithful and one day I will be one of the faithful departed, unless of course I die in mortal sin.

I dread that the modern practice of canonising everyone might creep into my own funeral. I want prayers and lots of them when I die. It might be impossible to stop concelebrants turning up in their white polyester chasubles but

I want the chief celebrant and assistants to wear black,
I want unbleached candles
I want, if possible, a black pall over my coffin
I want the Office of the Dead sung around my coffin
I want the Dies Irae
I want the traditional chants of the Mass
I want someone to preach on the vices of the priest Raymond Blake, the soul who is much in need of our prayer. A friend suggested I might even write the homily myself or even leave a recording, a voice from beyond the grave, a pre-timed recording coming from the coffin! Maybe the best thing might be not to have a homily at all. The alternative is to get a priest who fundamentally disagrees with me to preach.

All this not because I lack hope, not because I don't believe in the Resurrection, on the contrary, it is because I believe in the Body of Christ, in communion with him and his Saints. I believe in the People of God, the multitude coming out of Egypt carrying with them the bodies of the Patriarchs and bringing them into the Promised Land. This is what the Church does for the faithful departed.

Death is not, as that ridiculous poem says, "nothing at all". Death is catastrophic, as Jesus' death was. The gloom of death, the seperation from the living, the decomposition of the grave, the isolation - we go to the grave alone, means death is the ultimate powerlessness. For those who loved the deceased the pain is excruciating, death is something to be feared, it is terrifying. It tears the deceased from the living, as it tears hearts apart, as it tears the soul from the body.

Jesus' death gives hope in tragedy, it changes everything. The dark night is shot through by the eastern rising sun. The stinking flesh of the grave is called to life. The sinner is touched by grace. The black mourning clothes are shot through with gold. And the dead are raised to Life!

And even my death, the result of my sin, Christ will triumph over!

All Saints

Today is not the Solemnity of All Saints in England and Wales, I am not sure about Scotland or the rest of the world or even if this just another example of the English being out of step.

Anyhow in my multicultural and ethnically diverse parish the attendance at this morning's Mass was almost double what it is on a normal Sarurday.

Now everyone is travelling or working abroad it seems pretty obvious to me we actually need some consistancy as far as the calendar is concerned, unless of course we intend that the great feasts of the Church to be forgotten, or seperated from their secular festivities.

I know that it was Halloween or the Vigil of All Hallows/Saints last night because a young woman in a witch costume, with orange a green make-up , rang my doorbell just before midnight, she was sick as soon as I opened the door, appologised and staggered off.

Before and After

Valle Adurni has a picture of the Altar of the Chair in St Peter's, it has been veiled. It originally appeared on the excellent Rorate Caeli.

I remember seeing the unpleasant bronze table in 1975 on my first visit to Rome and thinking it should be replaced, that has not happened yet but this is vast improvement.

Restoring to its previous form would be good, restoring the Bernini original would be even better.

Psychological Assessment of Seminarians

I have been looking for the document on the the use of psychology to help assess candidates for the priesthood, I haven't seen it yet. None of the numerous commentators on the net or in the press given us a name for the document so I presume they have not read it either. I suspect that most of what we have heard is either from a press conference or mere journalistic speculation.

Someone in my year at the seminary after ordination spent 6 months in prison for downloading child pornography, at his trial it emerged that he been the victim of abuse by a friend of his father. He had said at his trial that he just looked at screen and wept remembering what had happened to him as a child. Most of his priestly ministry had been spent raising money for children in institutions abroad. I remember hearing him preach about them, he did so with a fierce passion.

He belonged to a religious community, and I suspect unlike the rest of us had not been psychologically screened. In his case there were certainly "deep seated" wounds that needed to be dealt with. Until his arrest and conviction I am sure he and others were completely unaware of how damaged he really was.

One of the real failures during my time at the seminary was in spiritual direction, most of the priests on the staff were recently ordained themselves, and often were men who were unable to cope with parish life. The Rector had done a course or two in counselling, but I think, to be honest he was illiterate in the art of Spiritual Direction. After I was ordained it seemed that the seminary became a therapeutic community. Those the Rector disapproved of were sent off for counselling, the type that had a distinctly Freudian character. I am sure the intentions were good, but in practice the students of the time thought it was used as a tool of oppression. In fact during this time, it seemed, more than any other, practically half those ordained left the priesthood within the first seven years, most to marry.

Psychological analysis for future priests is important, it always has been, the Church has always had its great psychologists, people like Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola etc. Analysis can never be the substitute for a good spiritual director, nor can it replace hours spent in silence in the presence of God, or for that matter regular and frequent confession. It can be used to tyrannise or to help, I hope this document promotes it as a helpful tool but also makes it subject to the other ascetic disciplines which our Tradition actually excels in.

This seems a reasonably balanced presentation of the document.