Here's the preaching of the resurrection from this morning's Great High Mass.

If Christ were not risen, we would not be gathered here. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A number of years ago, before I came to St Mary’s, I was engaged in the business of celebrating Easter. There I was trying to get people excited about the Easter Vigil – that’s the service that we celebrated early this morning here at St Mary’s. Its full of drama – of that there is no doubt. You get a fire lit in the middle of it, from which we light the Pascal Candle which burns so bright and clearly amongst us now. The other thing you do is take some coal from the fire, slip it into the thurible, the brass thing on chains that Beth came in with at the front of the procession this morning. You put on a teaspoon or two of incense, waft it about and the whole church smells of heaven.

Anyway there was I trying to enthuse some young people about coming to this exotic service. One particular teenager I remember. He had an interest in serving at the altar in church and I did the obvious thing and did a deal. [Read more…]