A Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The usual 2 services this morning, interspersed with prayers for healing, it being the 1st of the month. I took the rare chance to sit in a pew at 10.30, as I had an NSM celebrating and a lay officiant leading the Liturgy of the Word. I simply surfaced from a pew after the Gospel in dog collar (OK, I was wearing trousers as well), did the address for the youngsters (having moved them to the front so I could ensure I was being notionally listened to - even our lot will leave their copies of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" at the back when I haul 'em up front. If they hadn't, I'd have told them how it ends - I'm evil that way! Quite interesting to see how the service handles from that perspective. I must do something about the Offertory!

Yesterdays visit to St Francis Xavier's reminded me that, for all the number of times I have been inside it, I have never really taken time to look at it properly. Accordingly, I dropped in this afternoon to look at leisure. They have some rather good modern stained glass and an impressive set of painted Stations of the Cross. Not to my personal taste to be honest, but that's life. Then I popped up the hill to the Carmelite Convent where we went for a quiet day some time back for Evening Prayer and Benediction. Very nice actually. Prayerful, despite the sisters singing the Psalms at a pitch suitable only for devout bats, rather than tenors, as is the wont (in my experience) of female religious everywhere and of every denomination. Although they usually pitch the Magnificat at a singable level. It's a little haven worth remembering on a Sunday Evening. Half an hour of peace, and they even have silence after the reading and the reflection to let God in. Not your usual RC gabble. Could almost have been Anglican.

Then I went for a steak at the pub and off to blog. Life of Reilly really.