Joyous News from Oxford

Today we have the great pleasure of expressing our joy in the news that Mr Thomas Mason, a member of the Ordinariate Group in Oxford and friend of this group, has been accepted by the Ordinary for training and formation to the Catholic Priesthood, commencing in the Autumn.

Firstly we offer our hearty congratulations to him. But also we renew our thanksgiving to Almighty God for His continued blessings being poured out upon the Ordinariate and the Church in England, especially in sending new workers out into His vineyard in this year when the heart of the Curé d'Ars, universal patron of priests, visits these shores.

Thomas was received into Christ’s Church only last April, and serves as yet another potent reminder of the wonderful fruits that Anglicanorum Coetibus has brought in so little time. His commitment to the solemn and worthy celebration of the sacred liturgy has become the hallmark of those already ordained to serve in the Ordinariate. We think back with delight to the ordination of two other young former Anglicans, Frs Bradley and Lloyd, just a few months ago, and are renewed in our hope for the future of the Church in England.

Yet it is not only Thomas’s fidelity to the liturgical practices of the Church which gives us cause for joy. Like so many of the other young men presenting themselves for ordination, he is fiercely loyal to solid Catholic doctrine. This is the true fulfilment of the Oxford Movement in our age, which continues not to compromise with the prevailing dictatorship of relativism in modern British society, and continues to place the Gospel call to Christian Unity at the heart of its message.  This is the vision of the founding fathers of Anglo-Catholicism, that we might do rather more than just referencing the inherited Truths of Catholicism, and that we might live them and try to share them with others. 

Individuals who found themselves on the sure rock of Holy Mother Church will complete the conversion and restoration of England as Our Lady’s dowry.  Here you will find the Truth, the faith of the Apostles.  Here you find the Catholic faith cherished for the great gift that it is, not merely tolerated as one possible view among many.

We reaffirm, therefore, our commitment to pray for Thomas’s journey to ordination, asking the intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham, Bl John Henry, and S. Gregory the Great that he may grow in holiness and become conformed ever closer to the person of Christ the High Priest.

We know that Thomas is particularly keen on French organ and church music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  To celebrate this news, we include some examples of the genre below, so that we might all rejoice together and ask for God's blessing upon him.

First, the Incantation pour un Jour Saint writted by Jean Langlais.  This piece, at once mystical, symbolic and entirely vivid, is based on the Gregorian chant of the Lumen Christi, sung by the deacon on Holy Saturday, when during the Easter Vigil he processes into the darkened church with the Paschal Candle.  How appropriate for a new Catholic that we focus on the Easter Vigil (and indeed, Thomas's last visit to St James's was for our own Easter Vigil, upon which we reported in this widely read blogpost).



Next, the Gloria from Vierne's extraordinary Messe Solenelle.  Often thought of as a grand setting for grand days, or even as a concert piece, Vierne's work, while it does represent beautifully some of the French style of that period, was in fact one of the firm favourites of many French parish and cathedral choirs.  This then sits in perfect harmony with the liturgical tradition that Thomas is so keen to maintain - the best can always be offered, even in the simplest of settings, there is no reason or cause to offer less.  What makes this piece yet more suitable for today is that it was first sung for a mass on the Immaculate Conception in 1901, a feast so long honoured in England.  That Widor played the grand orgue of St Sulpice that day with Vierne at the orgue de choeur adds a level of colour that any devotee of French music of that period will adore. 



How else to conclude but with a Te Deum.  This, a well known and much loved recording of the plainchant of the Te Deum (as we sang at St James's only two Sundays ago) interspersed in an alternatim setting with the immense power of Pierre Cochereau's playing of the grand orgue of Notre Dame in Paris. 

Sacerdotes Domini

Another truly groundbreaking few days for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.  This weekend, for the first time in the Ordinariate, we witnessed the ordination to the Sacred Priesthood of former Anglicans who had never been Anglican priests.  This was a sign of progress, a sign of continuity and a sign of hope for the future.   Below you will see a picture of most of the Marylebone Ordinariate Group with the newly minted Fr James Bradley, then below you will see one of our number receiving one of Fr Daniel Lloyd's first blessings.

In April 2010, in our Anglican days, a small group of us from St Mary's Bourne St travelled up to Oxford to attend a conference on the subject of Anglicanorum Coetibus held in Pusey House.  In one of the breaks between the fascinating talks that day, we joked with The Revd Canon Dr Robin Ward, Principal of St Stephen’s House, as we pointed to two of his students, James Bradley and Daniel Lloyd, and together wondered, perhaps in fact only half in jest, if we were looking upon the last two catholic ordinands in the Church of England. 

I doubt that any of us there that day would have believed that only two years later, almost to the day, we would, as Catholics ourselves, be gathered in the magnificently restored St Patrick’s Soho Square to witness the ordination of those two young men into the Catholic priesthood at a service in which Dr Ward read from the Letter to the Hebrews of how Our Lord “learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”  Here is a photo of Dr Ward during the reading of that lesson, standing in the pulpit where, as he pointed out himself on his Facebook page, the great Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Servant of God, had once stood to preach.

