...is a magnificent church, and I went there this morning for the Conventual Mass. Last visit was for a wedding on a seriously hot day a few summers back - today the gardens of Ealing were all frosted and the leaves crunching icily beneath my feet as I made by way from the Tube station. The Abbey church is high-arched and with wide clean lines with a great spacious feel: it's not actually very old (19th century, damaged by bombing in WWII, etc) but somehow you feel linked to the early centuries of the church. I was wondering if such a large building could actually be filled for Mass, but it is, and indeed there are six Masses there each Sunday, and judging by the crowds still milling from the earlier one, it is a very popular parish.
There is a fine choir, all robed and walking in procession ahead of the monks who fill the sanctuary. There is a sense of timelessness about the Mass and it was a perfect place to mark the First Sunday of Advent.
I met some friends after Mass and they invited me back for coffee: two of their sons have sung with the Vaughan Schola at the TOWARDS ADVENT Festival and I was touched to discover that they remembered this with pleasure and still have the little prayer-books that we give to choir members each year as a commemorative gift. This year's Towards Advent choir was in fact from St Benedict's School, Ealing, and I noticed the choirmaster in the robed procession at Mass...
Main reason for being in Ealing this Sunday was to visit a friend, Prof Dennis O'Keeffe, to talk about Poland. With Roger Scruton and others, he was a visiting lecturer in Poland in the 1980s, in the v. difficult days of martial law, giving lectures to the "flying university" in various private homes...fascinating to hear about all of this, and also to discuss issues of today's Europe and its future...
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2 comments:
I apologize that this comment does not apply to your post but I wanted to let you know how very much I enjoyed you and your husband's book, "A Heart for Europe!" I was a little familiar with Blessed Charles but your book made me love him and Zita (who I hope will one day also be canonized.) Thank you for such excellent writing and for your impressive knowledge of history.
Dear Joanna, thank you for your excellent blog. In 80-ties I was a student and then researcher at the Catholic University of Lublin and many of these difficult things that you refer to as regards martial law in Poland. I like also your comments on the unfortunate directions in the area of morality, law and culture that Europe is driving at these days. But we need also seek for signs of hope. I am not suprised that fr Finigan recommends your blog. He visited with us in May and made some interesting obeservations both from Warsaw and Lublin. See for example http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2012/05/getting-to-know-modern-poland.html
God bless you
Piotr
from small town near Warsaw
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