"Sweet Sacrament Divine"....

...is one of my favourite hymns, and we sang it this morning at Holy Ghost Church, Balham. I went to Balham because there is an 80-strong group from there heading for World Youth Day in Madrid in 3 weeks' time, and I wanted to check some details with the parish priest. Alas, he wasn't there, because, as Dean, he had had to hurry off to a neighbouring parish where the priest, Fr Bonvini, had just died...

Fr Bonvini...Fr Bonvini...on hearing the news, my mind went back over 30 years, to a summer evening at St Elphege's, Wallington, where Fr Bonvini, then the curate there, talked to Jamie and me about Christian Marriage. We had gone there to make arrangements for the wedding - a family friend, Fr James Tolhurst, was to celebrate our Nuptial Mass and marry us. But it fell to Fr Bonvini to deal with the neccessary paperwork - and to explain to us about the Sacrament we were to recieve and its beauty and importance. His talk was quietly full of wisdom, imparting the Church's teaching without cliches or frills, and with an emphasis on prayer and the spiritual life, and I have always remembered it. May this good priest rest in peace after a life given fully to the service of the Church and to hundreds and hundreds of ordinary Catholic families like ours in the London suburbs...

This morning's Mass at Balham was a swirl of incense and glorious music, with Latin chant, a beautifully sung Psalm, and, as mentioned, "Sweet Sacrament Divine" at Communion...a friend remarked recently that the thing he had noticed, on joining the Catholic Church, was the number of men in the congregation - "Sundays, and even weekdays. Always lots of men. In my previous denomination it was mostly just older ladies".

Afterwards, I treated myself to 20 minutes with coffee and a newspaper: grim headlines about the massacre in Norway, and various analyses about the situation in Europe with new tensions over Islamic immigration, and a worsening economic situation...

Feeling solemn, I headed for home. I spent yesterday evening addressing envelopes for the big mailing to all London parishes about the Towards Advent festival later this year. Somehow it seems more important than ever to affirm a strong Christian presence and a message of general goodwill and hope. Will World Youth Day help?

Went to pick blackberries and think.