As the two deacons lay prostrate before the altar and we invoked the prayers of Our Lady of Walsingham, the Holy Angels, the Saints and Blessed John Henry Newman, we did so with the confidence of those who had been guided by such prayers, and by the grace of God, into full union with Holy Mother Church.  At the moment Bishop Alan Hopes (himself a former Anglican) consecrated Fr Bradley and Fr Lloyd to the dignity of priesthood we gave heartfelt thanks that we had been brought to witness the ordination of the first two men not previously to have served in the Anglican priesthood to offer their service to God as priests in his Church in the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

In his homily, our Ordinary, Monsignor Keith Newton, quoted from ‘Aaron’ by George Herbert, the divine of our very own Anglican Patrimony.

Holiness on the head,
Light and perfection on the breast,
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead
To led them unto life and rest.
Thus are true Aarons dressed.

Profaneness in my head,
Defects and darkness in my breast,
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest.
Poor priest thus am I dressed.

Only another head
I have, another heart and breast,
another music, making live not dead,
without whom I could have no rest:
In him I am well dressed.

Christ is my only head,
My alone only heart and breast,
My only music, striking me even dead;
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in him new dressed.

So holy in my head,
Perfect and light in my dear breast,
My doctrine tuned by Christ, (who is not dead,
But lives in me while I do rest)
Come people; Aaron's dressed.

We have included a large number of photos of Saturday's Ordination Mass in an album on our group's Facebook site (which you can reach through the link on the right-hand toolbar of this blog - do sign up to "like" our group page if you haven't already done so).  A small selection of our favourite photos is set out below.  For those readers with a connection to St Mary's Bourne St and St Barnabas Pimlico, you might recognise below the Very Reverend John Salter in one of the pictures, another former Anglican, and since 2002 a Melkite priest in full communion with Rome.

After each ordination to the Sacred Priesthood, there is always a First Mass.  Members of the Marylebone Ordinariate Group managed to attend Fr Bradley's FIrst Mass in Balham, and Fr Lloyd's First Mass in Oxford.

As feeble and ignorant Central Londoners, we do not know much of what lies beyond Zone 1, and we referred to this on our blogpost about our previous visit to the parish of Holy Ghost, Balham.  Therefore, there were, we regret to confess, those of us who were unaware that true beauty might be found in Balham.  It may famously be the Gateway to the South, but it is not widely known as the Stairway to Heaven.  Some of us trod our way rather warily from W1 to SW12, the marbled magnificence of St Patrick’s Soho Square fresh in our minds.  What a wonderful surprise lay in store for us, for there in Nightingale Square at the Church of the Holy Ghost we found a haven of beauty that should be a compulsory stop on the itinerary of every church architect and parish priest in the land wishing to discover what can be achieved with taste and simplicity.

One would have described it as tranquil but we arrived just as the congregation from an earlier mass was leaving, and the area was awash with small and excited children.  We are not so small but were just as excited as we were about to witness the First Mass of Fr James Bradley, whose ordination we had witnessed on Saturday.

There are few occasions more joyful in church than the First Mass of a priest.  In his homily Fr Stephen Langridge was to remind us of Blessed Theresa of Calcutta's injunction to priests to “celebrate each Mass as if it were your first Mass and your last Mass” and when we witness the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass being offered at the hands of a newly-ordained priest it is as if we too share in it for the first time.

After the rich liturgical diet of the Sacred Triduum at St James’s, Spanish Place, and yesterday’s ordination one could be forgiven for becoming a touch jaded, especially upon hearing of rumours of guitars in church (ever an uncomfortable reminder of the worst excesses of some of the more popular misinterpretations of the Second Vatican Council).  Yet again would Balham prove the folly of blind prejudice. The songbirds themselves were surely listening in awed silence as the sound of Padilla's Missa Ego Flos Campi and Guerrero's Regina Caeli floated, accompanied by authentic Spanish instruments in their correct context.

On leaving the church, one parishioner was overheard saying to another "What is this Ordinariate then?".  Her friend replied "Oh, it's what they call the Church of England nowadays."  This reminded us of the challenge continually ahead of us, that of spreading the word about what the Ordinariate is and what it does.  Efforts such as mentioned here must continue to be made (we know that there are plans afoot to do exactly this).  Yet, perhaps that casual remark between friends was closer to the truth than we had at first recognised - where else now was that vision of the Church of England to which we in our Anglo-Catholic days had adhered?

We returned to Marylebone humbled, joyful and full of thanksgiving for the start of the ministry of Fr Bradley.

We will report on the happy occasion of Fr Daniel Lloyd's First Mass in the next few days.  Thanks be to God for giving us these two new priests. 

Sacerdotes Domini incensum et panes offerunt Deo et ideo sancti erunt Deo et non polluent nomen eius. 

The priests of the Lord offered bread and incense to God and therefore they shall be holy to their God and shall not defile his name.