Lauda Sion

Doth it pass thy comprehending?

Faith, the law of sight transcending

Leaps to things not understood.

Here beneath these signs are hidden

Priceless things, to sense forbidden,

Signs, not things, are all we see.

We celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi on June 11 in grand High Church style. We were a little bit light on altar servers but we had a great crowd for once. We were treated to a wealth of wonderful music in our choir's last appearance for the season, starting with the Mass in g-minor of Ralph Vaughan Williams and the motet O sacrum convivium by Thomas Tallis. Canon Osgood gave a very entertaining and edifying sermon, and we also had the Rev. Woodward from London in quire as well as Deacon Paul, so it was a lively event that went pretty well considering we didn't have a rehearsal. It was Craig's last appearance as MC and by the time it was over he seemed to be glad that the mantle had been lifted from his shoulders and I even felt a little envious of his newfound freedom, I must say. Our other retiring MC Frank was not able to attend, sadly, and it was the end of 22 years of altar service for him and about 10 for Craig at St. Ignatius and close to ten at SMV before that. In spite of all the arguments we have had over the years, I will miss their wisdom and grace under fire.

The procession and Benediction after Solemn Mass was the usual near chaos but we managed to wing our way through it even with the mixed signals and sotto voce stage directions from several quarters. The immortal words of Fr Wells again echoed in my mind a few times, wondering "will we ever learn how to do Benediction?" We had no torches but we did have two thurifers, I being one of them, and we had pretty good smoke up until we got back to the altar for the Tantum ergo (Elgar). There was just too much music, as beautiful as it was, having started out with Elgar's O salutaris hostia, then processing around slowly and by the start of the Tantum Ergo my coals were dead and we still had to get through the Te Deum (Vaughan Williams). The second thurifer had better luck with the bigger thurible, so we had a respectable amount of smoke, but not nearly as much as you should have for a Te Deum. It was really too much to add that on after Benediction and it made the service 2 hours and 20 minutes long, which is almost as long as the Easter Vigil. It was glorious but I think Te Deums should be done either on Trinity or at the Feast of Dedication. A hymn to end Corpus Christi is a lot more reasonable even for someone who generally says too much ain't enough.

Now we are into summer and everything is much simpler, with just one sung mass on Sundays. There are no urgent building projects at the moment so I have finally found some time to get back to my candle recycling project and have been spending one night a week in the kitchen making bottle candles and votives from melting down old candle stubs and paschal candles. We have amassed quite a bit of wax the past few years and it's a shame to let it go to waste. It's actually rather fun now that I've gotten the hang of it. Keeps me off the streets anyway.