The Incarnation is not only for Christmas

The Feast of the Visitation has been, historically, a slightly odd one for those who have had an association with St Mary's Bourne St.  The month of May was never seen out with any great festivity, which you would at first think was unusual for a church in the highest of Anglo-Catholic traditions, dedicated to Our Lady, indeed thus dedicated on the Feast of the Visitation in 1874.  In fact there is a very good explanation.

Unlike so many of the apparently unusual traditions of individual parishes around the world, there was no secret behind this, there had been no loss of the rationale for this seemingly strange omission (although it must be admitted that the number of people "in the know" is not high).  The church was dedicated on the Feast of the Visitation according to the pre-1969 calendar, when this fell on 2 July, hence it always seemed slightly superfluous to hold another grand service on the 31 May.  Therefore, it had been practice since shortly after the calendar changes to observe the Visitation in a slightly low key way, given the bonanza to follow later in the year. 

Indeed, even although our friends at Bourne St now do mark the Visitation on 31 May in more style than in our time (and, on that note, we take the opportunity to wish the vicar a very happy birthday), the first weekend in July is still a time of great festivities there: founders and benefactors are commemorated on the Saturday, and a great procession around the parish accompanies the usual Sunday morning rituals. 

Whether the day is marked today and/or according to an older calendar, it is indeed a cause for great joy. Even if circumstances mean that we no longer agree on everything and are sadly no longer in communion, we have no difficulty at all in saying that our friends at Bourne St will be entirely right to include a Marian procession through the streets in their plans for early July.   The day should be marked with celebration and happiness.

Indeed, the first weekend of July holds a particular significance for us, as it was the occasion of our own parting of friends last year.....but we will say much more on that in around a month.

All that ecumenical introduction serves as explanatory background to the fact that we are not yet used to marking the Visitation at the end of May.  In this instance, we cannot attribute the lack of familiarity to strange Catholic practices, nor to clinging on to Anglican habits: the root cause lies in the parochial traditions of our former home.

The Visitation is a time of great rejoicing, commemorating not only the joyful leap of St John the Baptist in his mother's womb, but also the incarnation itself.  It is very easy to make the mistake of thinking that we celebrate the incarnation at Midnight Mass, and that that's enough : we do indeed celebrate the incarnation then, but the incarnation is not only about a signficant date of birth, but as the greatest of acts (all the more so for being an act of humbling abasement), it is rightly marked through the Annunciation, through the Visitation and all throughout the Church's year.

Without the incarnation there would have been no Holy Week and Easter, indeed even Pentecost, which we marked last week, would have been rather different.  The incarnation is a wonder that affects every day in the calendar, pre or post 1969, and it is absolutely correct to give thanks for it at all times.   

I mentioned above the celebrations of the Visitation in July (even if technically the event is now a commemoration of the anniversary of the dedication of a church).  Well, to make my point about the need to mark the incarnation throughout the year, I want to (appear to) be even more unseasonal and include Betjeman's well-known poem Christmas, another example of Anglican Patrimony.  The poem talks about all the ways in which Christmas is celebrated, and the things that people fixate upon, and concludes by noting that really what counts is miraculous yet rather simple.  The same can be said at any time of year, there is this single Truth that underpins so much of the Truth that the Church is blessed to proclaim.

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

The Gospels all flow from that single Truth, and we do well at all times and in all places to ensure that we ponder it in our hearts all year round, not just when the London shops are strung with silver bells and flowers.

The Visitation is a timely feast in its current position because it gives us one more chance to honour Our Lady in this her special month of May - not, of course, that we should desist from honouring her outside of May.  Time then for two pieces of music.  The first, a piece of Anglican Patrimony, the Magnificat, today's song, as set by Stanford in his Evening Service in C, and as sung at the Ordinariate's first anniversary celebrations at St James's in January this year.  The second: I just couldn't resist one last outing this year for Frank Patterson and Bring Flowers of the Rarest, a true May hymn. 

Tomorrow, our devotions turn towards the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the burning love of the incarnate one.  For tonight though, let us rejoice with Our Lady, and give thanks for her role in the incarnation.

