Tuesday 9 September 2008

Triumphal March.




The feast day of the Triumph of the Cross or the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, or Holy Cross Day or what you will gets closer. Being on Sunday it means that the feast will be kept with great splendour. When I was in Poland, there was a ubiquitous fashion for decorating crucifixes with a stole of the colour of the season, so I thought to replicate it here for this feast. I wonder if you all like it?

I am in the midst of preparing the sermon for Sunday as well as fifty other things, so brevity is the watchword today. We had fourteen for Low Mass this morning, which is good for a Tuesday at half past nine and the cafe seemed busy when I went at half past eleven, so happiness is unrestrained. There is a new curate lady in the newspapers today who, much like the majority of the CofE, does not seem to like the rest of it much. She boasts of her thigh high red leather boots (are they boots or trousers if that long?) and complains that the CofE is too middle class and she is to save it. Keep tuned. Elsewhere, Christina Rees of the Plover Eggs complains that she has a feeling that the Spirit is telling her that it is time for the CofE to do whatever she tells it. I do wish people would stop having feelings and learn to rely on the gentle mercies of our God and the teaching of the Church, it seems to have sufficed for the last two thousand years in spite of, rather than because of, such earnest reformers. We can either follow Christ and His word, or we can look at ourselves like Narcissus and find a better way, which suits us more, which we prefer, which feels nice. But it is not of God. Make your choice with care, for eternal life is gained or lost by a decision to be obedient to God or not. The sooner people stop thinking that God is some sort of easygoing Big Brother housemate the better.