Spent Monday...

...which was a Bank Holiday, exploring the City of London, planning the Autumn series of History Walks.    The names of the old City churches are wonderful: St Katherine Cree, St Andrew Undershaft, ... Fascinating information on Roman London in the deep Roman/Saxon crypt of All Hallows by the Tower. The church was not affected by the Great Fire (wind blowing in the opposite direction)  and is a feast of history...

I was asked recently where the name London originated. I knew the Romans called it Londinium. But why?  One possibility is a pagan God, Lud or Lod or Lund..seems that Lyons in France, and Luton in Bedfordshire may  possibly have the same origin...

Caught an evening train to Liverpool, arriving in a satisfying thunderstorm. Drenched, entered the chapel of this community to find them at prayer....

I was there to interview Myles Dempsey, and also to learn about plans for New Dawn at Walsingham, at which I have been invited to speak...

Fascinating conversations with Myles... elderly and disabled, but  uncomplaining and full of humour and common sense...among much else, enjoyed his comments on Catholic education, insights into why Walsingham is so important...and then, on a detour, his memories of Frank Sheed and the Catholic Evidence Guild...

...and tonight...

...it's Night Fever at St Patrick's, Soho....prayer, glowing candles, street mission, friars leading us in music and devotions, and the Blessed sacrament at the core of it all

A London History Walk...

...with a delightful American group initiated by  newly-ordained priest Fr Daniel Ciucci from Denver, Colorado. We began at Westminster Cathedral. It looks particularly fine on a sunny day under a blue sky, the great campanile soaring up...today, a solemn note:  the Union Jack was at half-past, along with others across London, to mark the deaths of the children and others in the Manchester  jihadist attack...

Then on down to the Abbey...there are always vast crowds of tourists queuing up to visit the Royal tombs etc. A fee is charged for that part of the Abbey - but we asked if we could just go into the nave to pray, and were shown into the area reserved for this. There are two lovely  large icons, one of Christ and one of Our Lady,  with banks of votive candles,   not far from the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.   The staff were welcoming, and it was a beautiful experience as  Fr Daniel led us in our prayers...

On to London Bridge and Mass at the Church of the Most Precious Blood. Numbers for weekday Mass here are in general good and are increasing - it is always notable, however, that over and above that,  there are always more on what should be Ascension Day (see note below about Feast Days)...

Lunch at a pub overlooking the river, and then on down the south bank, and across Tower Bridge to the Tower...

Later, as we were having some tea, a splendid parade came along - children with sticks, and clergy in surplices, and  the Mayor of Tower Hamlets in robes and chain, City aldermen  and Guildsmen, Thomas Boatmen with their oars...they were all there to Beat the Bounds for Ascension Day.  A perfect piece of authentic London pageantry, just what an American group ought to see! . We joined in to watch as the children duly beat the ground, and we all sang a hymn and so on...

This custom really began with Rogation Processions long long ago - walking around the parish to ask for a blessing on the crops in the fields...stopping to pray at the various places. This is how places like Gospel Oak got their names.

An inspiring evening....

...at the Centre for Catholic Formation, at Tooting Bec, organised with the Guild of Our Lady and St Joseph.  Theme was Evangelisation, and speaker Michael Dopp, from Canada took us through a thoughtful, practical presentation. Despite the heat - it has been a boiling hot day in London - the mood was attentive and we finished with a reading from St Matthew's account of Christ's glorious words of the great Commission, and then some words from St Paul...and then prayer, using this prayer written by a Bishop specifically on this theme....

Tragic juxtaposition...

...as I'm hurrying to post parcels to schools, with prizes for children who have taken part in the Lord's Prayer Handwriting and Artwork Project ...headlines in the press about the massacre in Manchester, young  victim faces looking out from the photographs...

Larger numbers than usual  at weekday Mass today...FrC  said that some people mentioned that they had come after hearing the news from Manchester...a sense of a need to pray for the victims, and for our country...

Human life...

...and the insights of St John Paul II, especially his letter Evangelium Vitae...I was invited to speak on this at the FAITH Movement this evening, part of a series of Evenings of Faith, held at the Challoner Room at the Warwick street church near Piccadilly, exploring and developing the insights of JPII...

