All Saints, All Souls...

...and vast crowds in Oxford Street and Auntie struggling along with them. Impossible to move at one point - sheer pressure of humanity. No, they weren't celebrating All Saints' Day. They were there to shop.  Christmas decorations already hanging up above the street, but not yet lit up.Half-term, and huge, HUGE numbers of people shopping and shopping and shopping...

I needed to reach a bank -  had promised to get some figures for a small charitable group which needs info in order to complete its annual statement of accounts - but the vast crowds made it very difficult to get down Regent Street and the bank had closed by the time I arrived. Swept back into the crowd, I managed to break off into a side-street and walked through Chinatown to reach Soho Square, where I was celebrating All Saints at St Patrick's Church, and watching the young members of the 2012/13  St Patrick's Evangelisation School make their formal commitment. A beautiful Mass, Fr Thomas from the Community of St John concelebrating with Fr Alexander  the parish priest, and young Fr James Bradley of the Ordinariate acting as cantor for the chanted Kyrie, Gloria, etc. Afterwards, a cheery celebration in the big room up in the church tower - wine and snacks and lots of talk. A most useful talk with Marianne Cuthbertson of Maryvale, looking at the difference between evangelisation and catechesis, and the need for both. It made me  appreciate anew  the role of lay people in the Church's mission in the sense that Vatican II sought to promote and develop it: Maryvale is  central in all of this for Britain.

At St Patrick's, as elsewhere, a table at the back of the church where one can write the names of family members and friends who have died, who will be commemorated in Masses for the dead in this Month of All Souls. Every year, my list grows a little longer. Nearly twenty years since my dear father died, and as I wrote his name I had sudden beautiful memories of him.  And this year, a dear cousin died - remembered with very special affection, as she was one of bridesmaids thirty years ago...