A Chrism Mass, or Something

Several of my colleagues of The Other Integrity have been posting pictures this Holy Week of the Chrism Masses they've attended with the Bishop of Oswestry or His Grace of Fulham all wearing nice Roman vestments and cohorts of clergy in concelebration gear. I doubted I would do the same for ours from Guildford, although the occasion is less trying than it once used to be since the suppression of the clergy music group who used to accompany the worship: the cathedral musicians wrested back control in a coup and the Mass sounds much the better for it.

But why wasn't the Bishop presiding? He preached, but left Her Serenity the Dean actually to celebrate the Eucharist. To be fair he is a very efficient preacher, although on this occasion I remembered his introductory gambit 'If you met Jesus in your parish, would you invite him to dinner?' and my attention wandered after that, I fear. But really part of the point of the Chrism Mass is that the Bishop celebrates with their presbyters around them, as was the case in the first few centuries of the Church: it isn't just to 'celebrate ministry' (which now includes laypeople who we are all encouraged to bring along) and pick up three small bottles of oil. In fact Bishop Andrew always used to delegate the Mass to the Bishop of Dorking, but even in those circumstances it at least expressed something of the idea of shared episkope between the two. Even most generously interpreted, that can't encompass the Dean. Could it possibly be that the Bishop thinks it's more important to signal inclusion by making sure a woman presides at an all-diocese eucharist, rather than do what the Chrism Mass is actually there for? Could he really have that 'thin' an appreciation of what he does?

(Mind you, a few years' time and we may all have to go somewhere else for the event anyway)