Pope Francis...

and President Trump meet this week. Premier Radio's discussion programme hosted by Lisa Mainwaring looked at this among other topics...what will the Pope say to the President? Will it be a useful meeting? With either one listen to the other?

We also discussed Ascension Day...which falls this Thursday. PLEASE PLEASE, dear Bishops of England and Wales, CAN WE HAVE OUR FEAST-DAYS BACK?????  Look:  the Anglicans and other Christians in our country are marking Ascension day on Thursday, forty days after Easter as has been done for hundreds and hundreds of years, following the tradition of the Scriptures. And then it is nine days - a Novena - until the great feast of Pentecost, fifty days after Easter Why is the Catholic Church going out on a wobbly limb and saying we must mark Ascension day on next Sunday. IT ISN'T FAIR, it isn't logical...and it means that priests, this Thursday, will find people coming to church and will have to tell them "Um...sorry....we can't celebrate the great feast of the Ascension. If you want to do that, you must come back on Sunday.

PLEASE MAY WE HAVE OUR FEAST-DAYS BACK?

"I saw water..."

"flowing from the Temple; from its right-hand side, alleluia"...carolled the children's choir at Mass, as Father C. carried out the Asperges....the choir was formed last year and is now singing well, in English and in Latin...

I love the Easter season, and today we heard from the Farewell discourse, about how we are not left orphans..."and I shall ask the Father, and he will send you another Comforter..."

After Mass , some of us often gather in the local pub for drinks and talk, sometimes making up a table for lunch. Today I then hurried on to St George's Cathedral where I was meeting a group at the main door for a Catholic History walk.Quick tour of the cathedral - my favourite stained glass, with its beautiful depiction of St John Paul anointing the sick when they were brought there in great numbers during his visit in 1982...and then on through the Southwark streets, pausing at landmarks such as this garden in the bombed-out ruins of All Hallows, Pepper Street,...and so on past the Borough Market to the river, and the fine view of St Paul's....

And Cardinal Burke...

...at a conference in Rome has said that, while St John Paul certainly consecrated Russia, along with the rest of the world, to Mary, it can and should be done again, this time with a specific mention of that country. And of course it can be done again.   Christianity is gaining  - or rather regaining - ground in Russia on a large scale and has been doing so rather dramatically since the 1984 consecration and the events that followed.  There will be a time when Russian pilgrims come to Fatima and join in the prayers there...and in God's good time there will be healing between the Eastern Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church and the unity broken so many centuries ago will be restored.

Renewing the consecration will probably, over the years, become something that is done with some regularity and with great solemnity. The mistake some commentators and lobbyists have made has been to link it with theories of their own: secrets hidden in the Vatican conspiracies covered up, a whole range of pet ideas. But Fatima was not about that.  The message was one of prayer and penance. Which was - no surprises here - the message that Cardinal Burke sought to emphasise too.

Cardinal Burke wrote a Foreword to Fr Andrew Apostoli's book on Fatima , which is a good read and answers a lot of questions often raised about the whole subject.

Cardinal Burke's speech was a rallying-call to the New Evangelisation, and he urged that we listen to the voices of  Blessed Paul VI and Saint John Paul:  "The pontificate of Pope Saint John Paul II, in fact, may be rightly described as a tireless call to recognize the Church’s challenge to be faithful to her divinely given mission in a completely secularized society and to respond to the challenge by means of a new evangelization. A new evangelization consists in: 1) teaching the faith through preaching, catechesis, Catholic education and all forms of communication, 2) celebrating the faith in Divine Worship and in prayer and devotion which are the extension of Divine Worship into every moment of daily living, and 3) living the faith by the practice of the virtues – all as if for the first time, that is, with the engagement and energy of the first disciples and of the first missionaries to our native place."

Particularly moving is the cardinal's quoting St John Paul's words at Fatima in 1982 on the anniversary of the attempt on his life. Worth reading the whole thing here...

The Catholic Education Service...

...has been much on my mind all week as I have been researching the history of Catholic education in Britain. Heroic tales of establishing schools for the poorest people in Britain's industrial cities in the 19th century...

