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Welcome to St Mary's the Virgin
By a monthly calendrical coincidence, the copy date for this esteemed organ of news and good cheer is the same day as British Gas ask me for the vicarage meter readings. This latter task entails getting into the cupboard under the stairs, moving various boxes of ‘Useful Things’, and then some crawling around with a torch.
After the great price hikes of the last few years we took the household decision to create a spreadsheet to keep track of the readings ourselves and be prepared better for the arrival of the bill. We discovered that this regular assessment of the readings got us to reassess, quite literally, exactly when and how we were spending our energy.
“Why,” I hear you cry, “is he telling us all this?” The reason gentle reader, is that by the time you browse these words Advent will be upon us. Churches all over the globe will alter their altars to have frontals of purple; the hymnology will become rather less triumphal, (at least theoretically – many churches follow the lead of supermarkets and lifts and begin singing carols as soon as Remembrance is safely passed); the readings will concentrate more upon prophecy and almighty judgement; all of which is the liturgical equivalent of asking you to take a meter reading of your soul.
Ponder it for a moment – how much energy are you spending, and when, on prayer?; on reading your Bible?; on working on the cardinal virtues of faith, hope and love?; caring for even the neighbours you might not like (– as one wise saint asked me only this week, “How do I pray for a man like ….?” [We try to be as apolitical as we can in Pilgrim’s Way, all I will say is the man’s name begins with D.]) as you care for yourself?
You needn’t crawl around, but it is worth always opening the understairs cupboards and the closets of our selves to the Lord who loves us. They are where we keep the skeletons of course, and therefore exactly the places Jesus would wish to shine His light upon, be born into, heal and transform.
Fr Neil.
