• Midnight Mass Sermon 2012

    I don’t know whether you are ready.

    I do know that this year, for me, the cumulative effects of coming back from sabbatical just recently and then succumbing to one of the nasty bugs that has been going around the city at the end of last week, has meant that my pre-Christmas rush this year seemed to be condensed not simply into a couple of days but a couple of hours.

    Cesar Augustus may have decreed that everyone was to return to their own town to be counted for a census, but this year the Provost of St Mary’s has decreed that henceforth, all Christmas Cards shall be known as Epiphany Cards and that everyone who receives them shall be grateful.

    In short, my planning has gone a little awry.

    Thus, I found myself at lunchtime today in one of the nearest shops to where I live. It is a greengrocer and I had to decide that most of my Christmas food shopping this year was going to be bought right then and right there or not be bought at all.

    As I bundled veg into my basket, the proprietor looked at me and raised an eyebrow. (more…)

3 responses to “Thurible Spotting”

  1.  Avatar
    Anonymous

    Re: Thurible Spotting
    Just a small correction – Big Aggie came from Glasgow's Catholic Apostolic Church, not Edinburgh.  But who has the Edinburgh o­ne?

  2.  Avatar
    Anonymous

    Re: Thurible Spotting
    Thanks for the correction Ruth – I have no idea who has the Edinburgh o­ne. Wouldn't it be wonderful to get them all together for a service? Is the Glasgow CA church building still extant? I don't even know where it was.
    There is a rather odd offshoot of the CA Church called the New Apostolic Church which exists in Scotland in Dunfermline, but they do not seem to have taken o­n the powerful aesthetic of the Catholic Apostolic church. It is wonderful that the two thuribles from Glasgow and Dundee are different – no mass production in those days.

  3.  Avatar
    Anonymous

    Re: Thurible Spotting
    The Catholic Apostolic Church in Glasgow was in McAslan St in Townhead. The building was apparently designed by AWN Pugin but was demolished in 1970. There’s a photograph of the interior in The City that Disappeared by Frank Worsdall

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