Notes To Self

The list of 'things that we must do differently next year' has grown and grown as this Holy week has gone on, moving inexorably forward beneath (almost) clear blue skies. I have been intending to get a proper, nice iron brazier for the New Fire rather than the increasingly ratty movable barbeque we have been managing with since we first celebrated the Easter Vigil in 2010, but I still haven't managed it and it remains on the list. I have noticed things that need changing with the orders of service for almost every liturgy, and come 2023 (if we are all spared) I will be doing some new things in Holy week, replacing the three Meditations with Compline we used to run, and which I haven't done this year as post-pandemic I thought most of our usual takers wouldn't be around. And minutes before the Liturgy of the Passion on Good Friday, I found myself racing around the church trying to find the gold velvet-covered bucket of stones we wedge the big wooden cross in for people to venerate. I couldn't, and had to improve with another bucket, and other stones. we need something other than a bucket next time round.

I am, though, finding it hard to summon up any spiritual thoughts; not that this is an abnormal situation. The Chrism Mass at the cathedral was bearable enough: we now all collect little bottles of the holy oils, so the days are long gone when the aisle leading to the little side chapel where the oils were being siphoned out of big jars into bottles, pots, or whatever we'd brought, were strewn with the bodies of fellow clergy Il Rettore had elbowed aside. 'Do you include the Solemn Reception of the Oils in the Maundy Thursday mass?' the Dean had asked me when I went to make my confession on Monday; we did, I said. 'well, that makes you and one other church in the diocese, I think.' I got back to the church, reached into my bag to retrieve the oils, and found my hand had brought out two, and a bottle of First Defence instead. It's a long week. Other anti-cold medicaments are available.