May Devotion

Between the 1030 and 1200 masses at St James's yesterday, the main act in the parish's May Devotion took place, a procession accompanied by the singing of hymns.  This is an act of worship that is extremely familiar to former regulars at St Mary's Bourne St. 

At the start of each May there, originally on a Sunday evening but then switched to be part of the main Sunday morning service in the late 1990s, a procession takes place around the parish (we have previously included some photos of this event c1992, including images of Fr Nicholas Kavanagh, now one of the parish clergy at St James's, in his Anglican days).  There was therefore something not only comforting and familiar, but also reinvigorating about seeing afresh a well known and loved devotion in what was undoubtedly its right and fullest setting.

Although the Bank Holiday Weekend around Easter had not seemed to have any adverse impact on the attendance figures at the Triduum at St James's, this Bank Holiday had clearly taken its toll on the usually impressive numbers at the 0930 Extraordinary Form Mass, the 1030 Solemn Latin Mass and the 1200 Mass.  Yet, squeezed in between the 1030 and the 1200, crowds appeared, seemingly from nowhere, to boost the throng and to join in this act of loving devotion to Our Most Blessed Mother. 

The St James's parish notes had prepared us for the event.  They had reflected on what is meant by natural law, a concept that seems so much to enrage critics of the Church.  There are some things that are quite simply right, that are known to be way that things are and must be.  For example, you do not need to be a Catholic or even a Christian to be aware that "Thou shalt not kill" is something that we all know to be right.  Those who talk of "just war", and yes even those who talk of euthanasia or capital punishment, all share the same premise that their case argues for a derogation from what we know to be right, what we know to be the normal and natural state of things. 

If we then turn to take another Commandment "Honour thy father and mother" and look at it in the same light of natural law, then we can say that devotion to Our Lady is utterly and completely natural and right.  Fr Colven, in those parish notes, advanced this argument as follows :

Somehow, in our Western secularised societies, Christians, and particularly Catholics, have to rebuild a credible presentation of natural law so that people begin once again to discover that right and wrong are not wholly relative terms – that there is such a thing as the objectivity (and, to quote Pope John Paul, the “splendour”) of truth.

Where do we begin this process? Perhaps we have within the Catholic tradition an emphasis which most people can recognise within their own life experience. The fourth of the Commandments (and the first to have a promise attached to it) is “honour your father and mother”. It is instinctive to respect and to love those who have given us life and nurtured its formative stages: this is not merely a matter of duty, but something which engages the heart and the emotions at so many levels - the general discomfort which is felt at the prospect of family breakdown, divorce, one parent homes, children in care, etc. only serves to underline the “naturalness” of maternal, paternal and familial relationships: this is what is expected and wanted, even when it is not found.

We know that Marian devotion has gone hand in hand with Christian orthodoxy – that as the Church began to understand (and define) the mystery of Jesus Christ in the first centuries of its life, it found that if had to speak about the woman in whom the incarnation had taken place. The authenticity of Christ’s humanity was (and is) guaranteed by a focus on the creature called to be his Mother. This focus is so much more than the theological emphasis from which it proceeds for, just as it is a basic instinct to love our own mothers, so it is the Christian instinct to love the Mother of Jesus. In so doing, we are caught up into something of the warmth of relationship shared by Jesus and Mary – “behold your Mother”. During Mary’s month of May it does us well to ponder the “naturalness” of Marian devotion and to see it as a potentially powerful tool in evangelisation – something that rings true to human experience, and can be the way to open up other avenues of shared understanding. Think about it!

The music at Mass yesterday led us towards the feast of Marian hymns that was to be a part of the procession.  The Offertory Motet was Croce's joyful and boisterous setting of the Regina Coeli, seen here being conducted by a university contemporary of mine (and fellow Pusey House musician) in preparation for a service at the Anglican cathedral in Southwark. 



