Saturday 15 March 2008

Red Vestments, and Not a Mention of Bishops.






Tomorrow being Palm Sunday, I have just been in Church to check that we have everything we need and to store the plants which i have just bought to decorate the Easter Garden which we will assemble after the High Mass tomorrow. I have taken out the Church's red High Mass set which was bought last year after a number of fund raising efforts raised the money for it. The cope came from St Benedict's Ardwick and the Saint can be seen on the hood. The High Mass set had no burse and veil, just the three vestments, stoles and maniples, but we are very lucky to have the red burse and veil from St George's in Hulme, an old Sarum rite church, long gone and now rather expensive flats. This burse and veil set is one of the treasures of St Hilda's really, and merits a close look, so I have taken a close up of the burse, showing St George shielding Christ from the assaults of the devil when He went into the wilderness for the forty days, our remembrance of which is now drawing to an end. Tomorrow, crowds of us will process from the Schoolyard along Whittaker Lane singing 'hosanna!' and waving our palms and then in the evening a smaller crowd will make the way of the cross for the last time on a Sunday this year, before we revert back to having solemn Evensong and Benediction on Sunday evenings. I hope to have pictures of the Mass tomorrow for you, but I am becoming concerned at the amount of pictures taken during Mass, even without flashes used, so we will see. Maybe we will take some this Holy Week to record for posterity what we are doing and then that will be that. We will see.