I’m not at all sure that we really lived up to the Feast of Corpus Christi this morning. I was rushing around just before the service looking for bread and wine and wondering how on earth we were going to celebrate this particular feast day without them. I’ve a feeling that Thomas Aquinas who thought up with this particular feast would have been less than impressed.
We could have done with a jolly hymn at the 11 am. It is all very well being a church with no hymnbooks on a Sunday, but how do you sing a jolly hymn without them at a midweek feast? Plan ahead, I suppose.
Off tonight to St M and All SS in Edinburgh for the flinging of rose petals and thuribles. Its the perfect way to spend a summer evening.
Corpus Christi
I recall in 1990 whilst the Cathedral was full of scaffolding, we had a full Choral (unaccompanied) High Mass in the evening. I remember Kenny Macaulay, in his sermon, considering the theology of a Unitied States Submarine called the USS Corpus Christi.
This was also a practice for the choir who the following evening assembled to head up to Oban for the Choir Tour – seven unaccompanied services in a day. Matins in Oban and Inverness; Mass in Aberdeen; Evensong in Dundee and Perth; and finally Compline in Edinburgh and Glasgow. By the time we had finished – even those of us in the support crew – we were shattered. My (then) financee joined us in Inverness having taken the overnight sleeper to Inverness as she was at University in Bath at the time.
I mourn the passing of the Sung (evening) High Mass and was thinking about it this evening on my journey home.
It was wonderful seeing you. I’m just so sorry I couldn’t stay and chat (leave house for work quite early!).