The FAITH Movement...

...Summer Session, held in the beautiful setting of Woldingham School at Marden Park in Surrey. This lovely valley has its own small railway station, and the school is approached via a long lane winding between meadows where cows munch lazily and great horse-chestnut trees cast glorious shade.  An added bonus - most mobile 'phones don't work there. Bliss.

This year's conference pack  has a list of all the FAITH Sessions going back to the very first one in 1973. Oh, we didn't have conference packs then, or badges on loops with information about fire drills, or anything like that. And there were  40 young people gathered at Roehampton that long-ago summer. Now, there are several times that number, some of them the  now-grown-up offspring of the first attenders. Plus many, many priests who have become linked to the Movement over the years...and a great number of seminarians, some from Rome, some from the diocesan seminaries here in England...

Excellent talk by Sister Andrea Fraile of the Sisters of the Gospel of Life. Excellent discussions over meals or in groups gathering in the courtyards and garden. A packed chapel for Adoration, and a Penitential Service, during which confessions were heard. Suddenly, across the silence, the searing siren of a fire alarm. Silently, everyone dutifully plodded out of the chapel and out to the official Fire Assembly Point, where there was a roll-call. For some reason, standing there and hearing each person answer up to his/her name  called out  from a list, I had a sudden frightening premonition of what it might be like in prison, with a roll-call of Catholics summoned for disobeying the latest spiteful infringement of our religious rights and liberties...

Back to the chapel, Undeterred, confessions continued, and then Night Prayer and Benediction. It is singing the Salve Regina that always brings back the deepest memories...now, a new generation of young men's voices starts the prayer, and as we all join in, I'm thinking of others summers decades ago, and the unchanging truths that have been taught and shared...