Salutary Effects

At Swanvale Halt we have a vestry prayer before the Eucharist begins. It's all very well but a bit unfocused, rather along the lines of 'Oh God you are really lovely, help us to remember that you are really lovely'. Back in the days of the old English Missal the vestry prayer was a means for the priest to make his own confession and be absolved before absolving everyone else, something I rather like as it emphasises our human solidarity in sin and forgiveness, and makes it possible for the laypeople (acting together) to pronounce God's forgiveness over an ordained person. So for Lent I introduced a new prayer including that element along with other very, very trad bits taken from the old pre-service Prayers at the Foot of the Altar.

We've now done this a few times and I wondered how comfortable people really were with it. I wondered how comfortable I was with it, for that matter, and thought perhaps I shouldn't have bothered. Then yesterday morning for the first time Alan, our retired priest, presided, and so he said the confession and was absolved by the rest of us. How moving it was to hear someone, one other person, making an admission of sinfulness and being absolved. If that's how I felt in my agitated state (I am usually far from calm on a Sunday morning a minute or two before Mass), perhaps others felt the same.