Newsletter 14th June 2020.
Today we keep the feast of Corpus Christi, the Sunday after Trinity Sunday. Normally we commemorate the institution of the Eucharist as part of the Mass of the Last Supper on the evening of Maundy Thursday. There are many things to think about on this evening and so after the completion of the Easter Season, the Church has a special feast to give thanks for the gift of the body and blood of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine. At one time this feast was kept on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday but in recent times it has been moved to the following Sunday.
I hope that all of you and your families are keeping well and managing to cope with all the problems.
From Monday, we are able to open the Church for private prayer. I have put a special page on the web site explaining the rules. I will see how this works during the first week. If it is popular and the rules are obeyed, we can continue. As yet not firm decisions as to when we can start Masses once again although the date of 5th July has been mentioned. I will keep you informed about this. One problem is that due to distancing rules, the number of people allowed to enter the Church will be limited and it may be necessary to arrange an additional Mass. Your thoughts on this would be welcome. I am thinking of 5pm on Sunday.
In the diary I see a date for the parish council for 16th June but obviously this cannot take place. We are thinking of arranging a Zoom meeting once the regulations are published so that we can decide how we should proceed.
The coming week is celebrated as the Eleventh week in ordinary time. The green vestments come out once again.
Friday is the feast of the Sacred Heart, which is always celebrated on Friday after Corpus Christi. I always think of this as the celebration of the human nature of Christ – and try to think of the details in the gospel – the type of clothes that he wore – the food and drink that he enjoyed – the things that he carried about – many details in the gospels if you look carefully and they make a fascinating picture.
A prayer for Corpus Christi:
Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived;
How says trusty hearing? That shall be believed;
What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth himself speaks truly, or there nothing’ true.
(Not the familiar hymn but a translation by Gerard Manley Hopkins of the original Latin hymn attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas).
Some baby spinach is growing in my pots so I tried to make some oeufs Florentines. Make a white sauce with some margarine, flour and milk and remember to add a little pepper and salt. Meanwhile cook the spinach and drain it very well. Poach an egg in some boiler water, adding a drop of vinegar so that the water swirls. Place the spinach on a bed of white sauce and add pinch of nutmeg to the spinach. Add the lightly poached egg with a sprinkle of cayenne pepper. This will impress your guests.
Various things happening in the garden with some new plants. A cucumber seemed to be doing it well until I sprayed it with soapy water to kill of the bugs. It almost killed it off, but it seems to be recovering. Please to find some cherries on the tree. The basil has not been looking very well of late and I am helping it to grow some new shoots. May be time to start again with some new seeds – thanks to Barry for these!
Probably you may have watched some ancient films in recent weeks. The Police Inspectors all have moustaches and wear double breasted suites and Homberg hats. They drive about in portly Wolseley cars. The stories are usually rubbish but some interesting details. One of the films recently showed passengers waiting for a bus on route 24. They boarded an RTL which would have been correct for Sunday services on this route between October 1952 and May 1953. However, in pulling away from the stop, the bus had morphed into an SRT with an FJJ registration number. (You need to be a nerd to understand this!)
After extensive building works, the boy and his sister are back in their normal house. They were away from home for many weeks. They are delighted with their new rooms, arranging everything, including a vast collection of Lego and the complete Harry Potter books. Alexia is at hand to help with difficult homework questions. I understand that some children have found away to put a fixed picture into the Zoom camera which gives the impression that they are giving full attention to the lesson, though in fact they are wandering off to do other more interesting things.
Here is David Holbrook on his Supervisor:
- His supervisor can be seen any Friday
- Walking up Trumpington Street with an odd movement of the feet,
- Still looking line an old corm, lissom, and knowing
- Uncannily what’s good, what’s bad,
- And probably rather hard up out of the bargain.
Now some learned thoughts from Eliot:
Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience: it modified his sensibility. When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped to its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience …… in the mind of the poet experiences are always forming new wholes.
Keep well and I very much look forward to seeing you all when we can open the Church fully once again.
With best wishes,
Monsignor Nicholas Rothon