Several of my clerical colleagues shared videos or images of their celebrations of Corpus Christi celebrations on Thursday – grand church settings, socially-distanced processions in the streets around, altars laden with candles and flowers. At Swanvale Halt, for the second year, it was just me singing Evensong and offering Benediction.
Even something so apparently
uncomplicated has the potential to go awry. Having emailed and put on the website
an order of service, I remembered too late that I’d thought it would be nicer,
given that we were using the old 1662 Evensong pattern, to use the Prayer Book
versions of the Psalms – but that the printed copy I was using in church still
had the Common Worship texts. The microphone never seems to work that well no
matter where I put it. Finally it only struck me that the relative positions of
the camera, the Blessed Sacrament, and me, might mean a viewer would see more of
my head than the Sacramental Presence of the Lord, not something you can check
easily alone. But people should still have had a glimpse of Him.
To be honest though I have always enjoyed Benediction it’s
never been a big part of the diet in this church. Its incumbents had a hard
enough time trying to ease the Eucharist into being the central part of worship
every Sunday – a process which took fifty years or so regardless of all their
efforts – and by the time we entered the central stream of Anglican Catholicism
in the late 1960s that stream was full of post-Vatican 2 enthusiasm and gaily
junking such picturesque observances as Benediction anyway. Although my dreams
include parading round the streets of the parish with Jesus beneath a canopy surrounded
by so much incense you can’t see, we’re not going to get there. Just putting
down markers for the Real Presence is enough.
Benediction is far from common in the eastern half of the county too and the only church I can think of that possesses and uses a monstrance is Salfords, although Bletchingley reached the dizzy heights of a Corpus Christi procession a couple of times under the previous incumbent. A few South London parishes (and, strangely Southwark Cathedral) now use the devotion. You might expect more given the general Liberal Catholic tone of Southwark diocese, but until recently it tended to be very Prayer Book so extra liturgical devotions would not necessarily have been appreciated officially.
ReplyDeleteThank you, as ever, John. The former Dean told me how it tickled him to have persuaded Bishop Gladwin to celebrate Corpus Christi with Benediction at the Cathedral: the bishop's response to the suggestion was 'Well, if you think people will like it'. 'Now that the Bishop has taken part in what is technically an illegal service in his own cathedral', Fr Victor related, 'I think we are probably all safe'.
ReplyDelete