Thursday, March 28, 2013

Maundy Thursday...

...and the name comes from the same root as Command (Latin: Mandatum).  Which command?  The one we all break: that we should love one another...

Spent the afternoon at Premier Radio (offices and studio in Chapter Street, not far from Westmin. Cathedral), recording some talks (re the new Pope, etc). You can listen to them in the week beginning April 8th - check out the Premier website...

Still have a bad cough and cold, but it's getting a lot better, and in a moment I shall walk in the chilly but bright sunshine down Victoria Street and cross the Thames to Waterloo, catching a train to London Bridge and to the Ordinariate church there for the Holy Thursday Mass.  Somewhere along the way I'll buy some hot cross buns for tomorrow's breakfast...

Just written my feature for the MAY issue of OREMUS, the magazine of Westminster Cathedral. The magazine is read surprisingly widely: when in Somerset at Christmas a nice priest told me that he has a subscription and always enjoys the magazine...BTW the April issue is just out (feature by Auntie in it) and has a pic of Papa Francis on the front...

Scouring the Internet for various bits of information, I realised that the arrival of a new Pope, and the retirement of the previous one, had given massive scope for the doomwatchers and all those the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-is-almost-here types. The other day, perhaps because of the cold weather, I was warned "Have you heard the Prophesy of the Three Days Darkness?"  Yes, I have heard it. Enjoyed a vogue in the 1970s. Popularised in the 18th century, then again in the 1950s because a bogus German group claiming visions from Heaven started to say that Padre Pio supported it ...this was eventually denounced in rather firm terms by Cardinal Ottaviani, then head of the Holy Office. Doesn't seem to have stopped people...I got the "Padre Pio believed in..." line again the other day. I am not quite sure why people focus on the three-day bit, because the main meat of the story is that two-thirds of all humanity will be wiped out in one fell swoop, which rather makes three days without proper lighting  seem rather trivial...

I wonder what happened to all those stores of food that people were keeping in the Autumn of 1999 because they were convinced that Everything Would Stop when the calendar moved to 2000, and no food would be available? I remember a publication in the USA carrying advertisments for sacks of dehydrated foods, guaranteed to last for five years...

And here we are in 2013 with plenty to worry about, and plenty to rejoice about, and plenty of work to be done, and an urgent mission of evangelisation to fulfil...








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