Gaudete Sunday
Rose-coloured vestments at Mass, three candles, including the pink one, lit on the Advent wreath.We were reminded to go to confession during this last week of Advent, as the best and most important preparation for Christmas.

I love the sense of a build-up to Christmas: Advent is definitely my favourite season in the Church's year. The Church offers us a lot and it's a pity we don't make more of it: the family in front of me had a small boy who had been given paper and biros with which to scribble and do drawings, so he turned his back on the altar and simply drew pictures, and whispered to his mother, and got hugs and giggles and little chats, all through Mass. Not particularly noisy or distracting - but what a pity: there was so much going on at the altar that would have interested him, had it been drawn to his attention. The sung parts of the Mass were in Latin, and children can enjoy that, and there was a good deal of incensing, and that sense of solemn activity blended with music and the ringing of bells....he could have felt himself a little part of that, had he been helped to do so.


This evening we are going round to some friends to mark Gaudete Sunday: their eldest boy is my godson and I have a parcel for him and smaller presents for his brother and sisters. At Blackfen last week, Fr Tim gave me some of the apples that he'd been given at Parkminster (Carthusian monastery in Sussex) and I am making them into a big pie for tonight. They are some of the swetest apples I've ever tasted.

Problems with my blog: a reproachful correspondent says I have published his/her email address in the "comment" section....I have spent the past half-hour going through every single comment for the past two months and can't find a single one that includes a private email address. I have specifically rejected several comments because they included private information or addresses which I felt the writers wouldn't really want on the Internet.....can this lady or gentleman please contact me again (I WILL NOT PUBLISH WHAT YOU SEND TO ME) so that I can sort this out??