What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Change your life

    [This post is reposted from a previous year. No-one who has ever kept the triduum with me has ever told me that what I promised fell short of their experience].

    Every year I make a promise to people. I say that if they keep the triduum with me at St Mary’s then it will change their life and change their faith.

    The Triduum is the three days from Maundy Thursday to Easter Day. Although the various services take place over several days, it is really one big feast, which is what makes it so extraordinary when you keep it in one place and experience the whole thing. It really is life changing stuff.

    I blogged a bit about it [one] year, and it might be worth pointing people to those blog posts:

    Maundy Thursday
    Veneration of the Cross
    Three Hour Devotions
    Good Friday Evening
    Holy Saturday – all hands on deck!
    The Vigil

    I’d say you’d kept the Triduum with me if you come to the Maundy Thursday evening service, two of the three services on Good Friday (try for the three hours if you can), the clean and polish on Saturday and the early fire Vigil and the main Festival Mass on Sunday.

    It really is life-changing if you do it all and there are people around who will testify to just that.

5 responses to “The Convent”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I really enjoyed the programme, looking forward to the next part.

    Couldn’t help grinning all the way through though thinking of you and a certain remark about convents and nuns from last year!

    Reply
  2. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    “wish more people did it”
    I tried to post a comment here, but it disappeared…

    anyway, I just said, be careful, because I’m scared I may get “itchy feet” again and want to reexamine looking at monastic life.

    I was disappointed by how rude two of the people were, but the sincerity of the lady who had been hurt by her family and was “afraid of God” was amazing stuff.

    Reply
  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Monastic Life
    I thought about monastic life at one point. However, when I went to a monastery to consider it more thoroughly I was stricken with a plague of boils and ended up being told to flee by a doctor. Notwithstanding my hesitation about the possibility of God meddling any more with humanity than by God’s becoming incarnate, there was no arguing with a plague of boils and I never went back.

    Reply
  4. Mark Avatar
    Mark

    Hey, but I never got boils! And as I was saying to Fr Philip last week it was that very experience in the monastery that has left a mark on the rest of my life. I simply don’t want to play along with materialism to the same extent anymore…

    Reply
  5. Moyra Avatar
    Moyra

    It was certainly interesting watching from an insider’s point of view…

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Sermon – 19 June 2005

    The gospel reading that we have just had represents a collection of proverbs and remembered sayings of Jesus Christ. You can almost imagine people sitting round and each tossing in a memory of what Jesus had once said which made them think. As such, it is not a terribly easy thing to preach on and…

  • New Archbishop of York

    A cautious welcome to the appointment of the new Archbishop of York, the Rt Rev John Sentamu. He became the Area Bishop in East London where I worked for a while. Margeret, to whom Bishop John is married, was the Selection Secretary on the Selection Conference which I attended when applying to have my vocation…

  • Recovery

    I am almost recovered from attending the grumpiest synod that I remember. Things were mostly calm in the hall itself, but arguments were erupting all around. Little fires that would not go out all over the place. This is a result of unresolved conflict coming to the surface.