Just back from a lovely service which celebrated both the new year and also today’s feast day. Today is the Feast of the Holy Name, which is what used to be called the Feast of the Circumcision. Sure enough, eight days on from Christmas, Jesus had to be named and we gathered together today for a Sung Mass to celebrate that and pray for the year ahead.
Somehow I managed to return wearing odd shoes. Anyone know how that happened?
Was one of them brown? Oh, the horror!
Happy New Year.
You will never, never live this down. Happy New Year anyway. Failure is attractive…
High heels?
Oh, some of you think I celebrate Holy Mass wearing the shoes I go to church in do you?
Certainly not – there are a lovely highly polished pair in the Sacristy that are worn for the actual holy mysteries themselves.
The problem only came to light when taking off the Footwear of Holiness to wear the Shoes of the Street.
I think if you do that kind of thing on 1 January you have to continue it all year.
Watch out all you organists – Frikki, Peter and Matthew – and any others who might be seated one day at the cathedral organ – your jobs are in danger. Today at the New Year’s Day service the Provost proved himself to be a one man band – he played the small portable organ, he was the cantor, he gave a small sermonette and before the service he stood outside in the cold to welcome people in. Should – or could – a provost do any more for his congregation? It was only after the service that he realised he was wearing different coloured shoes but who cares and who noticed anyway?
Wot – no postlude? Shame on you, Provost. You were probably afraid we might have burst into spontaneous applause.
As long as they were both flats and one wasn’t one of your Christian Louboutin’s you probably got away with it.
I was going to accuse you of being a ‘Réformiste’ (* see below) celebrating the Feast of the Holy Name on 1 January when I was thinking you’d keep the feast on 7 August; but the trusty Catholic Encyclopedia tells us there were many dates – though 7 August does have a Scottish connection (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07420a.htm)
* I was once on a train with an American Jewish woman who told me that she’d been an exchange student in France – Lyons, I think. When asked by an elderly French woman at the synagogue what sort of synagogue she attended at home in the US, she replied that it was a Reformed one – upon which the elderly woman spat on her and hissed ‘Réformiste!’. As you can imagine, this term of endearment is quite useful when dealing with clergy who make calendrical changes 😉
As for the shoes, something only the angels can tell you, I suspect!
BTW, Fr Kelvin, Happy Epiphany!