So it is a matter of concern to read about a strange document just produced by the CES ...something is definitely wrong....for a useful comment,read here

And read the document - which contains an enormous amount of drivel and rather horrible propaganda from homosexualist lobby groups - here.

THE CITY OF LONDON...

...is so rich in history, that even a shortish walk from London Bridge to the Bank of England yielded up four major Wren/Hawksmoor churches. The story of each has many layers...Saxon, Medieval, and then the Reformation...and the 17th century and the Great Fire...and then the Blitz... Many churches survived the Blitz - in 1940/41 the bombs were not such as to pulverise a church to dust although obviously much damage was done. What is odd is that a fire that roared up in one street could leave another nearby virtually unscathed...

Most Londoners don't know enough about the City, and don't know the story of  even famous churches like this one or this one (which I particularly like because of its sword-rests, so convenient if one happened to be wearing a sword and needed to put it down...) or this one, despite its association with a famous singing rhyme...

I spent part of Monday exploring the City churches  with a colleague, and putting together info. on the history.  The essential point is that the story is so much richer than most guide-books say...London's Christian history goes back to Roman times, and there are glorious Saxon saints to discover...and the great religious communities that suffered under Henry VIII... Watch for news of forthcoming Catholic History Walks...

Beautiful...

...new vestments at this church,  thanks to generous donations from people who simply want to ensure glorious worship. Fr C. showed me the newest chasuble - delicate workmanship worthy of its sacred purpose. The vestments are unfussy, dignified, made of fine materials, and have a sort of "flow" that give a sense of naturalness to their use at Mass.

I had to order a further 1,000...

...commemorative cards with the words of the Lord's Prayer, as after three  major re-printings, we had run out yet again. This is the fourth successive year of the Children's Handwriting and Artwork Project, an ecumenical venture supported by various groups including  the Catholic Union of Great Britain  and Christian Projects. The idea is to help children to become familiar with the Lord's Prayer. I am compiling a report on the 2017 Project, but you can get the general idea by reading this report, produced some while ago.  We spent today reading through a vast batch of entries from the West of England, and then I stayed on to wrap and pack prizes for the best entries from schools in the Greater London area...

AND WALSINGHAM CALLS...

...with its summer pilgrimages. The Dominican sisters in the New Forest have reprinted the piece I wrote about their St John Paul Pilgrimage, which will be taking place in July...read here...

Today...

...more work on the research for the history project at St Mary's University, and a meeting to discuss it all. Enjoyable. I'm deep in documents and letters from the mid 19th century. Students working in the Library have been glad to help with lifting down boxes from the archives.  It does feel strange to be reading Victorian letters and reports, all in formal language and with a sense of structured dignity,  while surrounded by today's young men in their cotton caps with the peak hanging down the neck at the back and the little strap across the forehead, and girls in their carefully ripped jeans...

Just occasionally...

...you have a random conversation that is a reminder that there is normal life still happening in Britain.

A late evening visit to a supermarket, a chat with the young man working on the till. I expressed sympathy that he was working late and he was quite cheery "Only half an hour more. Then I'm off". I said I hoped there would be a good supper waiting  at home. He beamed "Mince, mash and beans. I don't like Shepherd's Pie, so my mum does it this way instead. We're having it tonight. My favourite."

A vile, sick internet troll...

...sent an anonymous Comment today, sneering at the Cavalry Memorial service that my husband attended yesterday with his regiment.  (see Blog post below).

Obviously I haven't published the Comment.

I think that some one who sneers at soldiers honouring their fallen comrades belongs to the lowest form of humanity, but I am making a public note of it to remind readers that such revolting specimens do exist.

If you were in London today...

...you would have seen a march-past, at Hyde Park Corner.

It was Cavalry memorial day, the annual commemoration of the unveiling of the monument to the war dead of Britain's cavalry regiments. This year marked the 93rd anniversary.

Dress is dark suit and bowler hat, with medals and and decorations. My husband spent yesterday evening getting his shoes to the right degree of shine.

The Form of Service has some strong prayers for peace and concludes with these words which I have copied down this evening for my readers.

The 'Last Post' and the 'Reveille' are two of the principal calls used every day in our Army. The 'Last Post' to denote the end of the day's labour and the army at rest, the 'Reveille', the call the dawn of another day.

