One of the best things about school holidays is the chance to read more than time normally allows. A scout round a second hand bookshop earlier this week enabled me to pick up a delightful read. Patrick Leigh Fermor's
A time to keep silence recounts his experiences in French monasteries in the 1950s.
At the Abbey of St Wandrille de Fontanelle in Normandy he recalls conventual High Mass:
"Tierce ended, the officiating monk entered in his vestments, and the deacon and sub-deacon, the acolytes and torch-bearers. They genuflected together,and the Mass began. Every moment the ceremony gained splendour. If it was the feast of a great saint, the enthroned abbot was arrayed by his myrmidons in the pontificalia. A gold mitre was placed on his head, and the gloved hand that held the crosier was jewelled at the point of the stigma and on the third finger the great ring sparkled over the fabric. The thurifer approached the celebrant and a column of incense climbed into the air, growing and spreading like an elm-tree of smoke across the shafts of sunlight. The chanting became steadily more complex, led by a choir of monks who stood in the middle of the aisle, their voices limning chants that the black Gregorian block-notes, within their comet-like tails and Moorish-looking arabesques, wove and remove across the threads of the antique four-line clef on the page of their graduals. Then, with a quiet solemnity, the monks streamed into the cloister in the wake of a jewelled cross. Slowly they proceeded through the cylinders of gold into which the Gothic tracery cut the sunlight. Their footfalls made no noise and only the ring of the crosier's butt on the flags and the clanging of the censer could be heard across the Gregorian....The antiphonal singing from the stalls continued to build its invisible architecture of music: a scaffolding that sent columns of plain-song soaring upwards, to be completed by an anthem from the choir that roofed it like a canopy. The anthem was followed by a long stillness which seemed to be scooped out of the very heart of sound. After long minutes, a small bell rang and then the great bell from the tower which told of the rites that were being celebrated and the mysterious events taking place; and the heads of the monks fell as if one blow had scythed them away. Next, an unwinding, a decrescendo. The Mass sang itself out, the kiss of peace passed like a whispered message down the stalls, the officiating court dispersed, and the vestments were removed." pp 36-37.
I found this to be quite breathtaking.
No sung or high Mass for us in Leeds this weekend - but Masses for the 1st Sunday of Lent are as follows:
Saturday (Vigil) St. Mary's, Gibbet Street, Halifax. 6.00 p.m.
Sunday Sacred Heart, Broughton Hall, Skipton. 11.00 a.m.
St. Joseph's, Pontefract Road, Castleford, 3.00 p.m.
A quick look at this Sunday's gospel reminded me of Pope Benedict's compelling chapter on the temptations of Jesus in part 2 of his
Jesus of Nazareth. The temptation account is this weekend's Gospel. The Pope devotes an entire chapter of over 20 pages to this and in it compares Jesus in the wilderness of the desert with the wild beasts with Adam in the paradise of the garden. Christ is with beasts and angels but here for 40 days peace is restored, the peace Isaiah proclaims for the days of the Messiah when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard with the kid. When sin has been overcome peace and harmony with God shall be restored. Again it is of course pointing to Easter and I suppose to Mary's discovery in the early hours of Easter day - the new Sabbath.
Daily Mass at Broughton (except Sundays) at 9.30 a.m.
