LIGHT PERPETUAL

THE LORD LOVES A CHEERFUL GIVER

The trouble is that I’m a pretty graceless giver; I wish I could get better. On Tuesday morning I came to St.Peter’s to get ready to say Mass, and Linda, the cleaner, told me that the homeless guy was in the church foyer. He’d asked to come in and use the lavatory, and then had curled up on the easy chairs in the warm. No problem there, but I hoped he’d wake up before I was finished. Linda just cleaned around him. Then, as I was going backwards and forwards preparing the altar, a young man waiting for an appointment with the Enterprise Centre said, “Oh, sorry, there’s someone at the door for you.” So, up I go and find a local man who is known to me, brandishing doctor’s letters about an inguinal hernia, and saying he has no money for his fare to the Charing Cross Hospital and if he misses the appointment it’ll mess up his benefits. This is 9.55. I am due to say Mass at 10. I haven’t dressed yet. I haven’t opened the safe. This isn’t the best time! Ungraciously I end up making a point of bringing out my wallet and giving him a fiver “from my own money – nobody else’s”. I am mortified to realise a moment later that the young man waiting for his appointment has heard the whole conversation, and witnessed my grumpiness.

At the end of Mass, the homeless man is still asleep, and after I’ve bumbled around clearing up I have to wake him because I need to lock up. He  goes to the lavatory again and then says he’s diabetic and needs food, so I find some crisps and fruit bars and give him a fiver as well.

THANKS TO FELIX

We discovered the Felix Project a few months ago, or rather, they discovered us. They give waste food from supermarkets to groups feeding the hungry, and they have transformed our lunches. They don’t do meat, so we still have to find that, but they give us all our vegetables, and all manner of excellent extras. The only trouble is that sometimes the enthusiastic staff on the van are just too keen to shift stuff, and force food on us that we can’t realistically use. Three cartons of Rooibos tea anyone? A couple of weeks ago we had a young man making a TV film about the Felix Project who came in to see the lunch club in action, and did interviews. Whether any of it ends up being shown is quite another matter, and I wonder whether his pretty committed work is necessarily what his editors want, but we shall see (or at least we will if they warn us when it is to be broadcast).

GIVE THEM REST

Last night was All Souls’, our big occasion at St.Mary Mags. We had orchestra and choir, and about four hundred in church. We sang Fauré, in memory of Helen, and I presided in the black High Mass set that we bought in memory of Ian McPherson, a dear old Mary Mags regular a couple of years ago. I always invite families for whom we’ve done funerals in the past year, and each year some of them come and really get it. This year a young mum, who lost a teenage daughter to an acute asthma attack came, along with the daughter’s twin, and they loved it. She was absolutely blown away by the experience, which is as it is meant to be. The music, which is sublime, in that beautiful setting, and with the solemn mystery of the liturgy, takes people to a better place. We had lots of positive comments afterwards, from Warwick Estate families as from Little Venice grandees. The Music Society has been putting on a French Romantic Requiem for All Souls’ Day here for nearly fifty years, and we must be one of the very few places where it happens with full orchestra, which is really special. My mission has been to make it clear that this is an act of worship, not a concert, and so I’ve managed to get a second congregational hymn into the order, as well as making sure the order of service is designed to help people participate. We always invite people to add names to the list of departed to be read out at the intercessions, while the musicians want to suppress the list, so there’s always a little tension there. To be able to preside at All Souls’ Day at Mary Mags is a great privilege in my ministry.