Once the procession was underway, two great favourites were sung.  First of all, the Lourdes Hymn, the second verse of which we had not had the opportunity to sing in our previous existence as Anglicans.  How appropriate then, on a Sunday where the Gospel reading talked of the True Vine, the relationship between us and Christ, and thereby the relationship we have with Christ and His Church (the two not being mutually exclusive), that we should find ourselves singing this verse in the full Communion of His Holy Catholic Church. 

We pray for God's glory,
May His Kingdom come,
We pray for His Vicar,
Our Father, and Rome,
Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!
Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!

The other hymn in the procession was a hymn that has featured very recently on this blog, including in our most recent post.  However, that is no reason not to include it one more time.



The last hymn, sung after the blessing and dismissal, was a hymn that again featured on the St Mary's Bourne St Facebook site last year, and how lovely it was to hear it again, now in a setting where it feels so very natural, so very much the way of things in the entire Church.  It is no longer the territory of a particular wing, but the song of the whole. 



A few photos of this happy day follow below.   A few more can be found on our Facebook page.  Most Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Walsingham, Help of Christians, pray for us and for all thy children. 

Look Down in Mercy Upon England thy Dowry

Former Anglo-Catholics now in the communion of the Catholic Church are no strangers to Marian devotion.  What has changed is that this practice, which in our Anglican days was felt to be extreme, and was seen as something indulged in by a minority group, is now conducted in union with the whole Church, as part of the mainstream.

That is in no way to denigrate the devotion to Our Lady which existed, and in many circles still does exist, in the Church of England.  One year ago, the Facebook group page of our former Anglican parish contained a link to exactly the same youtube video as we now include below (you may have noted on this blog a weakness for Frank Patterson's performances of Catholic hymns, for example here, co-incidentally the hymn sung after Mass at St James's last Sunday).  All people have recourse to Our Lady and to the power of her intercession on our behalf, and is that not indeed one of the most wonderful things about her.



Yet in those days, it was something that we knew was not widespread in our ecclesial environment.  Other parishes and other clergy would view the May Procession at Bourne St as something eccentric, as something unfamiliar and exotic.  In all honesty, it must be admitted that some of the congregation were rather bewildered by it too: although there, all credit must be given to those who were, and are, so determined to carry on with this longstanding tradition, something which tells so powerfully, so visually and so audibly of the solid Catholic tradition of devotion to Our Lady.

One of the first large scale public events to occur involving the Ordinariate after our reception into the Catholic Church was the annual Rosary Crusade of Reparation.  If anything showed our new place in the order of things, and the solidity of the welcome given to us in the Catholic Church as Ordinariate members, that early event did, with Monsignor Newton leading the long procession from Westminster Cathedral to the London Oratory.  Photos of that great day can be seen here on our group's Flickr site and here on the Flickr site of the Ordinariate itself.  We are no longer at the edge of things, we are very much part of the core.

Much credit has been given to the Holy Father for his vision in bringing about the Ordinariates now springing up around the world.  We must give thanks not only for this, but also for the intercession of Blessed John Henry Newman and of Our Most Blessed Lady, since Anglicanorum Coetibus has allowed us and well over a thousand like us in England alone, to work together in Unity. 

We have said before that Ordinariate members should take Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman to their hearts, a wise Prince of the Church who showed great favour to Anglicans joining the Catholic Church.  We have also exhausted the airwaves by posting his hymn Full in the Panting Heart of Rome more than a few times.   On this the eve of Mary's month of May, perhaps his prayer for the Conversion of England is the most suitable way to conclude the opening blogpost of this special month.

O BLESSED VIRGIN MARY,
Mother of God and our most gentle Queen and Mother,
look down in mercy upon England thy "Dowry"
and upon us all who greatly hope and trust in thee.
By thee it was that Jesus our Saviour and our hope was given unto the world;
and He has given thee to us that we might hope still more.
Plead for us thy children,
whom thou didst receive and accept at the foot of the Cross,
O sorrowful Mother.
Intercede for our separated brethren,
that with us in the one true fold
they may be united to the supreme Shepherd, the Vicar of thy Son.
Pray for us all, dear Mother,
that by faith fruitful in good works
we may all deserve to see and praise God,
together with thee, in our heavenly home. Amen.