From time immemorial it has been the custom of the Army, when her sons are laid to rest to pay as tribute the Greatest Honour the Army can bestow, the Presenting of Arms and the sounding of the 'Last Post' and from the highest to the lowest as the body is laid to rest, this great and last tribute is paid.

The 'Last Post' signifies that the Warrior's labours in this earthly life are over and the mortal remains are at rest. If this were the end it would indeed of itself be a worthy tribute to the Memory of one of her sons whom the Army desires to Honour. But this is not the end!

Throughout the ages the Church has taught the Great Message of the Christian Faith - Our Lord's assurance by His Sacrifice and Resurrection of the Life to come - and so today the Army in its simple ceremonial does not leave us at the end of the labours of the day and the darkness of the night but with the stirring call of the 'Reveille' bids us take Comfort and Hope in that great lesson of our faith - the assurance of the Resurrection.

In union with the Pope in Portugal....

...we filled St George's Cathedral in Southwark for Mass to mark the centenary of the Apparitions at Fatima. Tradition and pageantry ...a procession with Knights of Our Lady, and Knights and Dames of the Orders of the Holy Sepulchre and of St Gregory the Great...a vast congregation singing "Ave Ave Maria"...three small children dressed as the young visionaries...the Archbishop reminding us that we were united with what was taking place at that moment at the shrine in Fatima...

We had a large crowd...

...at last week's History Walk in Chelsea, walking in the footsteps of St Thomas More. I do have a loudspeaker system, but it is heavy to carry, so I mostly don't use it except for the annual Martyrs' Walk.  So I end each walk desperate to rest my voice and have a large mug of tea.

But anyway...come to the next HISTORY WALKS!!! Sunday May 21st at 3pm  and and Friday June 2nd at 6pm - come and discover Southwark.  Meet at the main door of St George's Cathedral. Nearest tube: WATERLOO or LAMBETH NORTH

And: WESTMINSTER - come and learn about Thomas More, Guy Fawkes, Pugin, and more...Thursday June 1st, meet 11.15am on the steps of WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL

And THE CITY. Meet on the steps of St Paul's, Wednesday June 14th. Two walks: a choice of times. 2pm and 6pm.

And the MARTYRS WALK - Sunday June 25th, meet 1.30pm in the churchyard of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate., OLD BAILEY. Nearest tube: St Paul's. we will walk the route to Tyburn...

I've ordered...

...this book, which promises a good read....

On Saturday I will be here at a special Mass marking the centenary of the events at Fatima.

Have you seen the latest issue of FAITH magazine which has a special feature on Fatima? Send me a Comment with your full postal address - which I will not publish - for a complimentary copy.

TAKING TO THE STREETS...

...with a splendid May Procession in South London,down Southwark Street by the Borough Market at London Bridge, and along the busy Borough High Street...singing "Ave Ave Maria..." with children scattering flowers before a statue of Mary held aloft by four strong chaps...all rather marvellous, our singing carried by loudspeakers, and the message brought home to all passers-by with small leaflets asking "What's going on?" and the simple explanation that we are honouring Christ's mother Mary in this month of May and  inviting people to join us...

There is something about doing this sort of thing in this particular corner of London, so rich in history, that gives it an added zest. It was along this route that Henry V's victorious army marched as they entered London after Agincourt, stopping at the bottom of the Borough High street to sing a Te Deum and then heading down to cross London Bridge and enter the city.   It was along this route that pilgrims set off for Canterbury again and again over the centuries, gathering at the George Inn or at the Tabard to eat before heading off down towards Kent...

To studio, for a discussion on...

...Premier Radio with Lisa Mainwaring...click on that link for more info...

Centenary of the 1917 events at FATIMA...

...and what the real message is all about, is the subject of the editorial in the May issue of FAITH magazine. It's not on-line yet...if you want a copy, send a Comment to this Blog WITH A FULL POSTAL ADDRESS TO WHICH THE MAGAZINE CAN BE SENT.

Also in the magazine: a special feature on Bl.Jerzy Popieluszko, a review by George Weigel of Pope Benedict's Last Testament, and more...

Auntie has a feature...

...as usual, in THE PORTAL, on-line magazine of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. You can read it here...