Easter Triduum

Happy Easter everyone. I hope you have had a happy and holy few days. On Maundy Thursday, I went from work to pub to church. It was a good job that I drank slowly because not long after arriving at the parish church I was collared to act as a Eucharistic Minister. 

On Good Friday morning, I took a walk to the London Oratory. I should have gone on Saturday as it means that I missed the Tenebrae service. A shame as I have had a soft spot for Tenebrae at the Oratory ever since I read that it was not long after a Tenebrae in 1937 that Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan, Tolkien's guardian, died.

The Good Friday Liturgy in our parish is always a bit frayed round the edges, especially during communion. The church is always packed to the rafters and everyone gets up at once to receive communion from the priests! This year, however, two Knights of St Columba acted as ushers and were expert in making sure that people went up one pew at a time.

The Easter Vigil is my Catholic birthday, by which account I turned thirteen years in the faith this year. With Maurice Baring I can say that if converting to Catholicism was a mistake it was the most splendid one I ever made and I wish I could make the mistake over and over again. 

With that in mind, I have to admit a certain envy at those receiving baptism and confirmation at the Vigil this year. The star of the show was definitely Fr. Nicholas for singing the Exultet. We have been lucky this year in that we have had a proper singer - who lives most of the time in Switzerland, of all places - sing the psalms. I think the Vatican should require that a professional singer sing the Exultet. 

At the Vigil Mass, your writer read the New Testament from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans. He read it in his own indomitable style but it may not have been like that as beforehand I kept thinking of the way in which Ham read his (non canonical) epistle at the Memorial Service in The Constant Gardner.

Fr. Christopher, our parish priest, gave the homily at the Vigil Mass. He talked about the adventure of the faith, which put me in mind of Fr. Longenecker's excellent book, Adventures in Orthodoxy (which I previously blogged about here). He also talked about being surprised... surprised by joy. Just in case you didn't know this, Surprised By Joy is the title of C. S. Lewis's autobiography.