....(see below, re Missing Bus Pass)....
I took part in NIGHT FEVER in Soho...warm spring evening, and young people praying and singing in a church glittering with candles - and fanning out across Soho Square and the surrounding streets carrying lanterns to invite people in. It's simple - you just ask "Would you like to come in and light a candle?" and proffer a tea-light. And they mostly say "No, I'm all right thanks" and move on. But then they sometimes suddenly turn back and say "Oh...well...all right..." and walk into the church tentatively after you... and at the sanctuary you just gesture towards all the glowing candles there, and they take their own small tea-light and kneel down and light it...
Amazing encounters. One man knelt there silently and then whispered "Thank you for this experience". A group of partygoers knelt together, arms linked in a sort of communual hug. .A middle-aged couple started to say they were too busy but then changed their minds and came in together , stayed for quite a while, and went out with warm smiles and thanks. One girl in an extremely short tight skirt asked if it was OK for her to come in - "I don't think I'm, like, wearing, like...enough..." - which was, like, sort of true...but God reads hearts and knows about daft fashions, so she came in...
The candles glow in their hundreds along by the marble altar rails. Priests hear confessions in the confessionals and in the side-chapels. Lanterns line the main aisle and are all around the porch welcoming people in. And as things draw to a close as a late hour approaches, a full church joins in Compline "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord...." and then Benediction...
One goes home in a quiet glow. The last train trundled out to the suburbs and I caught a taxi at the station...
Next morning, ready to return to St P's for Divine Mercy Sunday, I couldn't find my bus pass. Always keep in the same place. Infuriating. The small wallet also included other travel documents needed for the coming week. Hurried to buy a new pass, cross at wasted money, worried about arrangements for the rest of the week...and somehow it felt all wrong that such a special evening had resulted in something so irritatingly, infuriatingly, tiresome...
And then Divine Mercy Sunday, a beautiful Mass, lunch with good friends, the Divine Mercy devotions at 3pm...and home to find an email waiting from a kind person who had contacted me via my Blog (see below...)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment