A cramped room, in use as a storage place...

...and we gathered around a makeshift altar on which a cross  was placed in the glow of candles. There was just enough room for Fr Chris to celebrate the sacred mysteries. One saw things normally missed because glimpsed only from a distance: somehow with this nearness the greater depths were sensed. Only once or twice in my life have I been at a Mass liked this, and, as with the other times, it made the  actions seem somehow more richly sacred because of their very simplicity.  The Scripture readings - Abraham and the covenant established - then Offertory and petition...water and wine, and  slips of wafer-bread... .Christ's words...a gleaming chalice lifted high, a sacrifice... God's plan from the beginning fulfilled in time and in eternity...

When the church's renovation is complete - already the pews are back, the marble floor looks superb, the final work is being done on the sanctuary and its baldachino - it will all look glorious. But I think we will have special and powerful memories of these days, with their faint faint echoes of  early Christians gathered in pagan Rome in secret, of Mass said with domestic clutter not far away, of the best and most supreme of prayers wafting heavenwards amid the ordinary...